Capital Punishment Solution

Decent Essays
Is it possible for revenge and justice to be the same thing on occasion? Or are the two mutually exclusive? According to dictionary.com, justice is “the moral principle determining just conduct.” If that is true and The United States of America is supposed to be a country founded on the idea of people being treated fairly and morally, then how can it allow some of its states to continue to practice laws that do not promote those ideas? Unfortunately there are multiple laws that this question could apply to in the country today, but none more so than the laws in certain states that allow for capital punishment to be enforced. Capital punishment, or simply the death penalty, is just the punishment of death for a crime. In most cases the death …show more content…
It stands to believe that at least a fraction of that number of innocent people were not quite so lucky on death row. There is no acceptable percent error when it comes down to potentially ending an innocent person’s life just in the name of retribution. Another problem with the death penalty is the unfair way in which it is consistently applied. Seventy seven percent of people placed on death row since 1977 have been placed there for killing white victims. However, nearly half of all homicide victims are African American. Capital punishment also does not take into account any mental illness, but the execution of the mentally ill is prohibited by international law. Also, the death penalty has not been proven to be a deterrent of crime as its supporters have suggested. In 2008 the FBI said that the fourteen states that did not have capital punishment had homicide rates that were less than or equal to the national average. Finally, the last big thing about the death penalty is its large price tag. The trial and events that precede it take up most of the cost. Those two things even without the post-conviction costs are still more expensive than life in prison. Most supporters of capital punishment would suggest it costs more to let them live because it sounds right, but that’s simply not true. Capital punishment is just a flawed system that solves problems with more

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    As John Morrison exclaimed,“It should be clear that the death penalty does just the opposite of promoting decency and respect for life... It can never be applied fairly.” Since the mid nineteenth century, inmates on death row have been murdered by a plethora of gruesome methods, such as venomous lethal injections, gas chambers, and electrocution. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been 1,413 executions in the United States from 1976 to the present. Although the number of death penalty verdicts are decreasing, flaws in the American judicial system have caused an increase in the amount of punishing wrongfully accused suspects to the death penalty.…

    • 1178 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Ronald Cotton Legal Case

    • 1909 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The American legal system is widely admired for its laudable moral qualities such as liberty, justice, and due process. Americans take great pride in seeing the legal system administer swift and fair penalties to those who have committed crimes. But what happens if the legal system is wrong? What if the person that was sent to prison, or executed by the state, did not commit the crime they were punished for? This was the situation that Ronald Cotton found himself in during the 1980s and 90s serving a life sentence for two rapes he did not commit.…

    • 1909 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When people hear the word punishment, it is an instant reaction to think that something wrong has occurred. Punishment has always been a way that societies and governments found to discourage and alarm the population from committing unlawful actions. By law, capital punishment is the legal killing of a person for committing a crime. Consequently, capital punishment was created to reduce a number of committed murders. Every year, several people are sentenced to life.…

    • 716 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Since August, 6, 1912, there have been two hundred and eighty two executions, done by the state of South Carolina (South Carolina Department of Corrections, 2016.) Death row is not only morally wrong, but it is telling the murders, and other people up for death row, that killing someone for doing something wrong is right. Death row should be abolished, not only does it give inmates the impression that an eye for an eye is okay, but it puts innocence people lives at risk, it costs taxpayers millions of dollars, and it is a violation of the eight amendments. First of all, the death penalty puts innocent lives at risk. One hundred and thirty eight men and women have been acquitted from death row, and some of these individuals were days or even…

    • 1124 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    No matter how hard the justice system tries, their will always be the risk and possibility of executing innocent people. There have been 100’s of reported cases of the justice system thinking that someone has commited a crime, then turned out to be wrong, just because it seems like the person is an obvious suspect. One reported case of this happening is a Texas man named Cameron Todd Willingham. He was executed in 2004 for allegedly setting a fire that killed all three of his daughters. After his execution, there was evidence revealing that he didn’t set the fire to cause their deaths.…

    • 401 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The death penalty has continuously been used ever since European settlers brought it over in the seventeenth century. “The first recorded execution in the new colonies was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608” (“Part I: History of the Death Penalty”). He was executed for being a spy for Spain. The death penalty varied and each colony had different laws regarding it during colonial times. In Virginia, Governor Sir Thomas Dale enacted the Divine, Moral, and Martial Laws.…

    • 1242 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Revenge Vs Justice

    • 1319 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In American society, something we’ve stressed on since the creation of the country is justice. Justice and fairness to all men. Even our constitution states that all men are created equal. But what if that justice our nation cares so deeply about isn’t justice at all? What if justice is just another name for vengeance?…

    • 1319 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A man named Cameron Todd Willingham who resided in Texas, was convicted of murder in 1992, it was believed that he had set his home on fire with his three children still alive. With this evidence he was put to death in 2002. Later after further evidence was discovered it was sadly too late for Willingham, it was found that none of the evidence used against him was in fact valid. They said they simply misinterpreted the evidence, that the fire was just an accident. They sentenced an innocent, grieving man to death.…

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Death Penalty: Cruel and Unusual Punishment The death penalty is a cruel process of a bygone era and has no place in modern day civilized society. The death penalty has evolved from a punishment for crimes such as petty theft and adultery to the absolute punishment for crimes such as the rape of a child, kidnapping, treason, and murder, to name a few however the death penalty is fraught with errors.…

    • 1050 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jury Nullification Essay

    • 2179 Words
    • 9 Pages

    First practiced in the United States in 1622 in the colony of Virginia, by the 1800s, capital punishment became the automatic penalty for any criminal convicted of murder or other capital crimes. With the law providing that no jury, once having recognized a criminal as guilty of a capital offense, could legally avoid the death penalty, by this time in the United States, capital punishment was not only widely accepted, but required. As a result of these conditions, if a jury collectively found a person guilty of a capital crime, but did not believe that the death penalty was an appropriate punishment, they would pursue jury nullification, in which the guilty criminal is claimed innocent in order to avoid execution. However, this devious method…

    • 2179 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    held in the higher security of death row. (Dieter) There are too many irrevocable mistakes that happen while prosecuting someone. Since 1973, 121 people have been released from death row due to innocence, and 982 prisoners have been executed.(Innocence, In Opposition to the Death Penalty).…

    • 301 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Capital Punishment: an Act of Justice or Revenge? To many, executing the offender of a heinous and violent murder is seen as an act of justice and retribution, and is an essential aspect of maintaining moral balance, however, perhaps the stronger and more substantial position is that the death penalty is a barbarous act of revenge, motivated by emotion rather than logic. According to the “Retributive Justice Theory” those who break the law deserve to suffer punishment, and likewise, deserve to be punished in proportion to the crime committed.…

    • 1554 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “Emory University researchers, including Paul Rubin, said, “The national sorting of crime rates each execution prevented 18 deaths.” That is 18 lives saved due to capital punishment. However, there are several why reasons the death penalty could be abolished. Comparatively, the death penalty is considered an unjust act towards humanity.…

    • 1214 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Crime! When people do it they don’t think of the consequences. Some consequences are unnecessary, cruel, and unreasonable and they are caused by the justice system. One of the consequences that are cruel is the death penalty. The European settlers first brought the death penalty to the U.S.…

    • 1139 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In relation to that, race and class play a major part in who gets the death penalty, those who have less money, are more likely to receive an inadequate defense team. Those who are wealthier can afford good legal counsel, and therefore have a better chance of being acquitted or receiving a lesser sentence, than someone with a public defender. Sixty-eight percent of all death penalty cases that have been overturned, were found guilty because they had inadequate defense. (Facts about the Death Penalty) The death penalty is permanent, once you execute someone there is nothing that can be done if it is found they are actually…

    • 1379 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics