Capital Punishment

Our society has become increasingly violent. Gone are the days where you can leave your doors open and your cars unlocked. Family values and morals are declining. Drug abuse, child abuse, domestic violence, and gangs are on the rise. Guns are almost as easy to get as candy. Children are not safe even at school. Society seems obsessed with sex and violence, which is glorified in music and movies. It seems some members of society place little value on human life. With the crime rate increasing, crimes becoming more heinous, and society's killers are becoming younger and younger, the United States which once outlawed capital punishment has brought it back. Some argue that it is justified and some see it as an act of hate. There has always been mixed feelings about capital punishment and that is why I thought it would be a good subject to write about. In my paper I will be explaining what capital punishment means and a brief history on the punishment. Also, I will be giving my opinion on capital punishment and an example as well.

Each year there are about 250 people added to death row and 35 executed. The death penalty is the harshest form of punishment enforced in the United Sates today. Once a jury has convicted a criminal offense they go to the second part of the trial, the punishment phase. If the jury recommends the death penalty and the judge agrees then the criminal will face some form of execution, lethal injection is the most common form used today. There was a period from 1972 to 1976 that capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Their reason for this decision was that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment under the eighth amendment. The decision was reversed when new methods of execution were introduced. http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/c/capitalp.htm

The American Civil Liberties Union believed the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantees of due process of law and of equal protection under the law. Furthermore, we hold that the state should not arrogate unto itself the right to kill human beings - especially when it kills with premeditation and ceremony, in the name of the law or in the name of its people, or when it does so in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion. Also, they feel that Capital punishment is an intolerable denial of civil liberties, and is inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system. Therefore, through litigation, legislation, and commutation and by helping to foster a renewed public outcry against this barbarous and brutalizing institution, we strive to prevent executions and seek the abolition of capital punishment.

In 1972, the Supreme Court declared that under then-existing laws "the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty... constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court, concentrating its objections on the manner in which death penalty laws had been applied, found the result so "harsh, freakish, and arbitrary" as to be constitutionally unacceptable. Making the nationwide impact of its decision unmistakable, the Court summarily reversed death sentences in the many cases then before it, which involved a wide range of state statutes, crimes and factual situations.

But within four years after the decision, several hundred persons had been sentenced to death under new capital punishment statutes written to provide guidance to juries in sentencing. These statutes typically require a two-stage trial procedure, in which the jury first determines guilt or innocence and then chooses imprisonment or death in the light of aggravating or mitigating circumstances.

In 1976, the Supreme Court moved away from abolition, holding that "the punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution." The Court ruled that the new death penalty statutes contained "objective standards to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing the sentence of death. Subsequently, 38 state legislatures and the Federal government have enacted death penalty statutes patterned after those the Court upheld in Gregg. In recent years, Congress has enacted death penalty statutes for peacetime espionage by military personnel and for drug-related murders. http://archive.aclu.org/library/case_against_death.html#introduction

Today there is a big controversy over capital punishment whether or not it works or if it is morally right. Before I go on capital punishment, in America, is only used in felony cases such as murder or a felony burglary, where there was an unintended murder because of a robbery. People who favor the death penalty say that the criminal deserve it and is the only way for justice to be served. People who are against it, the death penalty, say that it is immoral, that no person should be sentenced to death, it has no place in a civilized society, and that since the death penalty cannot be racially bias it should be banished. Capital punishment is justified by several means. First of all, it greatly discourages violent crimes like murder and rape. Many murderers are not serving most--if even half--of their sentences nowadays, due to early parole or overcrowded prisons. If a murderer is sentenced to life imprisonment, not only does it cost the taxpayers money to support them but also often their life in the jail is better than that which some citizens live everyday. These first two facts encourage crime rather than impede them. Also, a person who commits murder deserves a punishment that fits the crime committed. Premeditated murder, being the most vile crime committed, calls for the only fit punishment-- death. I am referring only to murderers getting the death penalty, and not necessarily any other crimes like rape or burglary.

There are now currently thirty-seven states that have the death penalty. Even the military has the death penalty. The other states, most of them in the Midwest and Northeast have abolished it. The only two states to not ever have the death penalty is Alaska and Hawaii.

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