Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Miscellaneous death penalty8 misc25 death penalty8 misc25 “Capital punishment is the infliction of the death penalty on persons convicted of a crime” (Americana 596). Killing convicted felons has been one of the most widely practiced forms of criminal punishment in the United States. Currently, the states that do not practice the death penalty are Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. However, for the remaining states that do practice the death penalty, it has been a topic of debate for many years. There are two parties who argue over its many points, including whether or not it is a fitting and adequate punishment, whether or not it acts as a drawback to crime and whether or not it is morally wrong. These two classes of people can be grouped together as the retentionists, or the proponents, and the abolitionists, or the opponents (Americana 596). For the retentionists, the main reasons they are in support of the death penalty are to take revenge, to advise others, and to punish. They are most concerned with the protection of society from dangerous criminals. In spite of all this, the death penalty is not a good form of criminal punishment for many reasons: it is morally wrong, it does not act as a drawback for crime, it is irreversible and can be inflicted upon people who are innocent, it is more expensive than imprisonment and those who are convicted commonly use the costly process of appealing the decision. “People that favor the death penalty agree that capital punishment is a relic of barbarism, but as murder itself is barbaric, they contend that death is a fitting punishment for it” (Jayewardene 87). Retentionists are most often subscribers to the “an eye for an eye” principle and feel that execution is the only way to satisfy the public as well as themselves. An example of this principle is someone stealing money from you then the same thing happen to them. Retentionists feel almost the same way about murderers who are sentenced to die. As far as they are concerned, the criminal brought his punishment upon himself and they deserve what When proponents of the death penalty are thrown the argument of capital punishment begin a tragic loss of human life, the majority respond “even in the tragedy of human death there are degrees, and that it is much more tragic for the innocent to lose his life than for the State to take the life of a criminal convicted of a capital offense” (Bedau 308). Fear of death prevent people from committing crimes proponents say. They also believe that if attached to certain crimes, the penalty of death exerts a positive moral influence by placing a disgrace on certain crimes like manslaughter, resulting in attitudes of disgust and horror to such acts. Furthermore, retentionists insist that the false influence of the death penalty reaches across state lines into jurisdictions that have abolished it, and so all benefit by its continued use. Perhaps this is the intended goal of the Violent Crime Control And Law Enforcement Act of 1994. It “establishes constitutional procedures for the imprisonment of the death penalty for federal crimes. It applies to federal statutes that previously carried the death penalty and creates many new capital offenses. As a result of the Act, the death penalty may now be imposed for nearly sixty federal crimes. New capital offenses include the murder of a federal prisoner serving a life sentence, and drive by shootings in the course of certain drug offenses” (Internet 11/18/99). Those in support of capital punishment think achieving model citizens and a better society happen through fear and intimidation. Retentionists do not see the death penalty as being morally wrong. For them, the most likely source of constitutional difficulty with capital punishment is the prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment,” otherwise known as the Eighth Amendment. When told by the opposing side that the death penalty is cruel, inhumane, and degrading, most proponents argue that murder is too. In fact, some retentionists consider execution to be more humane than life imprisonment because it is quick and instantaneous. Those in support of capital punishment feel that making the prisoner suffer by rotting in jail for the rest of his life is more torturous and To sum up the basic views of the proponents, imprisonment is simply not a sufficient safeguard against the future actions of criminals because it offers the possibility of escape and release on parole. “We think that some criminals must be made to pay for their crimes with their lives, and we think that we, the survivors of the world they violated, may legitimately extract that payment because we, too, are their victims” (Bedau 317). Even though the retentionists pose some interesting arguments, I myself feel that the abolitionist perspective contains much stronger backing and more reasons for opposition, the first of which is that the death penalty is wrong morally because it is the cruel and inhumane taking of a human life. The methods by which executions are carried out can involve physical torture. “Electrocution has on occasion caused extensive burns and needed more than one application of electric current to kill the condemned” (Amnesty 6). To many opponents, capital punishment is a substitution for legally killing people and no one, not even the State, has the Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty does not act as a impediment crime. “Expert after expert and study have emphasized and emphasized the lack of correlation between the threat of the death penalty and the occurrence of violent crime” (Meador 69). Isaac Ehrlich’s study on the impediment effect of capital punishment in America reveals this. It spans twenty-five years, 1957-1982, and shows that in the first year of the study was conducted there were 8,060 murders in 1957 and 65 executions. However, in the last year of the study, there were 22,520 murders committed and 1 execution performed. The absence of control is clearly The death penalty is nonreversible. “In case of a mistake, the executed prisoner cannot be given another chance. Justice can miscarry. in the last hundred years there have been more than 75 documented cases of wrongful conviction of criminal homicide. The death sentence was carried out in eight of these cases: (Draper 47). Undoubtedly many other cases of mistaken conviction and execution occurred and remain undocumented. A prisoner discovered to be blameless can be freed, but neither release nor compensation is possible for a corpse. The belief that execution costs less than imprisonment is false. “The cost of the apparatus end maintenance of the procedures attending the death penalty, including death row and the endless appeals and legal machinery, far outweighs the expense of maintaining in prison the tiny fraction of criminals who would otherwise be slain” (Draper 46). Abolitionists believe that the offender should be required to compensate the victim’s family with the offender’s own income from employment or community service. There is no doubt that someone can do more alive than dead. By working, the criminal inadvertently “pays back” society and also their victim and/or the victim’s family. There is no reason for the criminal to receive any compensation for his work. Money is no value in jail. Abolitionists consider the death penalty an insufficient form of punishment because it is cruel and inhumane, there is no proof that it prevents violent crime. It can be inflicted upon people innocent of any crime. The costly process of appealing gives the death penalty a hefty price tag and with the death penalty, the chance to make repayment to the victim and/or the victim’s family does not exist. The essence of the abolitionist perspective is,”The death penalty has been a gross failure. Beyond its horror and incivility, it has neither protected the innocent nor deterred the wicked. The recurrent spectacle of publicity sanctioned killing has cheapened human life and dignity without the redeeming grace which cheapened from justice melted out swiftly, evenly, humanely” (Draper 44). Bibliography: Word Count: 1319
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