World Day Against The Death Penalty 2024 is on Friday, October 11, 2024: Against Capital PunishmentDeath Penalty?

Friday, October 11, 2024 is World Day Against The Death Penalty 2024. 11th World Day against the Death Penalty: Greater Caribbean Poster - 11th World Day

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The biggest argument against capital punishment is that it simply isn't effective. Government crime policy should be based on what best protects our society from crime, in the most cost-effective way. Capital punishment has never been shown to be a deterrent, in fact statistically it is quite the opposite. And it costs much more than the alternative, life in prison without parole. So why would we do it?

It is based on vengeance. It is a 'feel good' measure. And isn't it appalling what makes Americans feel good? 8^)

I don't know if there can be restoration and reconciliation in cases like these, where someone has been murdered. You can't restore a murdered person. I think some murderers could be rehabilitated, but we have completely given up on rehabilitation these days, for any kind of crime, because politicians have to compete with one another to be 'tough on crime'.

But the death penalty is emblematic of a bigger problem in our approach to crime. We use it as a political football. We don't want to understand why people commit crimes, we just want to punish them, and if punishment doesn't work we figure it just wasn't harsh enough. Here in California we have doubled sentences for every crime and then doubled them again. If our streets could be made safer just by locking people up, then we'd have the safest streets in the world.

We need a new, more practical, more reasonable approach. Getting rid of the death penalty would be a good start, but just a start.

how to write thesis sentence for death penalty research paper?

For the worst crimes, life without parole is better, for many reasons. I’m against the death penalty but not because of sympathy for criminals. It doesn’t prevent or reduce crime, costs a whole lot more than life in prison, and, worst of all, risks executions of innocent people.

The worst thing about it. Errors:

The system can make tragic mistakes. In 2004, the state of Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham for starting the fire that killed his children. The Texas Forensic Science Commission determined that the arson testimony that led to his conviction was based on flawed science. As of today, 138 wrongly convicted people on death row have been exonerated. DNA is rarely available in homicides, often irrelevant (as in Willingham’s case) and can’t guarantee we won’t execute innocent people. Capital juries are dominated by people who favor the death penalty and are more likely to vote to convict.

Keeping killers off the streets for good:

Life without parole, on the books in 49 states (all except Alaska), also prevents reoffending. It means what it says, and spending the rest of your life locked up, knowing you’ll never be free, is no picnic. Two big advantages:

-an innocent person serving life can be released from prison

-life without parole costs less than the death penalty

Costs, a surprise to many people:

Study after study has found that the death penalty is much more expensive than life in prison. The high costs of the death penalty are for the complicated legal process, with the largest costs at the pre-trial and trial stages. The point is to avoid executing innocent people. The tremendous expenses in a death penalty case apply whether or not the defendant is convicted, let alone sentenced to death.

Crime reduction (deterrence):

The death penalty doesn't keep us safer. Homicide rates for states that use the death penalty are consistently higher than for those that don’t. The most recent FBI data confirms this. For people who lack a conscience, fear of being caught is the best deterrent.

Who gets it:

Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty isn't reserved for the worst crimes, but for defendants with the worst lawyers. It doesn't apply to people with money. Practically everyone sentenced to death had to rely on an overworked public defender. How many people with money have been executed??

Victims:

People assume that families of murder victims want the death penalty imposed. It isn't necessarily so. Some are against it on moral grounds. But even families who have supported the death penalty in principle have testified to the damage that the death penalty process does to families like theirs and that life without parole is an appropriate alternative.

It comes down to whether we should keep a system for the sake of retribution or revenge even though it isn’t effective in reducing violent crime, costs much more than alternatives and, worst of all, can lead to the nightmare of executing someone for a crime he didn’t commit.

Death penalty case????

You'll likely not get 'ungory' cases fo research in regard to the death penalty. Personally, I think 12 is old enough to begin understanding what the world is like.

For arguments against, .

As an example, a good one is the story of Kirstin Lobato. Nineteen year-old Kirstin Lobato was convicted in May 2002 of murdering a homeless Las Vegas man who was beaten, stabbed and sexually mutilated on July 8, 2001. She was sentenced to a minimum of 40 years in prison. Yet multiple witnesses confirm that on the day of the man’s death Kirstin was in Panaca, Nevada, 170 miles from Las Vegas. Her presence in Panaca is consistent with crime scene evidence that positively excludes her from having anything to do with his death, and that there is no evidence she had ever met the man. In a masterful frame-up that may be marveled at for decades as a text book case of how the three branches of the legal system interact to ensure a wrongful conviction, prosecutors worked hand-in-glove with the police to orchestrate, in the courtroom of an overtly compliant judge, the conviction of a plainly innocent young woman.

Or for evidence that even a confession does not mean absolute guilt, see the Australian case of Lawrence Lloyd who was charged with homicide and even confessed (the jury found manslaughter, so obviously something was wrong here) and after serving 11 years was released. Af his release, another suspect was charged and conviced of homicide, independentally of the crime. The conviction agains Lloyd was eventually quashed, meaning the state was convinced of his innocence.

Between 1973 and last year, there have been 123 exonerations in the US. These are just those where new evidence proved innocence. It makes one wonder how many are wrongly convicted and still on death row, or worse yet, how many have been executed.