s who are sentenced to die. As far asthey are concerned, the criminal brought his punishment upon himself and they deserve whatthey get. Cook 2When proponents of the death penalty are thrown the argument of capital punishment begin atragic loss of human life, the majority respond even in the tragedy of human death there aredegrees, and that it is much more tragic for the innocent to lose his life than for the State to takethe life of a criminal convicted of a capital offense (Bedau 308).Fear of death prevent people from committing crimes proponents say. They alsobelieve that if attached to certain crimes, the penalty of death exerts a positive moral influenceby placing a disgrace on certain crimes like manslaughter, resulting in attitudes of disgust andhorror to such acts. Furthermore, retentionists insist that the false influence of the death penaltyreaches across state lines into jurisdictions that have abolished it, and so all benefit by itscontinued use. Perhaps this is the intended goal of the Violent Crime Control And LawEnforcement Act of 1994. It establishes constitutional procedures for the imprisonment of thedeath penalty for federal crimes. It applies to federal statutes that previously carried the deathpenalty and creates many new capital offenses. As a result of the Act, the death penalty maynow be imposed for nearly sixty federal crimes. New capital offenses include the murder of afederal prisoner serving a life sentence, and drive by shootings in the course of certain drugoffenses (Internet 11/18/99). Those in support of capital punishment think achieving modelcitizens and a better society happen through fear and intimidation.Retentionists do not see the death penalty as being morally wrong. For them, the mostlikely source of constitutional difficulty with capital punishment is the prohibition against crueland unusual punishment, otherwise known as the Eighth Amendment. When told by theopposing side that the ...
