THE DEATH PENALTY

The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty

Introduction

The employment of the death penalty as the ultimate criminal sanction has been subjected in enormous debates. Many people view that capital punishment should be illegal. Since 1977, the executions have increased almost eighty-five percent. The number of people put on death row has risen from five hundred to over thirty-five hundred. Some of the popular reasons that many people want capital punishment to be illegal are poverty issues with obtaining a lawyer, the message it gives out, the homicide rate increases when it is legal, the cost of putting people to death, and the racism and/or sexism involved.

Ethics of Death Penalty

Many believe that the death penalty is giving a message out to others that it is ok to take someone's life in revenge of another person. Many humans believe that judges that sentence people to death are playing God and believe that that it is sac-religious. Giving someone a date to die is just as bad as someone pre-meditating a murder and the ones that do that are sentence to death. Now that doesn't seem right because it is really contradicting its own self.

People in favor of capital punishment believe that it will deter crime and lower the risk of innocent humans being killed. With modern technology, studies show murder rates are higher with states that allow capital punishment then the states without the death penalty. The average murder rate for every 100,000 people in the states that tolerate the death penalty is 8.0, but in states that don't permit the death penalty the average number are 4.4 (Dutta 1). The top three states with the highest murder rates are Florida, Georgia, and Texas, and each state consents to capital punishment. Between 1975 and 1985 twice as many law enforcement officers ...