The Death Penalty In The United States

America’s strategy of capital punishment believes that killing someone actually solves the problem of reducing crime rates, when in reality it is more of a method to avoid the real issue with the criminal justice system. We are killing all these prisoners and not really getting the answers we need. For instance, are we really stopping crime? Also, the death penalty puts innocent lives at risk because of how flawed it is. Since the introduction of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, 138 innocent men and women have been released from Death Row, including some who came within minutes of execution with the death penalty. Therefore, I am against the death penalty and wish for it to be terminated due to the fact that it is morally wrong and has little to no impact when it comes to reducing crimes rates. This makes it practically useless and straight-up stupid; it also distracts us to a point of making us avoid the true ways to actually reduce crime in America.

The death penalty, as we know it today, didn’t exist in the United States until 1976. However, the American penal system has incorporated capital punishment since the earliest settlements were founded in the early 1600’s. The first recorded execution in the United States occurred in 1608 in Jamestown, Virginia when Captain George Kendall was executed just one year after the Jamestown settlement had been established after he had been convicted of being a spy for Spain (Part I: History of the Death Penalty). Over the next 250 years, several states moved toward abolishing capital punishment altogether. While there has been serious push towards ending capital punishment, more than half of state governments within the United States cling onto their right to execute criminals who perform truly heinous crimes.

The death penalty is a huge controversy in the United States. There are many different feelings regarding the death penalty. Some feel like it is the easy way out for people who have committed heinous acts, and others feel like it is the perfect justice for those individuals. An argument made by the website ListVerse explained, that people teach their children not to steal, or commit crimes because they will be sent to prison and punished (ListVerse). Completing their argument, the same website also explained that if the same child, who was taught not to commit crime, commits murder, and is sentenced to the death penalty they are taught nothing (ListVerse). It is important that the criminal justice system not only serves justice, but also deters people from committing the same offense. On the opposing side of the argument, the website Phil for Humanity explains the importance of the death penalty. Phil for Humanity points out how expensive it is to house inmates, and that these individuals are extremely dangerous to society (Phil for Humanity). This paper will discuss the pros and the cons of the death penalty in greater detail.

As we near the culmination of the twentieth century, capital punishment is in decline. Once a near universal practice, the death penalty has been abolished in 101 countries, as of July 2015(Amnesty International, 2015) and executions have become less common amongst industrialised democracies. Some nations keep capital statutes for instances of exceptional crimes such as treason, but parts of the former Soviet Union, Japan and the United States of America (USA) still administer death sentences for ‘ordinary’ crimes of violence.

The majority of people believe that the death penalty is applied fairly today in the US. According to Washington D.C; six out of 10 people favor the death penalty. People might think (at first,) that the death penalty is cruel, until they actually know what and why it is used for. The death penalty is mostly used on convicted murders, while some have been used for on extreme cases relating to aggravated rape. “When asked about the frequency with which the death penalty is imposed, 40% of Americans say it is not imposed enough, with the remainder equally divided between saying it is imposed "too often" (27%) or "about the right amount" (27%).”(Dugan) With this only 27% of people think that the death penalty is applied “too often”, while 40%

Most executions in the United States are carried out by lethal injections. Another common method is death by the electric chair and states that practice this execution include Virginia, South Carolina, Florida and Alabama. Washington, New Hampshire and Delaware are some of the sates that consider hanging as an execution method .Oklahoma and Utah permit execution by firing squad but under the condition other executions methods are unconstitutional, Utah later burned the firing squad method in 2004. Some states have the same rules as Oklahoma that allow the use of other methods if lethal injection is unconstitutional. (Mark Berman-Robert Barnes)

This article is about the international perspective on death penalty. In most countries, death penalty is strictly reserved for the espionages and murderers. The ongoing debate about death penalty in international law has significantly evolved over the years. According to Dieter (1999), “The increasing use of the death penalty in the United States and in a number of other states is a matter of serious concern and runs counter to the international community’s expressed desire for the abolition of the death penalty” (para. 1). Although there is rather an inexorable trend towards the elimination of death penalty, per se, a vast number of countries still practice the execution of criminals and political opponents. In the American society, it is

Death is the most mortifying thing almost everyone is afraid of, including criminals. Death penalties not only affect the criminal, but it also affects the state by its great expense. Sentencing someone to death is an unnatural and cruel ability the law has over people. Also, innocent people can be put on the death row. To sum up, death penalties should no longer be allowed because they are highly expensive, they are a cruel way to end someone’s life, and some people may be falsely accused, though they are just following the jurisdiction system.

With all of the arguments against the death penalty, you would think that it’s still being implemented due to its effectiveness at inhibiting crime rates. However, this is not the case, as it has been heavily discredited and proved to not discourage crime rates at all (McElwee). According to “Death Penalty Information Center”, since 1990 there has actually been a higher rate of homicide in states with the death penalty than states without, and in 2015 there was a 25% higher rate of homicide in those death penalty states. This proves that in fact, the death penalty is so brutal on society, that when such violence is condoned via the death penalty, more violence is to follow (Brook). In addition, while one belief is that it is cheaper to kill the criminals instead of housing them, the overall costs of proceeding with the death penalty overtake those of its alternative; life imprisonment. Over the full extent of a case, executing prisoners can be up to three times as expensive as life in prison, due to factors like higher costs of capital punishment trials, automatic appeals, the long review process, and heightened security on death row (Brook). There is no need to fund a more expensive and inefficient means of punishment if there is a more humane and cost effective one available in life

The death penalty has become an extremely pressing issue in our culture today. Both sides of the argument make very valid points. On one side the death penalty could potentially make citizens feel more safe, and on the other hand people can argue that us as mere humans do not have the authority to “play God.” I believe the death penalty should be abolished for a variety of reasons; our government is a broken system, a proposed law would not end all murders, and we, as humans, should not have the authority to determine whether someone lives or dies.

Another reason that the death penalty needs to be abolished is that when we enact this penalty, we cease to view criminals as humans, and begin viewing them as sub-humans who are no deserving of the same rights that the rest of us enjoy. The United States’ Constitution itself states that all of us, even the lowest criminal is deserving of basic human dignity and basic rights. One of those rights is the right to life. When we take someone’s right to life away from them, they die as something less than human in our

First of all, the cost of death penalty compared to 40 years in prison is nearly three times as much. Since, the death penalty is three times more than 40 years in prison the taxpayers are being hurt. The cost of the majority of death penalty cases is costing around 2.3 million dollars per case (McLaughlin). This is a lot of money that is being used and it’s causing the unemployment rate to increase and it’s also affecting people life’s by leaving them homeless and without a job (“The US Can’t Afford...”). The United States has to stop wasting the money that they don’t have and should help American citizens. The cost of 40 years in prison is estimated at about 740 thousand dollars per case (Trout). If the United States were to stop death penalty, the economy would change drastically. With the cost of the death penalty being around 2.3 million dollars per case the United States needs money to pay for it, and they take that money from American citizens (McLaughlin). Taxpayers are

The strongest argument for the death penalty is the added cost to society of keeping a person in prison for twenty years at a cost of more than $50,000 per year (Smith, 1). With that being said, we are taking away money from building new roads and increasing the school education system because we are housing the living expenses of a criminal who has committed a horrendous crime. The death penalty not only affects the nation’s economy but also can hel settle with emotional comfort. The family members that committed can have some type of closure and relief instead of having the constant

Death Penalty should be abolished because it’s against human dignity and it’s unconstitutional, also the costs that are used for cruel punishment should be used for something that will help humans instead of taking innocent lives away. The death penalty is proven to be unconstitutional. The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution states that the use of “cruel and unusual punishment” should be prohibited. If we can consider the aforementioned methods of torture “cruel and unusual”, the punishment of death must also be considered unconscionable. There is no evidence that posits the use of the death penalty as being causal to a reduction in crime. According to the NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the murder rate

Capital punishment is known to bring justice to those who have been lost and scare others from committing these horrible crimes. In reality, the death penalty causes intense mental pain and does not effect crime rates at all. To keep this pain from happening, the death penalty should be banned at the federal level and not be allowed. Continuing to allow this practice is inhuman and unethical for our country. While capital punishment seems to bring justice, in reality it causes more harm than good to the government and the families involved.