The article, “Cruel and Increasingly Unusual; Lethal Injections,” from The Economist, discusses the death sentence in the United States. The article explains that in the US, the most common method of execution is lethal injection, although the practice is becoming rare. In several cases, the contents of the syringe proved to be faulty and the article briefly describes the controversy across the U.S. concerning lethal injections. The article also uses Kelly Gissendaner, a convict who was sentenced to death by the state of Georgia, and examples of failed injections, to show that a multitude of errors can be made in the preparation of an execution. Once the mistakes are brought to the attention of people, “these logistical and moral problems…
In the book Capital Punishment by Michael Kronenwetter . He talks about how capital punishment was favorable for our country. He explained the power of the death sentence and how it helped the government and the people of the United States. He explained how the capital punishment was a deterrent for people. That anyone who would think about committing a murder would think before because they would be afraid of the consequence.…
For this assignment, I reviewed two articles on the Criminal Justice database library. One focused on bail decisions, and how this can sometimes affect the outcome of the sentencing phase. The other article focused on Capital Sentencing Decisions, that focused on the portrayal of the victim. Both of these articles gave some interesting theories of how judges and jury decide the fate of one’s future. It described how certain factors can influence the judge or jury in their decision making.…
In, “ The 2% Death Penalty : How a Minority of Counties Produce Most Death Cases at Enormous Costs to All”, claims that by reducing or all together abolishing the death penalty, will be more beneficial cost wise for counties. Throughout the article, the author always reverts back to how expensive the death penalty can be. For example, the author compares Philadelphia county as one of the highest death rates to New Orleans which only had four inmates on death row that year. In many cases, the death penalty is necessary, however, in counties that have more inmates on death row than inmates that are not; it is time for its citizens to decide on whether the cost and loss of life is actually worth the time and energy that it is taking to keep these…
On one issue, Texas culture and tradition had influence the views of Texas judges on the death penalty. In fact, judges would often implement decisions and punishments based on a justice system that discriminated against certain races rather than a justice system based on evidence and reason to convict criminals. Racial bias is the opinionated view that a society has uses to assigns certain positive or negative traits to a race so that one can categorize them as either lower or higher in society. These stereotypical beliefs were set up during the time of the European enlightenment where philosophers had categorized races to use them has slaves and servants so that Europeans may maintain control for economic and social reasons like labor or…
In the essay Race, Capital Punishment, and the Cost of Murder by M. Cholbi, the author examines the issue of racial discrimination in capital punishment among African Americans; also, how African Americans murderers are more likely to receive the death penalty over white murderers. The Author believes capital punishment and the death penalty are just punishments for the actions of perpetrators, however the author believes the unequal distribution of capital punishment is not a just action (Cholbi 1). The argument of whether capital punishment is immoral has shifted to if its distribution among criminals is tolerable and just (Cholbi 1). Cholbi states,”I believe that the issue of racial disparities in capital sentencing deserves to be reinvigorated…
Recently, a vast amount of research by criminologists focused on the disparate treatment of African Americans in terms of a plea bargain. As Savitsky argues, that plea bargain is one of the most crucial variables in the high level of racial stratification in prisons that accounts for 95 percent of criminal dispositions. Black's dilemma whether to accept a plea deal or proceed to trial given their general lack of confidence in the Criminal Justice System, renders them at a disadvantage that systematically leads to differential bargain outcomes that aggregate the disproportionately ratio of incarcerated African Americans. The process of plea bargain received substantial criticism as it vests much more discretion to prosecutors than…
Should the U.S have the Death Penalty? Do you believe in the Death Penalty? In this essay you might be persuaded to the opposite side of your belief or stuck in the middle. I got my facts and details from Death penalty in the United States: why we still have it by Kevin Rizzo, December 20, 2014.…
One truth only institutes beyond question the pervasiveness of racial disparities in the historic implementation of the death penalty in the USA. Between colonial times and 1990, some 18,000 persons were put to death, from that total, only 30 cases involved the execution of a white individual for the homicide of a black person. Nearly all those cases , the social situation of the black victim was higher than the social situation of the white committer. In 10 cases, the black victim was a slave, and the homicide was dealt as a property offense against the white slave owner rather than offense of vehemence against an African American.…
In Greg Miller’s Wired article “Did Brain Scans Just Save a Convicted Murderer From the Death Penalty?”, John McCluskey, a prisoner escaped from an Arizona prison, carjacked a retired couple, shot them inside the camping trailer they were towing behind their truck and set the trailer on fire with their bodies still inside. Despite his reprehensible act of crime, John McCluskey’s lawyers successfully convinced the jury that the convict has several brain defects and that his action was a result of his impulsiveness as he is incapable of planning such things in advance. As a result, the jury decided that they had been unable to come to a consensus on the death penalty, in other words, John McCluskey is getting a life sentence without parole. Suppose…
Judicial death is an embarrassment to this country and should not be a sensible chastisement for persons with an intellectually handicap. By partaking in this inhuman act, and having it legalized in thirty one of the fifty states is ghastly. Society has long been ambivalent about psychological illnesses; and the fight has always been to treat mentally ill people as equals, but if an individual’s IQ is not even up to par with an average aptitude rating, this said person should not be eligible to receive one of the highest sentences our government can bestow upon someone. Individuals with psychological obstacles are at a greater risk of wrongful convictions and death rulings.…
Imagine sitting in a courtroom on trial for a crime. The death penalty is a possible sentence for the offense. Watch as the public defense lawyer ruins any chance of a lesser punishment … because he or she is drunk. This is exactly what happened to Robert Hosley. The article "This Man 's Alcoholic Lawyer Botched His Case” states that Hosley went to trial for committing a capital offense, murdering a police officer.…
Upon celebrating the 20 anniversary of being released, today, Sabrina Butler works as the assistant director of membership and training at the Witness to Innocence program. Together with her husband and three children, Sabrina now lives a normal life back in Columbus, Mississippi. When she reflects on the hardship that she has experienced, Sabrina stands firmly behind the idea that death penalty should be abolished entirely: “even if every reform was adopted, innocent people would still get convicted and sent to death row,” she said. She believes that “as long as human beings are in charge, they will make mistakes.” Butler contends that if death penalty cannot assure that all inmates on death row are utterly guilty, the criminal justice system should not risk the chance to execute innocent people.…
Of the 2.3 million people currently incarcerated in America 's federal, state, and local jails and prisons, over 1 million of them are African Americans. With that comes the fact that African-American males, born today, have a one-in-three chance of going to prison during their life. According to studies conducted by many major institutions, the American justice system is statistically biased against African-Americans and other minorities at all levels of the judicial system. Nanya Springer discusses this when she writes in her article about how white defendants usually fair better in trials over black defendants for the same types of crimes. (Springer 1)…
Adrianna Coffee Dr. Huck GSTR 110 Capital Punishment The death penalty should never be applied as a punishment to a person convicted of intentionally killing another person because the death penalty is a costly, unfair punishment that does not benefit society as a whole. What is the death penalty? The death penalty is defined as “the punishment of execution, administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime.” (Definition of Death Penalty in English) Since 1976 there have been over fourteen hundred executions in the United States.…