Capital Punishment is defined as "The penalty of death for the commission of a crime." The history of the first death penalty laws dates all the way back to the Eighteenth Century B.C. King Hammurabi of Babylon was among the first rulers to implement the death penalty with his Code of Hammurabi, which included the death penalty for 25 different crimes. Captain George Kendall was the first recorded execution in the United States in 1608. He was from the Jamestown colony of Virginia and was executed for being suspected of being a spy for Spain. Over the years, the way a person is put to death has slowly become more humane, but in the end, the biggest question to ask is whether or not killing another person is morally the right thing to do. Throughout this paper, I will outline five reasons why the death penalty is wrong. First, one must ask themselves, what gives a human the right to take the life of another human? My a young age we are taught that killing is wrong.
[...] Thirdly, prisons are over crowded as it is why keep more convicted people around. That is also a valid argument, but it is also flawed. Half the time after the person is put on death row, the verdict is overturned. So they end up being housed in prison awaiting an appeal (while on death row) then it us overturned and they end up being given in life in prison anyway. So wouldn't it just make sense to build more prisons instead? [...]
[...] While the price of the death penalty is different for each state, studies have shown that it cost more money to have a person on death row, than regular prison cells. This is attributed to the costs of appeals, and any experts needed during trial. In the State of Maryland, the average cost of a trial for capital murder, not seeking the death penalty cost approximately $ 1.1 million over the course of the entire trial. And a case where the prosecutors seek the death penalty, but don't get a guilty verdict will cost $ 1.8 million and a case resulting in a death sentence will cost approximately million.[6] So seeking the death penalty is almost triple the cost for just the trial alone, let alone all of the appeals for people on death row. [...]
[...] The death penalty is just way too permanent for it to be morally right. Also, it seems to me, that it would be more of a punishment to have to spend the rest of your life thinking about whatever crime you have committed rather than getting the easy way out. Not to say that death isn't a punishment in itself, it is just a more lenient punishment. Say for example, a person commits a crime, is convicted and sentenced to death row. [...]
[...] Dieter, Richard Cost of the Death Penalty. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/ (accessed 25 Feb. 2008). Paternoster, Raymond An Empirical Analysis of Maryland's Death Sentencing System with Respect to the Influence of Race and Legal Jurisdiction. News Desk at University of Maryland. Prejean, Helen The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions. New York: Random House. Sarat, Austin. Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution. Princeton: Princeton University Press Capital Punishment. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company [...]
[...] We, as a whole seem to pride ourselves on being a reasonable and moral society, yet we find it ok to kill certain people. The life of one person is not worth more or less than the life of another no matter what crime they have committed, and therefore it is not morally right to have the death penalty. Bibliography Alexander, Ellen and Janice Harris Lord Impact Statements A Victim's Right to Speak . A Nation's Responsibility to Listen. National Center for Victims of Crime. Arlington, VA. http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=32515 (accessed: April 25, 2008). Capital Punishment. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
