Persuasive Essay for Capital Punishment

Jalessia Moore        

April 6, 2016

PHI 105

Monica Perrone

Capital Punishment        

Capital punishment is a very controversial topic. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on the matter. Of course, this is a topic that many tip toe around because you want to be considerate of the (living or deceased) victims and their families, however, there has not been any valid justification as to why capital punishment should even exist. Capital punishment should be abolished because minorities are unfairly judged, there is no credible evidence that support the notion that it deters potential criminals, and innocent people have been executed.

Minorities are stereotyped or labeled as criminals, among other things, just because of the color of their skin. Although they have the right to a fair trial just as anyone else, and are considered innocent until proven guilty, jurors and onlookers have already prejudged them. This is a hasty generalization because it is assumed that all people of color are criminals. This is not to say that minorities are not capable of committing a capital crime, however, they should not be executed just for being black or having darker skin (Londono, 2013), which is considered a crime in the eyes of those who are racially biased. According to Londono (2013), you can most likely determine the outcome of a case where the death penalty is on the table. Capital punishment is final. Should any new evidence surface and/or new laws be implemented or the old laws be revised, once the execution has been carried out, it cannot be undone (Londono, (2013).

The death penalty, also referred to as capital punishment, has raised many questions. From my research, the most highly debated subtopic about the death penalty is whether or not it is, without question, a deterrent. So far no one has successfully produced concrete evidence that it does function as a deterrent. In fact, because there have been several different outcomes, a committee of scholars employed by the National Research Council decided that the statistics of the study should not be considered at all (Nagin, 2014). “No studies take different alternatives to the death sentence into account; no studies consider the potential murderer’s perception of his risk of execution” (Nagin, 2014, p. 11). The information used in current studies cannot be verified and are assumptions that cannot accurately identify the outcome of the death penalty on future murders (Nagin, 2014).