Systematic Denial of Human Rights
The fire moved quickly through the house, a one-story wood-frame structure in Corsicana Texas. Flames spread along the walls, plunging through doorways, blistering paint and tiles, and blackening furniture. Smoke pressed against the ceiling, seeping through each room and every window crevice, billowing into the morning sky. Inside the house, children screaming “Daddy, Daddy!” and neighbors lining the streets to watch the commotion. The fire deemed a triple homicide and father of three, Cameron Todd Willingham, became the prime suspect. After countless appeals and testimonies, inmate number 999401 was lethally injected in the huntsville penitentiary on February 17th 2004. Though after the execution was final, …show more content…
Individuals argue “death is different” and due to the fact that people have very strong beliefs about the morality and utility of execution, the death penalty can bring about incredible confliction between surviving family members. Disagreement over the death penalty can tear families apart rather than bring them together to endure the hardships they face. The death penalty creates a victim out of the criminal. Those who are executed have siblings, parents, and loved ones. “Our broken death penalty system, with its years of delays and other problems, holds a victim’s focus, and society's focus, on the killer, anticipating and expecting an event,the event, the killer’s execution. If and when an execution occurs, another coffin is filled and another family grieves a killing, but, sadly very little changes for the victim” (Evans). Not only does is affect the criminal's family, but capital punishment also affects the victim's family. The death penalty puts the media spotlight on murderers and makes fame out of a killer. Execution turns offenders into victims and they gain celebrity in their death. For example, everyone knows the name “Jeffrey Dahmer” but next to nobody knows the name of his 17 victims.
Opponents argue that capital punishment affirms the sanctity of life. Death sentences are subject to intense reexaminations by both state and federal courts and the decision to execute an individual is never made lightly. By carefully …show more content…
The United States was founded on the inherent truth that all men were created equal and endowed with certain unalienable. One of these rights is the right to life, and as a right can not be taken away. Our founding constitution exists to ensure that individual rights are protected and not to be abused by the states. Capital punishment is in obvious tension with this document, with the right to life and the basic beliefs of our government. To hold an individual in prison and to inform him that he will be put to death on a specified date is cruel and inhumane. It is an offense to human dignity and maintains a cycle of violence that defeats the purpose of the death penalty. Our justice system has valid alternatives to the death penalty, such as life imprisonment without parole, which substitutes as a valid alternative even for the most appalling crimes. The point should not be to judge whose life is more worthwhile, but rather to affirm that all human life must be valued. A process of which ends a human's existence cannot be systematic in a society that is upstanding and just. This practice offends our basic understanding of what is humanly tolerable
The fire moved quickly through the house, a one-story wood-frame structure in Corsicana Texas. Flames spread along the walls, plunging through doorways, blistering paint and tiles, and blackening furniture. Smoke pressed against the ceiling, seeping through each room and every window crevice, billowing into the morning sky. Inside the house, children screaming “Daddy, Daddy!” and neighbors lining the streets to watch the commotion. The fire deemed a triple homicide and father of three, Cameron Todd Willingham, became the prime suspect. After countless appeals and testimonies, inmate number 999401 was lethally injected in the huntsville penitentiary on February 17th 2004. Though after the execution was final, …show more content…
Individuals argue “death is different” and due to the fact that people have very strong beliefs about the morality and utility of execution, the death penalty can bring about incredible confliction between surviving family members. Disagreement over the death penalty can tear families apart rather than bring them together to endure the hardships they face. The death penalty creates a victim out of the criminal. Those who are executed have siblings, parents, and loved ones. “Our broken death penalty system, with its years of delays and other problems, holds a victim’s focus, and society's focus, on the killer, anticipating and expecting an event,the event, the killer’s execution. If and when an execution occurs, another coffin is filled and another family grieves a killing, but, sadly very little changes for the victim” (Evans). Not only does is affect the criminal's family, but capital punishment also affects the victim's family. The death penalty puts the media spotlight on murderers and makes fame out of a killer. Execution turns offenders into victims and they gain celebrity in their death. For example, everyone knows the name “Jeffrey Dahmer” but next to nobody knows the name of his 17 victims.
Opponents argue that capital punishment affirms the sanctity of life. Death sentences are subject to intense reexaminations by both state and federal courts and the decision to execute an individual is never made lightly. By carefully …show more content…
The United States was founded on the inherent truth that all men were created equal and endowed with certain unalienable. One of these rights is the right to life, and as a right can not be taken away. Our founding constitution exists to ensure that individual rights are protected and not to be abused by the states. Capital punishment is in obvious tension with this document, with the right to life and the basic beliefs of our government. To hold an individual in prison and to inform him that he will be put to death on a specified date is cruel and inhumane. It is an offense to human dignity and maintains a cycle of violence that defeats the purpose of the death penalty. Our justice system has valid alternatives to the death penalty, such as life imprisonment without parole, which substitutes as a valid alternative even for the most appalling crimes. The point should not be to judge whose life is more worthwhile, but rather to affirm that all human life must be valued. A process of which ends a human's existence cannot be systematic in a society that is upstanding and just. This practice offends our basic understanding of what is humanly tolerable