Capital Punishment Essay Conclusion

Against The Death Penalty Essay
Against the Death Penalty "Murder is wrong" ("Capital Punishment"). We've been taught this
indisputable truth since childhood. The death penalty is defined as one human taking the life of
another. Coincidentally, that is a classification of murder. There are as many as thirty
–six states with
the death penalty, and it's essential that they change it. The United States needs the death penalty
abolished because it is filled with flaws, cruel and immoral, and is an ineffective means of deterrent
for crime. I understand why you would want to have the death penalty in effect. You probably think
that it will be cheaper to execute people instead of paying taxes for them in jail. There is also a
probability that you think that you will...show more content...
Another flaw is it is morally wrong. No matter how people sugar–coat it, murder is murder, in the
name of justice or in vengeance it is morally wrong. Everyone deserves to live, no matter their
circumstances are. Federal states should not be allowed to decide who lives and who dies,
especially in a country such as the United States, which prides its self on freedom ("Top Ten").
Moreover, the death penalty is applied at random ("Facts"). "The death penalty is a lethal lottery: of
the 15,000 to 17,000 homicides committed every year in the United States, approximately 120
people are sentenced to death, less than 1%" ("Facts"). Many criminals have committed the same
crimes, but few have been sentenced to death for their crimes. In Addition, there is a chance
mentally ill citizens could be convicted to death ("Facts"). According to Amnesty International and
the National Association on Mental Illness, One out of every ten persons who has been executed in
the United States since 1977 is mentally ill. "Many mentally ill defendants are unable to participate
in their trials in any meaningful way and appear unengaged, cold, and unfeeling before the jury"
("Facts"). Many mentally ill defendants have been drugged against their will in order for them to be
competent enough to be executed ("Facts"). Some states still haven't put a ban on executing
mentally ill people such as Organ, although the United States Supreme Court has declared that
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Essay on Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment
The definition of capital punishment is the legal punishment of death for violating criminal law. The
person who gets capital punishment is the ones who committed serious crimes. Methods of capital
punishment throughout the world are by stoning, beheading, hanging, electrocution, lethal injection
and shooting. The two most common methods capital punishment use in the United States are lethal
injection and electrocution.
The lethal injection is the most used form of capital punishment. It's an intravenous shot that kills the
criminal quick and painless. When capital punishment is done by electrocution the criminal is
strapped to a chair that a volts of electricity is pass through.
In America if all people agree...show more content...
The first pros of capital punishment are that it works as deterrence against major crimes. The death
penalty is a punishment that creates fear in the mind of any sane person. Most criminals would think
twice if they knew their own lives were at stake. Although there is no statistical evidence that death
penalty deters crime, we have to agree that most of us fear death.
The most conclusive evidence that criminals fear the death penalty more than life without parole is
provided by convicted capital murderers and their attorneys. 99.9% of all convicted capital murderers
and their attorneys argue for life, not death, in the punishment phase of their trial. (prodeathpenalty)
A Second pro is that a criminal that is executed can't another crime or escape. A dead criminal can
no longer commit a crime, and therefore the danger to the public is permanently removed.
A third pro of capital punishment is that it's more economical. Why should money be spent on a
criminal when it could be spent on education, the sick, or the needy? The only reason why it is so
expensive to execute an individual, is because of the numerous appeal processes. (~ab2166)
Another pro is that the retribution to the family and loves ones of the victims is payed. Endless
stress and anxiety plague the families of the victims and executions puts all those stresses to rest
better than life–long imprisonment or

capital punishment Essay
The Ineffectiveness of Capital Punishment
For many years, capital punishment has been in use, but it is not been effective. Theodore Robert
Bundy in 1978, slipped into a Tallahassee sorority house and bludgeoned two sleeping women to
death, then killed a 12–year–old girl in Lake City. He was sentenced to three concurrent death
sentences in 1979. Nine years later, Bundy is alive and well on the Death Row (Von Drehle 1A). A
prisoner sentenced to death spends an average of 10 years, nationally, on death row waiting for their
execution. More than 2,100 people live on America's death Rows. At the current execution rate, it
would take eighty–two years to kill them all. Death Row is going to get bigger, the wait...show more
content...
Half of all death sentences are overturned on appeal, usually after several years of expensive
lawsuits and rigorous legal proceedings. For every actual execution in America, courts sentence
thirteen more people to die. Experts are coming to a conclusion that little or nothing can be done to
fix the system if it continues to allow the legal processes concerning the death penalty continue as
they are.
According to a study prepared for the Federal Judiciary Committee, the number of capital punishment
cases on appeal in the federal courts will be more than tripled in the next two years if the system
continue to operate as it does now. The study concluded that the lawyers needed to handle theses
appeals would cost the nation's taxpayers over thirty million dollars a year. California has 234
prisoners on the Death Row, the third largest population of convicts awaiting execution in the
country. Its last execution was 1967. However, the tax–funded budget for defense attorneys is more
that two million dollars a year, which, again, is actually funded by the citizens of that state.
Capital Punishment is cruel and inhumane. It is a slow process to complete, in terms of actually
getting the convict executed, as it is known to take years before the actual day of execution.
Prisoners stay in their cells for about 10 years, courtesy of the tax paying citizens of their respective
states, waiting for their death.
The death

Capital Punishment
Capital punishment is the execution of a perpetrator for committing a heinous crime (homicide),
and it is a hotly debated topic in our society. The basic issue is whether capital punishment should
be allowed as it is today, or abolished in part or in whole. My argument is that:
1)Capital punishment is not an effective deterrent for heinous crimes.
2)Life imprisonment can be worse of a punishment than death, not as costly as execution, and better
for rehabilitation.
3)The innocent can be wrongly put to death.
Conclusion: Capital punishment should be abolished.
Though capital punishment might seem like the only way to get revenge, it is morally unjust. Who
are we to decide whether a person should live or die? It is morally...show more content...
Murderers have the lowest rate of re–committing a homicide than people who have served time for
other offenses (Johnson, 1990).
The Innocent With convictions and executions, there is always a chance that someone was
wrongly filed with charges. What are we to do with these people? In a study of capital convictions
from 1900 to 1986 conducted by Radelet and Bedau, 350 cases were identified in which defendants
were mistakenly convicted of crimes they did not commit, and of these 350, 24 were executed.
Though 24 un–called for executions in 87 years don't sound too bad, the number should be zero.
Society must determine whether the risk of wrongly executing an innocent person is worth taking to
reap the benefits of executions of convicted murderers.
Conclusion
The latest information for Amnesty International states that 70 countries have completely abolished
the death penalty for all crimes. Thirteen countries have abolished the death penalty for all but
exceptional crimes, such as wartime crimes. Twenty–three countries haven't abolished the death
penalty by law, but haven't carried out any executions in the last ten years. Once abolished, most
countries do not reintroduce the death penalty. Since 1985, 35 countries have abolished the death
penalty. During that period, only four reintroduced it В– Nepal then once again abolished it. During
1998 at least 2,258 prisoners are known to have been executed in 37 countries and 4,845 sentenced
to death in 78

Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the toughest form of punishment enforced
today in the United States. According to the online Webster dictionary, capital punishment is defined
as "the judicially ordered execution of a prisoner as a punishment for a serious crime, often called a
capital offence or a capital crime" (1). In those jurisdictions that practice capital punishment, its use
is usually restricted to a small number of criminal offences, principally, treason and premeditated
murder. In the 38 U.S. states and within the federal government currently upholding and enforcing
death penalty statutes, this method of punishment varies quite differently amongst them. It is a
controversial issue...show more content...
The crime rate is lower in the states that do not invoke capital punishment, but as Walter Burns stated
"the number of murders tend to rise with the crime rate in general–and not only in America (4).
Capital punishment is maintained to hopefully show criminals that when they kill they will
eventually meet the same fate. By enforcing the death penalty, the government could be trying to
scare criminals from their crimes, and in some cases it has worked. When the death penalty was
restored in Kansas, for example, the homicide rate dropped considerably (7). According to research
done by Bedau, the crime rate continued to soar between 1960–1969, when capital punishment was
rarely being used in most states (7). As a whole, capital punishment has worked to lower homicidal
crimes and deter criminals from illegal actions. Capital punishment could help to keep repeat
offenders off the streets. In some states the common belief is that imprisoning the murders of
society in penitentiaries will keep them from killing again, but this is not true. Even when criminals
are imprisoned, their killing can still continue. Bedau did a survey of all the male inmates in state
penitentiaries during the year of 1973. He came to the conclusion that after the men were
imprisoned for one year, at least sixteen homicides were reported (7). In effect, the

Capital Punishment Essay
Capital Punishment Capital Punishment is regarded by most as a successful deterrent to murder, but
that is because these people don't look at it as it is applied. According to retributivists such as Kant
and Van Den Haag the guilty deserves to be punished. On the other hand, people against the death
penalty like Bedau think that the death penalty is just as much an effective deterrent as life in prison.
The most famous retributivist Kant, states that the guilty ought to get punished because they chose
to act wrongly, and by punishing them, we are respecting them as a moral agents. This occurs
because humans are given the ability to reason and act morally and thus if we don't punish them we
are not treating them as moral agents....show more content...
Another retributivist, van den Haag, is also a major supporter of the death penalty. He is not
concerned about sentencing innocent people to death because according to him there will
always be innocent victims, but that number or percentage must be kept to a minimum. Over the
past 85 years, there have been 25 who have proven to be innocent after death, but according to van
den Haag this is a reasonable number because there will always be mistakes(van den Haag,
pg252) . People against the death penalty say not only the guilty are being executed, and innocent
lives are being taken, thus we should have a stricter death row sentence to see if it is possible the
accuser will be innocent. Also, it would be too difficult to make a law that ensures that only those
committing the worst crimes are sentenced to die, for example if an abused wife decided one day
to get back at her husband and take his life. According to retributivists she doesn't deserve to die
even though she is guilty. Also, with the death penalty race, age and gender come into play. For
example, there isn't much media coverage on men on death row, but if there was a women on death
row you wouldn't miss a thing about it. Another example is the case of Ferman vs Georgia in 1972.
This case showed that capital punishment is unconstitutional, but the court didn't say it was cruel
and unusual punishment. Consequently, with the fact that the majority of people on death row are
usually poor,

Texas and the Death Penalty Essay
|
|TEXAS & THE DEATH PENALTY |
|SOC. 312 / |
| |
| |
Putting people to death for breaking the law is a punishment that has been in existence for thousands
of years of human history and has been enforced in all corners of the...show more content...
This criminal code is one of the most sophisticated in the country and has become a model for other
states to follow. But research studies conducted to compare effects of the death penalty nationwide
have shown some conflicting results. Comparison studies done to show homicide rates of
retentionist and abolitionist jurisdictions from 1999 to 2001 (Sorenson & Pilgrim) have shown that
death penalty states tend to have a higher murder rate than abolitionist states. This result creates the
argument of the overall deterrent effect of execution. Texas is still in the top 20 of states with the
highest homicide rate even though it is the highest in death penalty executions. "If the death penalty
were a deterrent, the argument goes, then Texas should be located among those states with the
lowest homicide rates" (Sorenson & Pilgrim, P. 25).
Another subtopic that has caused much debate along with the death penalty is the increasing
influence of today's media reporting on capital punishment cases and pushing to have televised
executions as a form of retribution for some viewers and a kind of morbid reality show–
entertainment for others. This also brings in the question of whether or not media coverage of
executions

Capital Punishment Essay example
Capital Punishment
"Let's keep society safe and give murderers what they deserve – the death penalty".
In this essay I will hope to set out both sides of the argument, for and against Capital Punishment.
The advantages and the disadvantages will be considered in conjunction with Christian teachings
and belief. The Christian teachings, Old Testament and New Testament will also be compared with
human reactions to the subject. From my research and analysis in this essay I will be able to come
to a conclusion as to whether or not I feel the death penalty is ever justified
Murder is a crime whether you look at the Bible – Thou shalt not kill The Sixth Commandment – or
at a book of English...show more content...
The disadvantages of Capital Punishment are shown most prominently in Jesus and what he stood
for, i.e. forgiveness and sanctity of life, also in the Sermon on the Mount and many other parts of
the New Testament. This does give the argument against capital punishment a head start but there
are also other factors to consider. By letting a murderer be put to death you will be legalising
murder for the executioner. Who is then to say who can and cannot kill? If a government decides
this, there is sure to be religious opposition, and if for example the Pope decides who can kill
another then he would be going against his own religion. When death is made legal in any way,
even in cases of war, it is encouraging violence. War should and is frequently only a last resort
'Just War'. The death penalty for murder would not be a last resort as there are alternatives and as
again who is to decide which murder and in what circumstances it would warrant another death. In
any case and in any trial mistakes could be made. There will always be the risk that an innocent
person will be put to death because of another's mistake. According to Christian beliefs no one
should be killed especially because God, the creator, is the only one who can give and take life, this
is called the

Capital Punishment Essay Conclusion

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Capital Punishment Essay Conclusion