Death Penalty Issue example essay topic

The most high profile execution of 2001 was undoubtedly that of Timothy Mcveigh. He was the one responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing that claimed 186 lives. He was given the choice between lethal injection and the electric chair. How kind of them to let him choose which way he was going to die.

I don't understand how a person can look another person in the eye and tell them that they are going to die on a specific date. It's just not right. Throughout history government has been putting people to death for wrongdoing. Methods of execution included practices such as crucifixion, stoning, drowning, burning at the stake, hanging and beheading.

Today capital punishment is typically performed by a lethal gas or injection, electrocution, hanging, or firing squad. The only three states that have firing squads are Idaho, Oklahoma, and Utah. The death penalty is the most controversial issue in our world, with many different perspectives on the subject. Personally, I think that the death penalty is wrong and unjust.

By allowing the government and the legal system to decide who lives and who dies is giving them the power not meant for mankind. For the family and friends of the victims who died believe that the criminal deserves the death penalty. Deserved? Is justice the motive, or is it revenge? The actual practice of capital punishment dates back as far as government itself. Throughout history, the death penalty has been controversial.

Capital punishment is brutal and degrading to people, including myself, yet supporters consider it a necessary Anast 2 form of retribution for terrible crimes. The people that do advocate the death penalty believe that it is an effective way of punishing criminals who have committed a crime of great extent. However, the death penalty is a human rights issue as well as a governmental power issue. Why should the government have control of who lives and who dies?

The only person that has control of that is God. This brings me to my next point. The death penalty issue is also a very religious controversy. The bible says that Jesus taught forgiveness of sins, not revenge and retribution.

Man has no right to decide when a person's life should end. Whether the issue is abortion or the death penalty. Yet, when a murder is committed there is a life taken. That person should be sentenced to life in prison. Besides, I think that we should make then suffer, rather than give them the easy way out and just dying.

Even the visits to the United States, which he intervened on behalf of prisoners awaiting execution, still, none of the states paid any attention to his pleas. Obviously, the government is in favor of the death penalty to stop crime. Well, instead of them killing more people then have already died; they should attack the main root of the situation and stop gun violence. Taking away the weapon of choice from murders might actually get the crime to decrease. I don't understand why people think when a person is committing a crime they are thinking about the consequence.

They are thinking about the crime, I'm sure people know that if you kill someone cold blooded then you might get the death penalty. Anast 3 Another standpoint on the subject is economical viewpoint. The more inmates you have then the more prisons you have, which means more money. Right?

Wrong. The death penalty is not now, nor has ever been, a more economical alternative to life in prison. A murder trial usually takes much longer when the death penalty is an issue than when it is not. Litigation costs, including the time of judges, prosecutor, public defenders, and court reporters, and high costs of briefs, which are mostly paid by the tax -payer. A 1982 study showed that if the death penalty were to be reintroduced in New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more than double the cost of a life sentence. Capital Punishment is an unfair and is usually a racist issue.

Racial discrimination was one of the grounds on which Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in Furman. Half a century ago, in his classic American Dilemma (1944), Gunnar Myrdal reported that "the South makes the widest application of the death penalty, and Negro criminals come in for much more than their share of executions. Between 1930 and the end of 1996, 4,220 prisoners were executed in the United States; more than half of them (53%) were black. There were also 455 men that were executed for rape, of whom 405 (90%) were blacks. The government is very racial about this issue.

Our country has always been racist, and it will keep going on forever. It's as bad as it was, but it's still there. But, when the death penalty was revived in the mid 1970's, about half of the people on death row at any given time were black. Anast 4 When talking about the death penalty, most people don't understand the various dramatic al issues behind it.

They really don't comprehend what is actually happening. Individuals that are for the death penalty are ignorant and close-minded. They don't understand that you are taking another life when you sentence someone to death. It's not going to bring the dead back, so why do people insist of taking another life?

The death penalty is very barbaric, brutal, and is an ignorant way of bringing justice to our world. With all the different viewpoints on the matter, it is hard for me to see why people don't understand that it is wrong. I wish that there were something that could be done so that people would be more open minded and have more positive outlooks on the matter.