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There has been much controversy over capital punishment over the years. Few people in the United States see capital punishment as being wrong. It is said that Canada is way too easy on their criminals because they do not punish the convicts by the death penalty. Canada says that the United States is way to strict on their criminals because they execute their convicts by the death penalty.
Should murderers be murdered for their crimes or should they spend the rest of their lives perishing in prison, that question may soon some day be correctly answered but for now it is strictly your own belief, possibly this essay may change your mind if you are for the death penalty. Most Canadians believe that Canada should never reinstate the death penalty. The United States uses the death penalty as a punishment for the more sever criminals such as murderers and rapists, most of their convicts are guilty and on a rare occasion one innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. The States say this only happens on a rare occasion, that rare occasion should never happen. In some cases in the United States and also in Canada the wrong people are accused of crimes that they did not commit.
Since the 1900 s, in the United Sates, there have been at least four cases where an innocent person is executed. Four innocent people are executed each year for a mistake made by the State using capital punishment. In Mississippi, 1990, Sabrina Butler was sentenced to death for killing her baby boy. In 1992, a retrial found she was not guilty. In this case Sabrina was able to escape her execution. Another case involving the death penalty took place in 1992; Rodger Keith Coleman was executed in Virginia, even though all evidence pointed to another person as the murderer.
The real murderer got away with this crime while an innocent man had to die for a crime he did not commit. In Canada, if we had the death penalty many innocent people here too, would face the death penalty for a crime they did not commit. If Canada had the death penalty an inmate by the name of Steven Truscott would have been put to death for a crime he did not commit. Steven was sentenced to be hung in 1959 (when Canada still had the death penalty), at the young age of 14 for the murder of Lynn Harper, a 12 -year old girl that was Stevens classmate. He was Canada's youngest ever to be on death row. Forty years later the Courts are now questioning if they had made a mistake and put an innocent man in jail.
Partly because of this case, Canadians abolished the death penalty. This innocent man unfortunately had to spend a lot of years in jail for a murder he did not commit. If Canada had not got rid of the death penalty Truscott would have been executed. These are just a few of the people who have been executed. The innocent should not be killed for crimes that they did not commit. The United States say that capital punishment deters people from committing crimes.
Studies performed by Thorsten Sellin showed that capital punishment has no deterrent effect. Sellin believes that there is little reason to believe that capital punishment deters people and is more effective than life in prison. Crimes have not gone down, they have gone up. When States are compared to each other the homicide rates are no different from States who have the death penalty and States who dont.
If the thought of imprisonment does not deter the killer then the thought of death row wont either. Other scientific studies have shown that capital punishment does not deter crime more effectively than other punishments. One UN study in 1988, concluded that research has failed to prove that the death penalty has any deterrent effect than life imprisonment. So in order for a criminal to commit the crime the killer must not have been deterred by capital punishment.
A lot of murderers kill by an impulse and do not think about being killed themselves. The murderer learns through imprisonment how to control the impulses and that what he / she did is unlawful. Capital punishment or no capital punishment, the homicide rates will be the same. Many people in the United States see the death penalty as retribution. Unfortunately 64 % of the United States people believe in the death penalty, 25 % oppose it and 11 % are not quite sure about the death penalty. Canadians see the death penalty as cruel and unusual punishment, another excuse for using violence to solve a problem.
In section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms it says that we have the right to life, liberty and security of oneself. Therefore Canada can not accept the death penalty because it would violate the charter. Section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says that nobody should be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. Capital punishment is cruel because it reflects the old times where slavery, branding and other in humane ways were common and took place.
Like those in humane, torturous practices, the death penalty has no place in Canadas civilized society. Capital punishment is unusual because it only takes place in the United States along with very few other countries. The death penalty is morally wrong. Nobody in his or her right mind would want to kill someone for any just reason what so ever.
Executing a convict for killing someone makes the State just as wrong as the convicts themselves. If they dealt the crime they should do the time, not death for the crime. A society that respects life should not take life. According to the United States it costs less to execute inmates. They say it is cheaper to execute inmates rather than keeping them in jail for 30 - 40 years. That only works for short term.
The death penalty costs way more in the long run. In North Carolina studies show that a murder case form start to finish adds an extra $ 163, 000 to what it could cost to keep the convict in jail for 20 years. In Maryland, studies show that in 1979 - 1984 cases that ended with no death penalty sentences were 42 % cheaper than the cases that ended up with a death sentence. Florida has found that the cost of each execution is around $ 3. 2 million, or in other words six times the cost of a lifetime prison sentence. Palm Beach Post (Florida) basically said that it is costing taxpayers $ 24 million for each execution. Colorado spent $ 2. 5 million on five death penalty cases and only one of those cases was a sentence for the death penalty.
Executions are more costly in the long run than life sentences. When most people think about the death penalty very few think about what the executioners sees and how much killing people actually effects them. A man by the name of Jim Willett told his story of being an executioner to The Times in the UK. In Willett's life of being an executioner, he has executed 89 Texas prisoners. Willett claimed that It was the most emotionally draining experience I have ever had 1. Willett said that in April of 1998, when he was appointed to be a senior warden at the Texas prison, in which he calls the busiest death house in America.
Willett broke the record for executing the most number of prisoners than any other single state. Willett said that he often executed two to three people weekly. Now Willett has retired at the age of 51 and is very relived that he has. Willet said I got tired of watching people die. The weird thing is that Willett did not want the job of an executioner, as each execution went by Willett's thoughts of capital punishment being unjust were being strengthened. Willett says that even to this very day he is still agonizing over what he had to do in the name of justice.
Willet said that he is certain that all the men he had put to death were not all guilty. Willett also believes that capital punishment does not deter people, or help victims families over come their loss, or that if the judges and jurors had to carry out the executions themselves there would be no death penalty. Willett says that I have had a lot of inner struggles. Willett explained how it got easier as time went on to perform his duty. There was no comparison between the first and last, but it never got anywhere near what I would call easy.
Willett explains what it is like with the criminals in their last moments of life. Willett says that first they inject sodium thiopental, it is a sedative drug, next comes a drug called pancuronium bromide, that collapses the lungs, then lastly they inject potassium chloride, which is used to stop the heart. In the very last moments of their lives, Willett said that a couple inmates have said that they could taste the chemicals in their mouth. Willet said that instead of drawing a last breath, most inmates exhaled nosily as their lungs collapsed That sound is a sound that I can hear today. It is the most awful sound.
He said that he is proud that he always performed his duties well, but has grown overwhelmingly uneasy about capital punishment because I was not forced to think about it before and now I am -- - over and over and over. Willett swears that if the judges and jurors had to execute people that there would be less executions. When Willett was asked a question about innocent men being executed, he replied to my knowledge there were none, but certainly that is a possibility. I do not think that any criminal justice system in the world is going to be perfect because humans are involved. Willett said that most men changed a great deal during their imprisonments, and he doubts that the criminals death gave any of the victims closure, but instead created more victims in the now dead convicts family.
These are the things I struggle with Willett says. Obviously the death of one convict affects many. Even though the convict may be a sworn killer with no remorse there will always be someone mourning over their death. Through an executioners eyes Canada would be able to see that there is a lot more to the death penalty than what meets the eye. In conclusion the death penalty repeats the cycle of violence, fails to deter people from serious crimes, it is more expensive than life sentences, and contributes to the death of innocent people. Canada should never reinstate the death penalty because there are way to many downsides and risks the death penalty.
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Research essay sample on Capital Punishment Does Not Deter Cruel And Unusual Punishment
