Capital Punishment :: essays research papers

Capital Punishment is the ultimate denial of human rights. There are strong indications that rather than deterring violence, it increases people’s tolerance of and tendency toward violence. Though capital punishment does not deter capital crimes it does constitute a uniquely cruel and degrading punishment. It’s imposition forever deprives a potentially innocent individual the benefits of new evidence or a new law that might warrant the reversal of a conviction or the setting aside of a death sentence. In addition, the cost of executing a person in the U.S. is far higher than the cost of imprisoning him or her for life. States wishing to condemn cruel and inhuman acts of killing do not serve their purpose by repeating the act of killing. The average homicide rate in the 13 states without the death penalty is lower than the average homicide rate in the 37 states where it is legal. Between 1972 and 1990, the homicide rate in Michigan which has no death penalty, was generally as low or lower than the neighboring state of Indiana, which restored the death penalty in 1973. The U.S. Bowers- Pierce study analyzing executions between 1907 and 1963 concluded, that an average of two additional homicides were committed in the month after an execution; they also noted a â€Å"brutalizing† effect on society resulting from executions. According to FBI statistics the murder rate in some states which use the death penalty is twice that of some states which do not use the death penalty. Between 1976 and 1985, almost twice as many law enforcement officers were killed in death penalty states as were killed in states that don’t use the death penalty. The death penalty has not proven its worth to society; study after study has shown! that it fails to deter crime, no credible body of evidence contradicts them. Capital punishment is pre- meditated killing and, like all killing, involves a cruel and violent assault on the human body. If administering 100 volts of electricity to the most sensitive parts of a man’s body is rightly condemned as torture, how does a state condone the administration of 2,000 volts to a human body in order to cause death? At a 1990 Florida execution, a malfunction of the electric chair equipment caused flames to leap six inches above the prisoner’s head each time the current was turned on. In 1992, a prisoner in Oklahoma had a violent reaction to the drugs used in the lethal injection.