FREE ESSAY ON DEATH PENALTY

DEATH PENALTY

The Death Penalty The death penalty has always been and continues to be a very
controversial issue. People on both sides of the issue argue endlessly to gain further
support for their movements. While opponents of capital punishment are quick to point out
that the United States remains one of the few Western countries that continues to support
the death penalty, Americans are also more likely to encounter violent crime than
citizens of other countries (Brownlee 31). Justice mandates that criminals receive what
they deserve . The punishment must fit the crime. If a buglar deserves imprisonment, then
a murderer deserves death (Winters 168). The death penalty is necessary and the only
punishment suitable for those convicted of capital offenses. Seventy-five percent of
Americans support the death penalty, according to Turner, because it provides a deterrent
to some would-be murderers and it also provides for moral and legal justice (83).
Deterrence is a theory: It asks what the effects are of a punishment (does it reduce the
crime rate?) and makes testable predictions (punishment reduces the crime rate compared
to what it would be without the credible threat of punishment), (Van Den Haag 29). The
detterent effect of any punishment depends on how quicklythe punishment is applied (
Worsnop 16). Exections are so rare and delayed for so long in comparison th the number of
capitol offeses committed that statistical correlations cannot be expected (Winters 104).
The number of potential murders that are deterred by the threat of a death penalty may
never be known, just as it may never be known how many lives are saved with it. However,
it is known that the death penalty does definately deter those who are executed. Life in
prision without the possibility of parole is the alternative to execution presented by
those that consider words to be equal to reality. Nothing prevents the people sentenced
in this way from being paroled under later laws or later court rulings. Futhermore,
nothing prevents them from escaping or killing again while in prison. After all, if they
have already recieved the maximum sentence available, they have nothing to lose. For
example, in 1972 the U.S. Surpreme Court banished the death penalty. like other states,
Texas commuted all death sentences to life imprisionment. After being released into the
general prison populaton, according to Winters: Twelve of the forty-seven prisoners that
recieved commuted sentences were responsible for twenty-one serious violent offenses
aainst other inmates and prison staff. One of the commuted death row prisoners killed
another inmate and another one killed a girl within one year of his release on
parole.(21) This does not mean that every death row inmate would kill again if realeased,
but they do tend to be repeat offenders. Winters states Over forty percent of the persond
on death row in 1992 were on probation, parole, or pretrail release at the time that they
murdered (107). Society has a right and a duty to demand a terrible punishment for a
terrible crime. According to Walter Burns, an eloquent defender of the death penalty,
execution is the only punishment that can remind people of the moral order that human
beings alone live by (qtd in Hertzburg 4). Van Den Haag states that the desire to see
crime punished is felt because the criminal gratifies his desires by means that the
noncriminal has restrained from using. The punishment of the criminal is needed to
justify the restraint of the noncriminal (30). Society has a moral obligation to see that
civil government punishes all criminals, which includes enforcing capital punishment.
Executing capital offenders helps to balance the scales of moral justice. The death
penalty is religiously permissible according to certain passages in the Old Testament,
particularly in the eye for an eye teaching advocated in Matthew 5:38. god requires
capital justice for premeditated murder, when there is no dooubt of hte accused person's
guilt. This is the one crime in the bible for which there is no restitution possible
(Winters 64). The Constitution of the United States also supports the death penalty.
Norton quotes James Madison, author of the Bill Of Rights: The Fifth Amendment states '
no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a
presentment or indictment of a grand jury...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or
property, without due pprocess of the law' . The Eighth Amendment states that ' cruel and
unusual punishment shall not be inflicted'. (A-14) Since both of these ammendments were
enacted on the same date in 1791, it can be safely assumed that executing someone for a
capital offense does not qualify as cruel or unusual punishment as long as the individual
has mot been deprived of life without due process of the law. The majority of death
sentences are not carried out until all appeals are exhausted, which generally takes
several years, if not decades. This long appeals process guarantees that the accused
recieves due process. In 1974, lawmakers authorized the death penalty for airline
hijackings that result in death and in 1988 thay extended the penalty to certain drug
trafficking homicides. The crime bill passed in the summer of 1994 approved the death
penalty for dozens of new or existing federal crimes like: treason, genocide #, death
caused by train wreck, lethal drive-by shootings, civil rights murders, and gun murders
commited during a federal drug felony or violent felony. Thirty-eight states have
reinstated capital punishment laws since the U.S. Supreme Court banished it in 1972 and
reinstated it a few years later. Executions satisfy the public's demand that murderers
suffer punishment proportionate to thier offense. If it is wrong to impose the death
penalty on murderers, then it would be wrong to forceably take back what a robber took by
force. It would be wrong to imprision someone that illegally imprisioned someone else. It
would also be wrong for the police to drive over the speed limit to persue someone who
was speeding. The death penalty is a deserved and just punishment for murder. It does
deter some murders, which saves an unknown number of innocent lives.