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Capital Punishment, Should It Or Should It Not Be Used In Todays CriminalJudging
Capital Punishment, Should It Or Should It Not Be Used In Today's Criminal Judging System Capital Punishment, Should It Or Should It Not Be Used In Today's Criminal Judging System While Capital Punishment has been one of the most feared things of our time, it is still being questioned if it is unconstitutional. The Death Penalty is being enforced in more than 100 countries in the world and are usually in used in politically-related cases. Although it has been the case in many countries throughout the world it has been said that the Death Penalty is "cruel and unusual punishment" which is a direct violation to the Bill of Rights. Capital Punishment is a certain copy of the earliest days of slavery, when you had no rights or any different opinion, and like then, executions have no place in our civilized society. The Death Penalty, throughout it's years of existence, has always been against the views of the people, either because of it's brutality or because of it's lack of effectiveness. The Death Penalty has been opposed by the people since the beginning of it's era, which was around 1976, when the United States Supreme Court declared that the death penalty was not against the Constitution. But if read directly the Eight Amendment of the U.S. Constitution "prohibits cruel and unusual punishments" and not only that but abolitionists also think that Capital Punishment ensures Americans equality for all . The abolitionists also did a poll which ensured that there was "no support for the view that the death penalty provides a more effective deterrent to police homicides than alternative sanctions. Not for a single year was evidence found that police are safer in jurisdictions that provide for capital punishment" The highest homicide rates were also in Death Penalty states with executions: 9.7 homicides per 100,000 people as compared to 5.1 in states without the Death Penalty . It has also been shown that the Death Penalty is racially biased and unfair. There has been substantial evidence to show that courts have been impulsive, racially biased, and unfair in the way in which they have sentenced some persons to prison but others to death. In 1944 Gunnar Myrdal reported in his book American Dilemma that "the South makes the widest application of the Death Penalty, and Negro criminals come in for much more than their share of the executions" Between the years of 1930 and 1940 the African Americans only made up about 12 percent of the United States' population, but between those times they also made up about 51 percent of the people that were executed. Juries are more likely to impose the death penalty on blacks than on whites accused of the same offense (Administra- tion Office of the Courts). Of the 145 cases studied by the Administration Office of the Courts it was shown that whites would have received the death penalty at a higher rate since they met the criteria for capital punishment more often. Yet, the case studies revealed that this was not the situation. Is the value of a white life worth more than a person of color? When Capital Punishment is put into a case and the person has been killed there is no way to get back from that if they are later found to have been innocent. If a person is sentenced to life without parole and is later found to be innocent, that person can still be released, but if the person was put to death there is no way of giving life back to someone who's been executed. For example, a man about 5 years ago was set free after he was in jail for 12 years and after he was 72 hours from being executed. In his case, the prosecutors used perjured testimony and suppressed evidence which imprisoned him. The witness that set him free was a sixteen year old who while imprisoned for a separate murder conviction, confessed to killing the officer whom Randall Adams was in jail for killing ("The Case"1). For us to kill those people who have acted outside the boundaries of acceptable human behavior puts us in the same position as they are in-we become killers. It is also a view that peopl...This is ONLY a preview of the article. If you would like to view the entire document, you must subscribe to Electronic References. Please register below now! Get This Full Article After Registration
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