Capital Punishment

Capital punishment is the ultimate sentence for a criminal. The question many Americans ask themselves today is whether the death penalty serves justice or immorality. The United States is one of the few industrialized countries in the world that continues to use capital punishment. The death penalty is morally wrong. It is the cruel and inhumane taking of a life and fails to eradicate the severe criminal behavior throughout American society.

Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty does not act as prevention toward criminal behavior. "The increase in murders in the United States has nearly tripled in the past 25 years." (Coughlin) This clearly shows that many violent criminals are not afraid of capital punishment. There are thousands of murders in the U.S. every year yet only a handful of these cruel killers are sent to death row and executed. The threat of being executed is almost non-existent.

In 1972, capital punishment was eradicated in the United States when the Supreme Court ruled that the carrying out of the death penalty "was cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th and 14th amendments to the Constitution". The 8th amendment states "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted". The 14 amendment states, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Our fore fathers set the amendments as guidelines for America based on the beliefs that America was a fair and just nation. Yet lingering over our nation are the deaths of criminals that our taken by the states each year. With all the growth our nation has had over the years we still use cruel tactics in the killings of criminals.

The methods by which most executions are carried out can involve physical torture, among other such methods as lethal injections, electrocution, and the usage of the gas chamber. All techniques used for killing criminals are gruesome and are an injustice that the world has derived from and opinion that has been treated like a fact. That is simply an eye for and eye, to take a life is to give your life, why has are society accepted this analogy because it has always been accepted and is easier to agree with than to argue.

Furthermore DNA has been proven to be a large factor in prisoners being taken off of death row. "Between 1973 and 1993, 48 people on death row were released after they were found to be innocent." (Adam, Cassell) This alone should make people take a serious look at the dependability of the criminal justice system. As long as the death penalty is maintained, the risk of executing an innocent person can never be eliminated. "A 1987 Stanford University survey discovered that at least 23 Americans have been wrongly executed in the twentieth century." (pbs.org) These innocent victims were sent to there death by a jury of everyday citizens and a judge although they were innocent because a few people assumed they were guilty they lost there right to live. People make mistakes whether they want to or not but when it comes to taking the life of an equal we must be positive one-hundred percent, with out a doubt, and that is nearly impossible.

The Governor of the state of Illinois declared a hold on executions in January of 2000. He said "I cannot support a system which, in its administration, has proven so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's taking of innocent life until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate."