Currently our system is flawed. It is just immoral execute innocent prisoners who potentially have families hoping for Daddy's release from jail, kids who will have to live a whole life without one of the parents, parents who have to bury their kids; and all this happening to someone who is innocent. The death penalty is based on the archaic ideology of 'an eye for an eye'. Is it really right to murder murderers? If so why don't we rape rapists or steal from people who steal? This strange double standard is something that we should not keep in practice. While the death penalty is meant to be the harshest punishment available but it creates sympathy for the most monstrous of perpetrators.
One of the biggest issues revolving around the death penalty is the ineffectiveness of a lot of our methods. The electric chair quite often does not initially kill the victim. This often leaves the victim hurt, burned, or even paralyzed. Lethal injection which is the most commonly used form of capitol punishment (Amnesty USA), is probably the most inhumane technique in practice today. A series of three drugs, Sodium Thiopental, Pancuronium Bromide, and Potassium chloride are used. The first drug puts the inmate to sleep, the second stops the inmates breathing, and the third is intended to stop the heart. This may seem like a very humane process, it actually can be one of the most painful. If not rendered unconscious, the inmate will feel excruciating pain; if paralyzed by the Pancuronium Bromide, the inmate will be unable to show this pain (Amnesty USA) Most executions take over twenty minutes to conclude and often leads to inmates gasping for air and suffering immensely before being put to death. By law health professionals are required to administer the drugs to the inmate but this violates almost all codes of professional ethics for doctors and physicians.
It is for these reasons I think we need to stand up as Americans and no longer allow this barbaric and inhumane process to continue in our country. We cannot allow our own citizens to be brutally executed in any way, shape, or form.
~OVERtheUNDER~
Works Cited
"The Innocence Project - About Us." The Innocence Project - Home. 23 Jan. 2009
"Lethal Injection." Amnesty International USA - Protect Human Rights. 23 Jan. 2009
11 comments:
This is extremely true. Why do we murder murderers when in fact, the only punishment rapists and stealers get is jail time?
By killing a murderer we are becoming the murderer’s. Just because they chose to kill as a life style doesn't make it right for us to follow the same road.
We need to set an example and stop the death penalty, if not for the murderers, then think about their families they have and what it could possibly do to them? Think about the innocent life’s that have been take because of false witnesses. We are now the murderers’ not the victims because of this punishment.
We need to start a new path, "Follow the road less taken."
Along with this...
The death penalty is almost like letting someone get away with murder because they no longer have to suffer. They have died and passed on. However, sentencing them to life in prison forces them to have to think about what they did day after day. They cannot get around it.
Another thing...
The death penalty draws out trials for the victims family. They cannot move on because they still have trials to attend for something that may have happened ten years ago.
This is ludacris. The Death Penalty has been around for ages due to the simple fact that it takes threats off the the face of the earth. Look at People like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer who killed multiple people for their own sick, sadistic pleasure. We put them in jail, and they get to LIVE while all of their innocent victims are buried in the ground, and the families of the victims go to bed at night knowing that murderer is sleeping well, being fed, and getting to shower at THEIR EXPENSE. Yes, us tax-payers buy the food that murderers get to eat, provide them beds, and give them those jumpsuits. In most murder cases, victims are not just shot, they are mutilated and suffer a far more tragic death than taking 3 shots of drugs would ever do to anyone. As for rapists and theives, they go to jail because the death penalty would be a more cruel punishment than the crime they commited, yet they still need to learn a lesson. TRY, because it is absolutely impossible to know the feeling without experiencing it, to be in the shoes of a victims family. Going to trial and hearing the gruesome details of how your brother or sister was killed and looking in the eye of the murderer, you would want the sick SOB dead, too. You wouldn't feel complete with him getting to live everyday and see the sun rise and set, while your family member will never be seen again.
The Death Penalty isn't just for payback, but to protect the rest of the world. It is not uncommon for people to escape from prison (yes I know thats quite a stretch) but also for some murderers to even live out their prison sentence and return to the world years later. Would you want a murderer walking around on the streets? Thats right...I didn't think so! It's not like we are stoning them to death or beheading them, but injecting them with drugs that do the things they are meant to do. Without the death penalty, murderers would never learn their lesson.
For my last point, imagine the fear in the mind of the victim right before they die. Compare that to what a murderer goes through right before execution....seems like a fair penalty to me.
XXGOGETTAXX
AMEN XXGOGETTAXX, thank you for articulating that bit for all the people who can't even seem to see the other side of the argument they are waging because they are ignorant bleeding hearts for all living things. Your cause is noble guys, but you fail. Oh, and Lil BK, it's the road less TRAVELED, not TAKEN.
XXGOGETTAXX while you do bring up some good points, wanting that "sick SOB" dead is still going the archaic principle of an eye for an eye, wanting the person dead makes you just as bad as them, wanting that person dead almost is like legalize premeditated murder, i think you should let them rot in jail and have to live with themselves for the rest of their lives, tormented by their own personal prison,that is more effective of a punishment the any other thing i can imagine. The death penalty is just an outdated fear tactic, it no longer serves the purpose it used to. Crimes rates are going up so our so called solve all scare tactic is not doing its job. The only thing it is doing is putting more bodies in our funerals and potentially kkilling our own innocent citizens, which my friend is very sad =(
OVERtheUNDER
The death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment.
Twice, the 5th Amendment authorizes execution.
(1) “ No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury . . . " and
(2) ". . . nor shall any person . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . ”.
The 14th amendment is, equally, clear:
" . . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . ."
Not surprisingly, over 200 years of US Supreme Court decisions support those amendments and the US Constitution in authorizing and enforcing the death penalty.
Some wrongly believe that the US Supreme Court decision, Furman v Georgia (1972), found the death penalty unconstitutional. It did not.
The decisions found that the statutory enforcement of the death penalty in the US was a violation of the 8th Amendment.
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
A review of the record shows that Jesse Tafero was guilty.
Start reading about halfway into this article
http://joshmarquis.blogspot.com/2005/03/myth-of-innocence.html
In addition, 9 inmates have been removed from death row because of DNA exclusion.
There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.
In fact, innocents are more at risk without the death penalty.
OvertheUnder, I have a hard time believing that because I feel a murderer should be murdered, that that makes me just as bad or guilty as a person who actually commited the murder. It is called justice, not revenge, not unconstitutional, and definately not premeditated murder. In reality, most people on death row are in prison for about 10, sometimes more, years. That time allows for appeals and more information/evidence about the case to be brought into view, but also does punish the criminal. If you really think about it, knowing that you will be in jail for the rest of your life is not as bad as being there for 10 years, and everyday counting down the minutes until you are executed. You stare death in the face, which is worse than knowing that yes, one day you will die, but not knowing how or when. Also, if you say that I am just as bad as the murderer for wanting them dead, do you feel that the certified doctors who inject the drugs for lethal injections are murderers as well...should we be putting them in jail "for the rest of their lives" as you wish...or just letting them go back to practicing medicine as they usually do? An eye for an eye is a basic principle that stands for equal and fair justice (of course there are exceptions, i.e. we don't rape rapists or burn arsonists), and is meant to keep the rest of mankind as safe as possible. The death penalty is not meant to scare anyone, and just because crime rates as a WHOLE may be going up, doesn't mean that it isn't effective or doing anything that it is supposed to be doing.
Personally I believe this topic has holes in it which ever side you take. If we do use the death penalty we become urders ourselves, as others have said. But if we don't use it will a lifetime in jail be enough for vertain crimes? Either way you look at it the situation is going to have its draw backs.
I think you are making a logical and moral error.
Killing equals Killing: The Amoral Confusion of death penalty opponents
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
A popular anti-death penalty slogan is: "Why do we kill people to show that killing people is wrong?"
They are unaware that we don't.
Even with no sanction, most folks know that committing murder is wrong.
We execute guilty murderers who have murdered innocent people.
There really is a solid moral difference between crime and punishment, guilty murderers and their innocent victims.
The moral confusion exists when anti death penalty folks blindly accept the amoral or immoral position that all killing is equal. They are just looking at an act -- "killing" -- and saying all killings are equal and wrong. Only an amoral person would equate "equal" acts, without looking at the consideration behind them.
For those, like some anti death penalty folks, who believe all killing is morally equivalent, they must equate the slaughter of 6million innocent Jews and 6-7 additional innocents with the execution of those guilty murderers committing that slaughter. They would also equate the rape and murder of children with the execution of the rapist/murderer.
This is, precisely, what the anti death penalty folks are doing with their common slogan, they morally equate killing (murder) with the punishment for that murder, another killing (execution). They think they are the same. That is what their slogan means.
For such anti death penalty folks to be consistent, they must also equate holding people against their will (illegal kidnapping) with the sanction for it, the holding people against their will (legal incarceration) or the taking money away from people (illegal robbery) with a sanction for that, taking money away from people (legal restitution).
Fortunately, most folks can see these clear moral differences.
Some anti death penalty folks are either incapable of knowing the moral differences between crime and punishment, guilty criminals and their innocent victims, or they are knowingly using a dishonest saying by equating killing (murder) with killing (execution).
copyright 2000-2009 Dudley Sharp: Permission for distribution of this document, in whole or in part, is approved with proper attribution.
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
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