Death pentaly misc10
The use of capital punishment has been a permanent fixture in society since the earliest civilizations. It has been used for various crimes ranging from the desertion of soldiers during wartime to the more heinous crimes of serial killers. However, the mere fact that this brutal form of punishment and revenge has been the policy of many nations in the past does not subsequently warrant its implementation in today's society. The death penalty is morally and socially unethical, should be construed as cruel and unusual punishment since it is both discriminatory and arbitrary, has no proof of acting as a deterrent, and risks the atrocious and unacceptable injustice of executing innocent people. As long as capital punishment exists in our society it will continue to spark the injustice which it has failed to curb. Capital punishment is immoral and unethical. It does not matter who does the killing because, when a life is taken by another, it is always wrong. By killing a human, the state lessens the value of life and actually contributes to the growing sentiment in today's society that certain individuals are worth more than others. When the value of life is lessened under certain circumstances such as the life of a murderer, what
The study concluded that in the period between 1900 to 1980, about "350 people were wrongfully convicted of capital offenses, 139 of the 350 were sentenced to death, and 23 were actually executed" (Nathanson 344). Surely, the advice of someone who clearly demonstrated a total disregard for the value of human life cannot be considered in such an argument as capital punishment. According to David Bruck, a prominent lawyer for South Carolina Office of Appellate Defense, "All Bedau was saying was that doubts concerning executed prisoners' guilt are almost never resolved. Georgia decision "invalidated all existing death sentence statues as violative of the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment and thus depopulated state death rows of 629 occupants" (Berger 352). " Works CitedBerger, Vivian, (1988. This decision was reached not because it was believed that the death penalty was intrinsically cruel and unusual but because, as Justice Stewart put it, the "death penalty as actually applied was unconstitutionally arbitrary" (Berger 353). After years of watching the ineffectiveness of determining who should be put to death, the Supreme Court in the1972 Furman v. However,scientific studies have failed to prove that executions deter other people from committing crime. Local politics, money, race, and where the crime is committed can often play a more decisive role in sentencing someone to death than the actual facts of the crime. In regards to racial discrimination in sentencing, it has been found that "racial bias focuses primarily on the race of the victim, not the defendant" (Berger 355). is stopping others from creating their own circumstances for the value of one's life such as race, class, religion, and economics? Immanuel Kant, a great philosopher of ethics, came up with the Categorical Imperative, which is a universal command or rule that states that society and individuals "must act in such a way that you can will that your actions become a universal law for all to follow" (Palmer 265). Stephen Nathanson, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University addresses the problems of discrimination and randomness best by saying, "as long as racial, class, religious, and economic bias continue to be important determinants of who is executed, the death penalty will continue to create and perpetuate injustice" (Nathanson 346). An argument against the death penalty which to sensible and decent persons should seem undeniable is the fact that innocent people have been murdered by the state in the past and in all probability more will follow. There must be some set of moral and ethical standards that even the government can not go against, otherwise how can the state expect its citizens not to follow its own example? Those who support the death penalty believe, or claim to believe, that capital punishment is morally and ethically acceptable. ) BibliographyBerger, Vivian, (1988.
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