Negative Stance on Capital Punishment
Negative Stance on Capital Punishment
Each year there are about 250 people added to the death row and 35 executed. The death penalty is one of the harshest forms of punishment enforced in the United States today. Once a jury has convicted a criminal, of an offense they go to the second part of the trail, the punishment phase. If the jury recommends the death penalty and the judge agrees then the criminal will face some form of execution. Lethal injection is the most common form of execution used today.
There was a period from 1972 to 1976 that capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Their reason for this decision was that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment under the eighth amendment. The decision was reversed when new methods of execution were introduced.
I am opposed to capital punishment because I don’t think that it is right to execute someone for making one or two wrong decisions. Capital Punishment is a cruel and unusual punishment. There also is a possibility of innocent death and it doesn’t deter crime.
The strongest argument against capital punishment is the argument capital punishment is a cruel and unusual punishment. The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, condemning cruel and unusual punishment, is used to protest Capital Punishment. The fallacy of this argument is that it appears to be a red herring augment, one that takes attention away from the facts of the case. When the Constitution was drafted, capital punishment was practiced widely in this country, yet it was not specified as wrong. Many of the framers of the constitution endorsed capital punishment, as did the philosophers that which the constitution draws from. John Lock went to say that murder is not wrong. So how can murder be immoral? Citizens under social contract agree not to kill only because others also agree not to kill. It is the function of penal laws to prevent murder by demonstrating to everyone that it is not in their best interest to murder.
Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty does not act as a deterrent to crime. Expert after expert and study after study show that the lack of correlation between the threat of the death penalty and the occurrence of crime. ...