?The?Capital punishment is the infliction of the death penalty on personsconvicted of a crime. ?This has been a topic of debate for many years. ?Why do we kill people to prove killing people is wrong??The 1st argument I have against capital punishment is that it?sunconstitutional. Every person has an equal right to ?life, liberty, and thepursuit of happiness.
? This is a quote from American Civil Liberty UnionNational Office, ?Capital punishment is a barbaric remnant of an uncivilizedsociety. It is immoral in principle, and unfair and discriminatory in practice. ? Does the government have the right to kill? Maybe in self defense, like apoliceman firing on a armed and dangerous criminal. Suppose we apply thesame standards to the government that we have for civilians. A civilian hasthe right to shoot at an intruder as he is entering his home but if the civiliancatches the intruder and has him under his control, the shooting him wouldbe considered murder.
That?s what capital punishment is. . . simple murder. Against: I agree that capital punishment is a relic of barbarism but as murderitself is barbaric, death is a fitting punishment for it.
It goes along with the?eye for an eye? principle. For example, someone steals $10 from you andthen the person who stole your money has the same thing happen to them? Doesn?t that satisfy you? Many feel the same about murders who aresentence to die. The criminal has brought the punishment upon himself, theyThe 8th amendment of the us constitution, condemn gruel and unusualpunishment is used to protest capital punishment. For::When the constitution was drafted, capital punishment waspracticed widely in this country, yet it was not specified as wrong or as crueland unusual. John Locke went as far to say that murder is not intrinsicallywrong. How can the constitution be brought into this argument, since itmakes no mention of capital punishment?The methods by which executions are carried out can involve physicaltorture.
?Electrocution has on occasion caused extensive burns and neededmore than one application of electric current to kill the condemned. It oftentakes 10 minutes or more to die in the electric chair. It is also torture to keepsomeone locked up when they know they are waiting to be killed. Officials often defend this and say it?s not cruel and unusual, but how canthey defend this opinion in the case of John Evans who was executed byelectrocution in 1983? According to witnesses at the scene Mr. Evans wasgiven three charges of electrocution over a period of fourteen minutes. Afterthe first and second charges Mr.
Evans was still conscious and smoke wascoming from oall over his body as a result of his flesh burning. An officialthere even tried to stop the execution on account of it being cruel and unusualpunishment, but was unsuccessful. Witnesses later called th whole incident aThe death penalty costs more than life in prison. It costs 5 to 6 times morethan lifetime imprisonment, according to studies in a number of states. Mostcosts occur at trial level.
Indiana, with smaller death row than Virginia?sestimates it could save $5 million per year by abolishing capital punishment. Murder rates are lower in states that have abolished the death penalty. TheSupreme court, United Nations, and numerous independent studies haveconcluded that the death penalty has no effect on the crime rate, on averagethe murder rate in U. S. which execute is almost double the rate in states?In case of a mistake, the executed prisoner cannot be given another chance. Justice can miscarry.
In the last hundred years there have been more than 75documented cases of wrongful conviction of criminal homicide. The deathsentence was carried out in eight of these cases? Undoubtedly many othercases of mistaken conviction and execution occurred and remainundocumented. A prisoner discovered to be blameless can be freed; butneither releases nor compensation is possible for a corpse. Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty does not act as a deterrent tocrime. ?Expert after expert and study after study have emphasized andemphasized the lack of correction between the threat of the death penalty andthe occurrence of violent crime? Ehrlich?s study on the deterrent effect ofcapital punishment in America reveals this.
It spans twenty-five years, andshow that in the first year the study was conducted there were 8,060 murdersin 1957 and
