Why should we determine when a person should die? The death penalty is a capital punishment that is legal in the U.S for federal crimes like murder, treason and espionage. The death penalty existed long before the U.S. was even a country and dates back as far as the code of Hammurabi. The death penalty, however, is only legal in some states. According to the federal government, the death penalty is completely legal, but it should be considered a cruel and unusual punishment and, therefore, a violation of the 8th amendment because it kills innocent people and promotes more death.
One example of how the death penalty violates the 8th amendment is shown through the innocent people that have been wrongly executed, increasing the rate of executions. …show more content…
Whether it’s a command or not, someone is killing another person. We don’t know if the person who committed the crime was commanded to do it in return to let a loved one live, so why not place that person in jail without parole instead of killing them? Then years later you find out that the person you executed was actually guilty but there’s nothing you could do about it because you took the “easy” way out and killed the person. In the documentary, Deadline from 2004 , the warden said that the death penalty was a gruesome act towards him and other prison guards because it made them look like killers themselves (Document 9). This shows the pressure that wardens themselves feel about having to kill someone making the death penalty a cruel punishment because even people who are not on the death row are affected to even participate in such act. Imagine how they feel about killing someone, although they might have done it for a good reason like their states supposedly says, they have to live with the fact that they themselves killed someone that later on became a statistic. In a show on Netflix called The Killing, there is an example of how a warden feels about executing someone. In the show, there is a man named Seward, who supposedly killed his wife by slicing her neck while his son watched from the bottom of a closet. Seward was sentenced to death in Seattle. While on a platform that he was going to be hanged from, one of the toughest prison guard, broke down and walked away from Seward when it was time to put a black rag over his head. Later on, he packed up his things and told another prison guard not to get comfortable in the prison because it’s not a pretty place. The effect that executing a person plays is a big role on prison guards. It’s a tough job to put a rag over someone’s head and push a button that would kill them right then and there in
One example of how the death penalty violates the 8th amendment is shown through the innocent people that have been wrongly executed, increasing the rate of executions. …show more content…
Whether it’s a command or not, someone is killing another person. We don’t know if the person who committed the crime was commanded to do it in return to let a loved one live, so why not place that person in jail without parole instead of killing them? Then years later you find out that the person you executed was actually guilty but there’s nothing you could do about it because you took the “easy” way out and killed the person. In the documentary, Deadline from 2004 , the warden said that the death penalty was a gruesome act towards him and other prison guards because it made them look like killers themselves (Document 9). This shows the pressure that wardens themselves feel about having to kill someone making the death penalty a cruel punishment because even people who are not on the death row are affected to even participate in such act. Imagine how they feel about killing someone, although they might have done it for a good reason like their states supposedly says, they have to live with the fact that they themselves killed someone that later on became a statistic. In a show on Netflix called The Killing, there is an example of how a warden feels about executing someone. In the show, there is a man named Seward, who supposedly killed his wife by slicing her neck while his son watched from the bottom of a closet. Seward was sentenced to death in Seattle. While on a platform that he was going to be hanged from, one of the toughest prison guard, broke down and walked away from Seward when it was time to put a black rag over his head. Later on, he packed up his things and told another prison guard not to get comfortable in the prison because it’s not a pretty place. The effect that executing a person plays is a big role on prison guards. It’s a tough job to put a rag over someone’s head and push a button that would kill them right then and there in