Capital Punishment
Table of contents
1. Introduction
2. Cons and pros of the death penalty
3. The death penalty and the mass media
4. 法律essay指导Immorality of the death penalty
5. Conclusion
死刑
目录
1。介绍
2。比较赞成死刑
3。死刑或大众媒体
4。淫乱的死刑
5。结论
介绍
死刑是最残酷的和最可怕的惩罚在当今世界的存在。失去你的生活你丢掉一切与你真正的生活。有一个观点,对死亡的恐惧是最强烈的恐惧。
这个工作的主要目的是找到所有的优势和不足之处死刑。就我个人而言,我反对这样的惩罚。有一个古老的谚语,它表明它的更好的原谅十有罪的惩罚要比无辜的。真理,在这俗语说必须发生的基础上有罪判决,尤其是当它牵涉到死亡惩罚。我会尽我最大的努力来证明我的观点,说服我的对手。总之我了解我的对手的意见,尊重它。
统计,只有在美国境内的美国大约有250人被判处死刑,每年都有。35他们处决。这句话来自两个阶段之前,它是执行:第一阶段包括听力的试炼和法官的判决,第二阶段是服务的一个句子里。有时再审程序是有可能的,但如果陪审团的成员提出死刑,法官同意,执行将举行。
最常见的形式是执行注射死刑的现在。这种新方法的执行发明不久以前,这是一种最普遍的方法使用功能。在中间的20th世纪从1972吨o1976死刑不允许在美国由于宪法修正案第八条。发明致命注射剂再次使用。
比较赞成死刑
意见,支持死刑,能够在逻辑上证明。他们的观点验证了数目的参数。谋杀案件数量和艰苦的罪是低于对照组的国家里,死刑是官方处罚。对死亡的恐惧降低犯罪罪行。订单的水平非常高,在这些国家,因为它是基于恐惧或胁迫。人们也认为死刑把类似的道德界限,因其特殊的罪行,如谋杀,ravishment等人穿越这些界限失去全部的道德和它只会留下要杀他们。另一个方面是死人的人是一个多重凶手无法杀死任何人当他任期有期徒刑都会来结束或如果他逃跑了。
Introduction
Capital punishment is the cruelest and the most terrible punishment that exists nowadays in the world. Losing your life you loose everything that connect you with the real life. There is an opinion that fear of death is the strongest fear.
The main aim of this work is to find all advantages and disadvantages of the capital punishment. Personally I stand against such kind of punishment. There is an ancient proverb, which states that it’s better to forgive ten guilty than to punish one innocent. The truth, stated in this proverb must be the basis of warranting guilty verdict, especially when it comes to death penalties. I’ll do my best to prove my opinion and persuade my opponents. All in all I understand my opponent’s opinion and respect it.
The statistics states that only on the territory of the United States about 250 people are sentenced to death every year. 35 of them are executed. The sentence comes through two phases before it is executed: the first phase includes hearing the trial and verdict of judges and the second phase is serving of a sentence. Sometimes retrial is possible, but if the members of the jury propose the death penalty and the judge agrees, execution will take place.
The most common form of execution nowadays is lethal injection. This new method of execution was invented not long ago, and it’s the most widespread method used nowadays. In the middle of the 20th century from 1972 t o1976 the death penalty wasn’t allowed in the USA due to the eighth Amendment. Invention of lethal injection renewed its use.
Cons and pros of the death penalty
Opinion of those, who support the death penalty, can be logically proved. Their point of view is proved by a number of arguments. The number of murders and hard crimes is lower in those countries where the capital punishment is an official penalty. The fear of death for crimes reduces such crimes. The level of the order in such countries is very high, as it’s based on fear and intimidation. People also say that the death penalty puts something like moral bounds due to special crimes such as murder, ravishment, etc and crossing these bounds people lose all their morality and the it’s only left to kill them. Another aspect is that dead person who was a multiple murderer isn’t able to kill anybody when his term of imprisonment will come to the end or if he escapes.
All these facts must be taken into consideration but there is another aspect that, to my mind, is the most important and can cross out all the others. This aspect is called morality and humanity.
First of all let’s correlate the death penalty with ten tables from the Bible. By Christianity killing a person is a great sin. Death penalty is the same killing even if it’s aimed to punish the murderer. Christians think that God placed every person on the Earth for the exact aim that should be realized. Killing a person deprives him of his right to carry out his mission. Execution is not the natural death. Some Christian sources say that only natural death can lead to Heavens, all other deaths leave people in the realm of shadows with no way out. Christians couldn’t accept the death penalty in any case.
10 tables of the Bible are norms of every society. They form the morality of every civilization. Jesus taught people to forgive those who have made you harm you and return good for evil. We will never exterminate the evil if we do evil for evil. In such a case the evil would only double on the Earth. How differs action of the murderer from the person who gives a lethal injection? Won’t this person accuse himself of killing during all his further life? These both actions are murders and all the other circumstances are not very important.
The death penalty for some crimes intimidate other people, the fear of death doesn’t allow people to commit a crime. The organization of the society is based on intimidation, but is it a healthy society. Does this society is able to give a possibility for the development of high-organized, independent individuality with free thoughts and intentions? I am completely sure that it is not. The fear of anything can bring up only slaves. People see that the value of the life isn’t high in the society. If one person can be killed even if he needs the highest punishment, then one day this punishment can become acceptable even for less serious crimes. The person realizes that if the death penalty exists it can threaten himself even if he doesn’t commit a crime. This fear can exist in subconsciousness.
Another aspect of the capital punishment is the possibility to execute an innocent person. Jury and judges are ordinary people, so they can make mistakes. Death sentence can become an error that will cost someone’s life. Who will be responsible for the death of an innocent person? Of course, that judge who pronounced sentence on death would be put into prison or have another kind of responsibility, but who will be able to return the life of the innocent person? Nobody and it’s the main point in the question of the death penalty. Human factor doesn’t give us a possibility to pass 100% fair sentences. Human life is sacred even if this person has killed another person. This murder will lie on his conscience and he’ll answer for all his crimes. Nobody has a right to encroach on the sanctity of human life, even the state.
In the history of the United States of America two death penalties that were fulfilled then were found incorrect. The two persons were found innocent but they were already killed. It happened in 1918 and 1949. Those who stand for the death penalty affirm that such a miserable number in a rather long time span isn’t so bad, but such arguments loose all their power when we speak about human life.
The main aim of the person on the Earth is to reach progress and develop capabilities. All the persons can make mistakes and then have a possibility to correct them. The capital punishment doesn’t give such a possibility to condemned persons who committed a blunder. To die is sometimes easier then to live with you sins and realize what you have done.
There is an opinion that the existence of the death penalty decreases the number of crimes but at the same time another statistics show reverse result.
The number of criminals sentenced to death represented by the mentally ill people, male, poor and minorities are met more often than other sections of population. Women are sentenced to the death penalty very rarely, it’s more men’s fate. If you try to come to know the particulars of the condemned person you’ll see that he was abused during his childhood, came through sufferings and unfairness. Of course, the murder couldn’t be warrant in any case, but we can understand what made him the murder.
It goes without saying that alive can do more than dead. The criminals work and the payment of their work goes to the society, to the victim’s family for example. There is a number of examples when people sentenced to life imprisonment invented something and made their contributions in the society. In 1924 two nineteen-year-old boys killed a boy. They were sentenced not to death but to life imprisonment. Their behavior in prison was an example for other prisoners, they worked in prison hospitals, taught them to read, created a school in prison and wrote a grammar book. Their asset in the improvement of the life of prisoners is priceless.
Another argument against execution is that it’s the cruelest punishment not suitable for the civilized society. The Eighth Amendment of the American Constitution tried to fight against death penalty and even succeeded in it in the 1970s but its success didn’t last long. Eternal struggle for or against the capital punishment moved away them from the punishment itself. When the Constitution was just in project, the question of death penalty wasn’t even discussed, it wasn’t thought abnormal and more over immoral. Most creators of the Constitution approved such kind of punishment. The laws of the state form people’s morality and show what is good and permitted. The possibility to kill even if it’s a kind of punishment can lead the using of this method among ordinary people.#p#分页标题#e#
The death penalty and the mass media
Law and media coexist and overlap in the modern society. People create their opinion, drop their conclusions guided by the information they get from mass media and very seldom think about the credibility of this information. In modern society, the impact of mass media is so big that it not only passes the legal norms to the population, but also has the power to influence or even change them.
Receiving publicity can become a serious problem for death eligible cases as from the role of observer mass media becomes an active participant of the trial. If death penalty is appointed, the media doesn’t leave any chance to the charged person and the appellate procedure is usually illuminated as an annoying delay on the way to the climax – execution. The question of moral issues, appropriateness of the death penalty or its efficacy is surprisingly rarely touched by the mass media. These questions can raise unnecessary doubts in the minds of people and spoil dramatic effect, so diligently created. Another peculiar feature of mass media’s covering the death issue is the lack of defensive evidence, if any presented to the wide audience. The main line of narration is usually lead from the part of prosecution – they have more TV air and spaces in the magazines and newspapers. Defense doesn’t have these privileges.
Very seldom journalists try to show compassion to criminals. Another interesting feature is that mass media tries to avoid the direct formulations, when talking about the death itself, trying to use phrases like “came to meet death”, “went to his final journey”, etc. They are usually afraid to minimize the sufferings of the victim, by showing any humanity to putative criminal. To be just, there are rare cases, when the topic innocent person unfairly condemned is speculated, but these cases are rare and can not be regarded as general tendency. “The role of denunciator conflicts with media’s role of impartial chronicles” (Amari). Complicated or ambiguous cases are not so popular among the media, as they need context, complex explanations and event chains and let multi-faceted interpretations.
The influence of media coverage in brining the death penalty is especially strong. “The feedback loop is especially visible at the legislative juncture, when crime control policies are made at the prosecutorial juncture, when discretion about capital charging is at work; and at the adjudicative juncture, when both judge and jury must make difficult decision about sentencing” (Liebman, 78). The Eighth Amendment guarantees the right of people to express their opinion and the importance of this opinion to be heard. Media becomes a transitional point, which passes emotion from the courtroom to average observer. We get a loop here – trying to answer the needs of the audience, mass media tries to search for the facts, which would appeal most of all to this public. At the same time, collecting such facts, media influences pubic opinion. The main difficulty lies in the fact, that media prefers a selective depiction of events and the selective emotional background for their coverage. Feelings of compassion, mercy and sorrow to victims aren’t accompanied by even the smallest effort to display compassion to the convicted person. The crime and criminal himself become the incarnation of encroachment on the social legislative norms and stability.
Immorality of the death penalty
“Capital punishment is a barbaric remnant of an uncivilized society. It is immoral in principle, and unfair and discriminatory in practice. It assures the execution of some innocent people. As a remedy for crime, it has no purpose and no effect” (American Civil Liberties Union National Office). Couple of sentences exposes all immoral and inhumane roots of the death penalty.
All in all the moral argument is the strongest among all the arguments against the death penalty. Human rights must be protected by the state but not all the methods are admissible and possible. Even the state can’t avoid crossing all the bounds. The death penalty is a kind of punishment, which supposes deprivation of human life. Even if the number of executions is brought to minimum and death penalty is used only to the cruelest murders and in particular cases, it’s killing and give any change for the improvement of civilized society.
Penalty death is unnatural action as any kind of killing. It’s wrong morally, it’s against all principles of the humanity. It’s even against the laws of nature and I won’t even mention The Bible and its interpretation. Taking human life is inhumane, we live among people, not animals, and we must be guided by human laws. Capital punishment is just another formulation of killing to avoid calling names in their real names. It’s God’s privilege and no one even the state can take such responsibility and administer justice and mete out punishment.
“The death penalty is irrevocable. “In case of a mistake, the executed prisoner cannot be given another chance. Justice can miscarry. In the last hundred years there have been more that 75 documented cases of wrongful conviction of criminal homicide. The death sentence was carried out in eight of these cases” (Draper 47). Even if the person gets to know that the sentenced was passed wrongly and he is free, what can he do and is he capable to perceive all the world adequate after years spent in prison waiting for the death every day? Is it moral to break person’s life?
Conclusion
The death penalty is the cruelest punishment, which can be used in a number of cases in some countries. Some people support such kind of punishment and think that only such severe actions can keep the society in safety and provide security. People believe that seeing sure punishment another people would be afraid to commit crimes. It’s only one point of view, there is another that is absolutely opposite and to my mind it’s more suitable for the civilized society with principles of humanity and tolerance.
The actions of the state are the example of the behavior for all the other people. Using the death penalty as a punishment the state pulls down the moral norms. Life is a gift given by God, so only God can take it away. Death doesn’t correct the mistake, it can only neutralize the murderer, but soon appear new criminals. The murderer must realize his crime and beremosful of it. Way of the mankind should reach peace and stability and deaths on its way are not admissible.
法律essay References
1. Amari Jane, Is crime coverage out of Balance? Research shows a Need for More Reporting of Context, Perspective, Consequences, Risk Factors, NEWS WATCH, (Garnett New Network), March 12, 1999, available at http://www.ukassignment.org/flessaydx/
2. Liebman James et al., A Broken System, Part II: Why There Is So Much Error in Capital Cases, and What Can be Done About It? (Feb. 11, 2002),
3. Stephen Layson, “Homicide and Deterrence: Another View of the Canadian Time-Series Evidence,” Canadian Journal of Economics, February 1983.
4. Isaac Ehrlich, “Capital Punishment and Deterrence: Some Further Thoughts,” Journal of Political Economy, 1977.
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