Example Of Essay On Death Penalty

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Death penalty or capital punishment has been one of the hottest topics for centuries, but this subject has turned out to be even more disputatious matter in the current era when terrorism is springing up at quite a threatening pace. Aside from those folks who despise the death penalty, there are also some people who stand in favor of it. They believe that the death penalty ought to be employed in particular cases like terrorism, 1st degree murders, etc.
But the reality is that the employment of the death penalty even in the cases of the aforementioned crimes, in order to deviant the criminals basically creates an ambiguity. This loophole ultimately at any stage could open the prospect of employing capital punishment for many other crimes as well, even for those which don’t really involve the murder. Following are some other rational reasons which explicate why it is imperative to drop out the death penalty.
1) The Cost of the Death Penalty
Each and every capital punishment is executed at the dumfounding cost of the general taxpayers. Some folks might wonder to know that it is way more costly to execute an individual than keeping him/her in the jailhouse for life. The research has exposed that California, which is the USA’s third largest state, has exhausted more than four billion dollars merely on the death penalty from 1978 to 2011. The biggest reason behind it is that the trials of capital punishment are approximately twenty times expensive as compared to those trials which seek the life sentence without the parole’s possibility (ProCon.Org, 2004).
It is estimated that in different parts of the globe each case of capital punishment ranges from one to three million dollars, from the moment of capture to the convict’s execution. In point of fact, this amount can also reach the figure of seven million dollars for some cases. While, on the other hand, the lifetime imprisonment cases on average cost around about fifty thousand dollars and it also includes the incarceration’s cost. The hefty budgets exhausted in the execution of criminals are a real big deal, especially for the underdeveloped regions that do not have enough resources to fulfill even the most basic needs of the general public.
2) Deterrence
There are so many reliable scientific studies as well as the extensive preponderance of the evidence available that clearly depict that death penalty fails to deter the rate of crime and it’s nothing more effective as compared to the lifetime imprisonment in dissuading murder. In addition to it, those states and countries which are operating without capital punishment have considerably lower rates of murders. For instance, the Southern region of the USA accounts for approximately eighty percent of the entire country’s executions, but still it has the uppermost regional rate of murders.
3) Innocent Folks Get Executed
The unfair execution of the innocent individuals is an absolute injustice and what is even worse about it is that it is not possible to rectify it. Since the capital punishment’s restoration, one hundred and forty-two women and men have been freed from the death row in the United States of America. The most shocking thing is that some of them were merely some minutes away from getting executed for the crime which they have never actually committed. The rate of error is simply terrifying and utterly unacceptable. After all, each and every life is priceless.
4) Insufficient Legal Presentation
One of the most crucial and decisive factors in evaluating whether a defender will ultimately get the death row or not is the overall quality of representations/he gets. Apparently, it is not possible for the each and every defender in the cases of capital punishment to afford private attorneys, since they often charge high fees which an average man’s pocket cannot bear. As a result, the appointed lawyers are generally underpaid, overworked or missing the key experience which is significantly required in order to deal with the cases of the death penalty.
There are quite a few instances available in the history in which appointed attorneys to pursue the case of capital punishment were so green that most of them were completely untrained even for the trial’s sentencing phase. Whereas other appointed lawyers spent their time simply by sleeping during the whole trial, or came to the courtroom under alcohol’s influence.
5) Consistency and Fairness
In the cases of murders, there is some solid evidence available to point out that in all around the world the courtrooms have been unfair, contradictory and arbitrary in the method in which numerous folks have been condemned either to prison or deaths. Additionally, local parties, juror misperceptions, bias and particular geography in determining whether an individual should get the death row or not. It is a well known fact that while convicts of some extremely atrocious slayings don’t result in the capital punishment, but convicts who commit much fewer atrocious crimes get punished by the death, plus codefendants who get charged with virtually the similar crime time and again receive incongruent sentences.
Furthermore, the entire procedure of capital punishment doesn’t overcome biases which are long deep-rooted in the subconscious mind of the people. The effete guidelines, which generally are unknown or unclear to the jurors, tend to make sure that the decision makers eventually fall to depend upon the already existing prejudices regarding victims and criminals. Basically confirmation partiality signifies the subconscious kind of choosy thought process in which folks seek out and observe what affirms their established opinions, and to undervalue or ignore the importance of any contradictory piece of information.
In the same way, cognitive theory of dissonance suggests that individuals are extremely motivated to justify and rationalize those beliefs and notions which they already have in mind to diminish the distress of having those beliefs which are contradictory ones. The mind of human beings has a natural instinct to go to any possible length in order to achieve the consonance. An interesting fact is that even highly rational jurors and judges are prone to such forces (ProCon.Org, 2004).
Plus, the attitude, religion and race of a juror toward the capital punishment could manipulate the way they’ll their votes during the trials of the death penalty. Inserting an individual of a certain color into the opposite homogenous panel of adjudicators will considerably change the predicted pronouncement of the jury. The studies have shown that the overall prospect of getting the capital punishment for those cases in which a white’s victim and black’s defendant perk up where they're 5 or more male, white judges on the panel of adjudicators and the prospects dramatically diminish when there’s at least single black male judge on the panel of adjudicators.
Here it should be kept in mind that at the end of the day judges are also human beings who belong to diverse backgrounds and bring diverse point of views to the board of judges regarding the future dangerousness of the defendant, remorsefulness of the defendant and lingering doubt. In other words, the life of a person who is getting trialed for the capital punishment in merely in the hands of those judges whose judgments could also be altered due to different forces which tend to act upon them.

Conclusion

After going over all the aforementioned factors, it apparently seems that the capital punishment does not succeed to pass any reasonable public policy test. Even in case a person agrees with any of these discussed factors, the overpowering evidence’s that as a coherent response it lacks in the credibility. Therefore, currently the feasible alternative to the death penalty that’s gaining remarkable acceptance of the public’s imposition of the lifetime imprisonment without the parole possibility. This exceptional alternative will surely not let the convicted murderers freely walk on the street ever again. But at the same time, they will get enough amount of time for the re-formation of their souls and minds, which could help a lot other inmates.
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