California's Death Penalty

Ñ--California's Death Penalty?

What are we mad about electricity rates, gasoline prices, traffic congestion and crowded schools? We're missing the point here. What were missing here is some good, old and honest anger about an issue that has been a concern for decades - California's Death Penalty. The Death Penalty has long been a problem in California from costs, deterrence, overcrowded prisons, execution of the innocent and so on. Then if were having all these problems why should we continue using this system?

The death penalty is the sentence of execution for murder and other capital crimes. Which are punishable by death? The death penalty is used only in 38 states (www.deathpenalty.org). The state of California is home to the nation's most clogged death row, housing 641 men and women pending lethal injection. Having to house all these criminals is costing tax payers millions of dollars. Capital punishment in California, as in every other state, is more expensive than a life imprisonment sentence without the opportunity of parole. These costs are not the result of careless appeals but instead the result of constitutionally mandated safeguards (www.deathpenalty.org). Even with the careless appeals and mandated safeguards were having to take a closer look into convicted felons' cases and by doing so we have saved a large number of wrongfully convicted people. Capital punishment, the death penalty, is a highly controversial method used in punishing people who kill another human being. It has raised difficult moral, practical, and legal issues. The debate over capital punishment continues to be pursed in both courts and the political arena (Capital Punishment, pg.3). The debate can be sorted out around several questions:

ﻢ Is it morally right to deliberately take the life of any person, even a person who has killed another?

ﻢ Is the death penalty actually effective in deterring crime?

ﻢ How often are innocent persons executed by mistakes? Is the execution of innocent a necessary price to pay for the security of society?

ﻢ Does the importance of capital punishment excuse its cost and the diversion of lacking resources from efforts to fight crime and rehabilitate criminals?

ﻢ Does the U.S. Constitution's ban of "cruel and unusual punishment" apply to the death penalty?

In looking at these questions, the following sections will inform you that the death penalty in California should be abolished.

Throughout history the human race has fought over what was fair and just punishment for the killing of another human. The bible tells us, "Moreover ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death" (Numbers 35:31). Methods of execution have included such practices as crucifixion, stoning, drowning, burning at the stake, impaling and beheading (Mircrosoft Encarta, 2002). Most of all these events were made public so as to show a deterrent to others, "warning so to speak that this awaits you when you murder". Public executions were a common place event in society until the 1830's due to the deterrent effect of them. In the 1900's through this deterrent event wasn't public anymore for the reason society wanted to hide its manners from the public eye to save ourselves from the horror of the event itself (Microsoft Encarta, 2002). Executions have been said to have a deterrent effect on the crime of murder, although there is little to no evidence to prove this. The decision to kill antoher human is dependent on numerous different events that are in turn influenced by religion and beliefs. Example of a more commonly used verse is in the bible itself, " And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Deuteronomy 19:21). This verse from the bible has been and will be used by the death penalty advocates to prove their point about the right of a man to kill another man. The death penalty doesn't bring back the dead it just exacts vengeance to the living.

The risk of executing an innocent person is usually considered the strongest most practical argument against punishment. The death sentence, once carried out, is irreversible. If society executes an innocent prisoner, there is no way to undo the error. The advantage of imprisonment it always leaves the possibility of overturning a wrongful conviction (Capital Punishment, pg 19-20). While years lost because of being incarcerated it cannot be returned but there might be some sort of compensation. The possibility that innocent sentenced to death does exist. In California, at least six men have been sentenced to death, that were either acquitted on the charge of murder or had their murder convictions overturned (www.deathpenalty.org).

California has executed just 10 inmates since it restored capital punishment in 1978. In that same period, 38 death row inmates have died of other causes: three were killed by other prisoners, a dozen committed suicide and the rest died of natural causes (www.deathpenalty.org) According to California law, all death penalty appeals are heard by the Supreme Court. It is more likely that an inmate, who is sentenced to death, will sit on death row for more than five years before he is appointed an attorney for his first and mandatory appeal to the California Supreme Court.

The death penalty or capital punishment may be approved by Congress or the state's legislature for murder and other capital crimes. The Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty is a "violation" of the eighth amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org). "The court found that the arbitrary and capricious way in which the death penalty was administered constituted cruel and unusual punishment, which the amendment bans. The Court, however, did not rule the capital punishment itself was unconstitutional. Only the random and freakish employment of the death penalty, and not the sanction itself, was ruled constitutionally indefensible" (Capital Punishment, pg 29-30). Capital punishment is submitted down today to criminals guilty