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Example research essay topic: Death Penalty States Death Penalty Information Center - 2,680 words

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DEATH PENALTY The death penalty is the execution sentence for murder and other capital crimes, serious crimes or grave crimes such as murder, treason, rape and the like. The federal government has also declared death penalty sentence for federal offenses, such as murder of a government official, kidnapping resulting to death, running a large-scale drug enterprise and treason. (Merriam & Webster). To date, there are twelve states, namely, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Hawaii, Alaska, Iowa, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont, and the District of Columbia, which prohibit death penalty. The other states of the United States of America are in still in heated debate over the issue. This essay proves the thesis that Capital punishment should be abolished on the grounds of in effectivity, immorality and injustice because the death penalty does not in any way deter crime or promote justice. Death penalty does not deter crime Several studies in the decades of the 1990 s and 2000 s dispute the notion that capital punishment, primarily death penalty, discourages criminal acts.

A 1998 research study conducted for the United Nations concluded: This research has failed to provide scientific proof that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment. Such proof is unlikely to be forthcoming. The evidence as a whole still gives no positive support to the deterrent hypothesis (Hood 238). The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the South has repeatedly demonstrated the highest murder rate in the United States. In 1999, collated reports from the states of the South exhibited a murder rate above the national rate.

The Southern part of the United States actually accounts for the highest rate of executions against the Northeast, which reveals a 1 % murder rate. The Fbi's Uniform Crime Report of 2001 showed the same results as that of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Their results showed that in the United States, the highest murder rate is in the South with a 6. 7 rate per 100, 000 people. This was still higher than the national rate, which was 5. 6. The reports also revealed that 80 % of the executions happening in the United States are coming from the Southern region.

The Northeast, the only region without executions, displayed the lowest murder rate of 4. 2. (DPIC) A survey done by the New York Times uncovered that the states without the death penalty law have lower homicide rates than those that practice capital punishment. Throughout the past 20 years, states with the death penalty law have a 48 % - 110 % higher rate than those states that has abolished the law. Non-death penalty states display a 3. 6 murder rate compared to the 5. 6 rate of death penalty states. (DPIC) Michigan, an example of a state that abolished the death penalty over 158 years ago, proves that their state can prosper without crime rates shooting up high. Their crime rates are maintained at a low rate. In 1990, the gap between death penalty states and non-penalty states was at 4 %. By 2000, the murder rate gap of death penalty states was 35 % higher than that of the other group.

The murder rate gap grew to 37 % by the year 2001. In 2002, the gap of the murder rates between the two groups stood at 36 %. (DPIC) These studies actually indicate that non-death penalty regions have remained consistent with a low murder and homicide rate while death penalty states remain constant with a high murder and homicide rate. Executions may even increase the murder rates rather than deter crime. Criminals are more afraid of the idea of being imprisoned his entire life, with no chances of getting out rather than the death penalty. The accused and the criminals view life imprisonment as robbing and controlling their lives, which is hard for them to accept. Death penalty could be their easy way out of the miserable situation they may live in inside the prison bars.

Crime rates even shoot up in the event of executions because it makes criminals angrier and more vengeful of the society. They see a life sentence without parole as more tolerable than death penalty. Death penalty is costly for the government. Crime deterrence can possibly be more effective through a crime prevention program rather than sentencing a criminal to face the death row.

More of the criminal justice money actually goes to the murder trials, appeals and death row convictions. Research indicates executions are three to six times more costly than life imprisonment. According to a study by the New York State Defense Association, the cost of executing someone is actually, on the average, more than three times as high as keeping that person in prison for life. The higher cost is partly the result of the numerous appeals and other safeguards required to insure that an innocent person is not put to death, as well as the added costs of security on death rows and the cost of the execution itself. (Hintze, 4) There is a danger of sending an innocent man to his death with the death penalty law. There are also studies that report the evidently high number of wrongfully convicted people facing the death row. There were around 68 % of the 4, 576 cases between 1975 and 1995 where James Lesbian of the Columbia University Law School and the appellate courts reviewed found a serious, reversible error.

Two out of three death penalty convictions were overturned on appeal, mostly due to errors by incompetent and underpaid defense attorneys or because of police & prosecutorial withholding of evidence. Thus, more and more jurors, even prosecutors, opt for a life sentence without parole than the death penalty (DPIC). The justice system is biased and unfair already and with this is the risk of sending an innocent man to his death. Sometimes, new evidences are found way after the sentence has been carried out or while the accused is waiting in the death row.

For example, with the development of DNA testing, a number of convicted criminals, including those in the death row, have been exonerated. If the accused dies before the evidences point out that he is innocent, how then will it bring back the life of the innocent person? Capital punishment cries against the principle of the legal system, which is the premise that it is better to release a guilty man than punish and convict the innocent man (Ring, 5). Death penalty is biased and unfair. The politics, quality of legal counsel, and the jurisdiction where a crime is committed are more often the determining factors in a death penalty case than the facts of the crime itself (Top 10). This results in a biased and unfair trial.

Most often than not, death penalties are awarded to the lower class and colored Americans who are accused. Most of those accused of crimes often receive only perfunctory representation from underpaid, overworked court-appointed lawyers. They have little, if any, protection from police and prosecutors, who may engage in misconduct in the pursuit of convictions and political or personal aggrandizement. They have no protection from the racial discrimination that occurs at every step of the process (Bright 5). It is apparent from the text of the Constitution itself that the existence of capital punishment was accepted by the Framers. At the time, the Eighth Amendment was ratified, capital punishment was a common sanction in every state.

Indeed, the First Congress of the United States enacted legislation providing death as the penalty for specified crimes. However, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment already contemplated the existence of the capital sanction in providing that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or Property without due process of law. Almost all of the defendants facing the death penalty sentence cannot afford their own lawyers. Therefore, they just depend on the quality of the lawyers assigned to them by the state. Many of these attorneys lack experience in capital cases or are so underpaid that they fail to accurately investigate the case. A poorly represented defendant is much more likely to be convicted and given a death sentence than an accused who has his own lawyer that could provide all the means, financially and intellectually, to defend him.

A 1986 study in Georgia showed that persons who killed "whites were four times more likely to be sentenced to death than convicted killers of non-whites (Young, 76 - 87). Studies have also repeatedly reported that a death sentence is carried out far more likely when a white person is murdered than when a black person is murdered. Blacks and Latinos account for the unbalanced share of those waiting in the death row. As of late 1998, Blacks accounted for 43 % of those on death row, up from 40 % at the beginning of the 1990 s.

On the other hand, Latinos accounted for about 10 % of the death row population. If the accused is charged with killing whites, he is 4. 5 times more likely to be given the death penalty than those who are charged with killing Blacks. Of the 500 prisoners executed between 1977 and the end of 1998, more than 81 % were convicted of the murder of a white. The odds of a death sentence in cases in which a Black killed a white victim are as much as 11 times higher than in the murder of a Black victim by a white person.

The death penalty is racially discriminating because it seems to pursue a line of thinking that count white lives as more valuable than black lives. Such racial bias has existed over the history of the death penalty and it proves to be most problematic. Death penalty was always used unfairly. Discrimination is seen in at least three major ways: with regard to sex, race, and social status.

It is rare that women are sentenced to death and executed, though statistics show that 20 % of all homicides in the United States in recent years have been committed by women (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2003). According to Death Penalty Information Center, from the first woman executed in the U. S. , Jane Champion, who was hanged in James City, Virginia in 1632 until the present time, about 3 % of the U. S executions constitute females. Although, today blacks no longer outnumber whites on death row and the rate of their death penalty sentences is almost equivalent to their high percentage of the prison population, there has been a discriminatory pattern with regards to the victims. Studies indicate that homicides where a white victim is involved are far more likely to be prosecuted as death penalty cases (News Batch, 2005).

Death penalty undermines the value of human rights and human life. More than any other reason, this seems to be the most critical area in this issue. Criminals are persons, too. No matter what the victims may say, criminals have also their individual rights, right to a fair trial, right to repent, right to plead guilty or not guilty to the crime accused of him. Capital punishment is stifling their human and constitutional rights. Capital punishment supporters argue that this is a teaching from the Bible.

They use the notion of an-eye-for-an-eye. It is true that in the Old Testament, God Himself used capital punishment to penalize the people. Examples of these are the Great Flood and the raining of hail and fire in Sodom and Gomorrah. In fact according to Genesis 9: 6, Whoever sheds man's blood by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God, He made man. Capital punishment is awarded to those who have sinned. Capital punishment is said to be reasonable because it is tied to the sanctity of life.

Capital punishment is awarded to those who have taken or destroyed the life of another. But only God can take life away as he is the one responsible for giving men the lives they live. In capital punishment, people take upon themselves Gods role of taking away ones life. This is morally wrong. The Ten Commandments alone evidently states that we should not kill. The death penalty is destroying life and killing is against Gods very Commandments.

Death penalty is revenge not justice. The victims families even say they prefer quick trials with no appeals because it gives them the peace they need. Long trials with numerous appeals interrupt more their desire to rest the matter. It makes the families suffer longer than they should. The act of killing the criminals does not take away the pain and hurt that the victims families feel.

Capital punishment is an act of revenge. It reinforces the idea that we can punish those who have wronged us, especially grave offenses. Death penalty can be seen as act of crime itself, although it is argued to be legal. Can killing ever be legal? Vengeance is never justice. Justice is what the victims and their families seek.

Death of the criminal cannot give them the justice they need. Premeditated murder is punishable by death, argue the capital punishment supporters. But isnt death penalty also a premeditated murder? Killing the criminals, the murderers, only continue the wrong done by the murder. It does not do justice. As an old adage states, two wrongs dont make a right.

Alternatives to Death Penalty The Death Penalty Information Center reported in 1993 that Polls conducted in the recent years in California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, Virginia and West Virginia all concluded that people prefer various alternative sentences to death penalty. A May 2004 Gallup Poll found that a growing number of Americans support a sentence of life without parole rather than the death penalty for those convicted of murder. Gallup found that 46 % of respondents favor life imprisonment over the death penalty, up from 44 % in May 2003. During that same time frame, support for capital punishment as an alternative fell from 53 % to 50 %. (DPIC) The primary alternative chosen by the anti-death penalty advocates is the life sentence without parole. Moreover, the suggestion is to require the sentenced person to work with dignity within the prison bars. Part of their earnings will then be the payment for the cost of their stay in prison and the other part will go to a restitution fund that will help the victims of crimes and the families of the murder victims.

Conclusion Capital punishment lowers the value of human life because it is associated with the notion of revenge. Death penalty robs the sacredness of human life. It also abuses the society in a way that it forces the society to accept the premeditated murder the government disguises in the death penalty law. It sends a message that killing is the way to solve a problem. As a result, the society slowly accepts the view that killing and violence is not at all shocking. Death penalty actually violates our belief in the concept of hope and change, that humans have the capacity to learn and change.

It is understandable that many feel that a drastic move has to be done to change the crime situation. But the death penalty is definitely not the answer. WORKS CITED Bright, S. The Killing Machine. The Nation. (2000): 5 Capital Punishment.

Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2003 Death Penalty Information Center. (DPIC). 2005. 3 May 2005 < web >. Death Penalty News Batch (June 2005). < web > September 19, 2005. Hintze, M. Death Penalty: Ineffective and Unfair. The Daily. University of Washington. 98. 24 (1990): 4.

Hood, R. The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective. Clarendon Press. (1996): 238. Merriam & Websters Dictionary of Law. 1996. Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. Capital Punishment.

Standard 2003 Ring, M. Legalized Murder: The Death Penalty Serves Revenge and does Nothing to Solve Crime. The Tech. 117. 51 (1997): 5 Young, R. L. "Religious Orientation, Race and Support for the Death Penalty.

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 31 (1992): 76 - 87.


Free research essays on topics related to: death penalty states, death penalty information center, death row, capital punishment, premeditated murder

Research essay sample on Death Penalty States Death Penalty Information Center

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