The Death PenaltyI feel that this type of punishment is cruel and unusual. in violation of the EighthAmendment. I also say with the long wait on death row and the inefficiency of thesystem, criminals are not deterred by this treatment. In addition, they ask, where is theline drawn for crimes punishable by death? Out of 3,860 inmates executed from 1930 to1980, 3380 were executed for murders; however, about 500 more were put to death forother crimes. There is also the possibility that a criminal might be put to death for a crimethat another criminal in different state might have gotten a different punishment for.
Andmore minorities and ethnic Americans are executed, for the same crimes, than whiteAmericans. If people want to punish some one , I think killing really isn’t going to doanything. When a person steps foot in the world of crime, they give up life. So how isstopping life and giving up life really different. Death will approach them anyway, theonly different thing is who hand them it . I don’t think Human have any right to takesomeone’s life, even our own.
If people want to punish these criminals, punish them in away that they feel pain ,and agony, so that they ask for you to kill them. For the peoplewho have no conscience, we need to create one for them, so they can at least know andfeel the guilt of what they’ve done. As of September 24, the United States set a new record by executing seventy-six persons in 1999,more than in any year since the death penalty’s reinstatement in 1976. Nearly half of the 1999 executionsthrough September were carried out in Texas and Virginia.
Among those executed in 1999 were foreignnationals, a juvenile offender, and individuals who may have been mentally ill or retarded. Approximately3,500 people were on death row. Doubts about the death penalty were particularly acute in Illinois: three of the six personsexonerated on grounds of innocence and released from death row during 1999 had been tried andimprisoned there. Illinois’ dramatic cases in 1999-one of the death row inmates had come within two days ofexecution five months before his exoneration-sparked a number of investigations into the state’s use of thedeath penalty.
Governor George Ryan also signed legislation devoting public funds for prosecution anddefense in capital trials, including monies for attorneys, investigators, and forensic specialists. The US continued to be one of only six countries to execute persons who were younger thaneighteen when the crimes for which they were sentenced were committed. The imposition of the deathpenalty on persons who were under eighteen years of age at the time of their offense violated the provisionsof international and regional human rights treaties to which the United States is party. Despite nearlyunanimous international condemnation of the use of the death penalty for juvenile offenders, six countries inthe world-Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Yemen-were known to haveexecuted juvenile offenders in the 1990s. The United States led the list with ten such executions between1990 and 1999.
In 1999, the United States carried out the execution of one juvenile offender, Sean Sellers,marking the first time in forty years that the United States has executed someone for crimes committed as asixteen-year-old. Seventy juvenile offenders were on death row in the United States as of July 1, 1999. In positive developments, the highest court of the US state of Florida ruled that the imposition ofthe death penalty on sixteen-year-old offenders was cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the stateconstitution; and effective October 1, 1999, the state of Montana abolished the death penalty for thoseunder eighteen at the time of their crimes. As a result, of the forty states that retained the death penalty afterOctober 1999, six allowed offenders sixteen years of age or older to be put to death. Nineteen states limitedthe death penalty to those seventeen or older at the time of their crimes, and fifteen states restricted capitalpunishment to adult offenders.
State authorities and US courts continued to disregard violations of the rights of defendants whowere not US citizens. Under the Vienna Convention, these defendants were supposed to be advised, uponarrest, of their right to contact their embassies for assistance. In 1999, five foreign nationals were executeddespite reports that their right to consular notification had been breached: Jaturun Siripongs of Thailand;Karl and Walter LaGrand, brothers from Germany; Alvaro Calambro of the Philippines; and StanleyFaulder of Canada. Pleas from their governments were ignored, as were appeals from theInternational Court of Justice in the cases of the LaGrand brothers and Stanley Faulder.
The USState Department did show signs of increased concern about Vienna Convention violations: Secretary ofState Madeleine Albright wrote to Texas Governor George Bush in an attempt to halt the execution ofStanley Faulder, and the department was reportedly publishing and distributing training materials for policeregarding their obligations under the convention. In October, the Inter-American Court of Human Rightsissued an advisory opinion regarding US obligations under the Vienna Convention and opined that thefailure to notify foreign nationals about their right to seek consular assistance was in all cases a violation ofdue process under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention onHuman Rights.Bibliographywww.politicalissues.com
