Pojman Death Penalty

Capital Punishment in the United States is something that people in our country have never agreed on. For instance the death penalty is not even used in many of the states. The two stances that people take are that the death penalty should be eliminated completely or that it should be used often nationwide with no state exception. My stance on the issue is that the death penalty is wrong and that the United States needs to get rid of it like most civilized countries of this era have. Even though polls show a strong support for the death penalty most people do not realize the flaws with the system and therefore may not have the same opinion if they did. The first reason that the death penalty must be abolished is because innocent people
It is the idea that by killing convicted murderers it would stop possible murderers from killing innocent people, therefore saving innocent lives. Even though there is no evidence to show deterrence it is pretty obvious that deterrence would happen with capital punishment. In his argument for capital punishment Pojman brings up the lightening scenario. Which is a scenario where every time a person commits murder there are then struck and killed by a bolt of lightening. If fellow future murderers see every murderer being struck by lightening then it would most likely deter them from committing that offense. It is clear that that situation would lower the number of United States murders drastically. This shows that if there are more executions that are known to the public then it will be clear that murder is never worth it. Again common sense would seem to show that dying because of the death penalty would be more of a deterrent than regular prison time. If a criminal is expecting to only be put in jail rather than being put to death he may be more likely to commit a horrible crime. Pojman also shows a quote from Judge Hyman Barshay which paraphrased was that the death penalty is like a lighthouse, we know about the shipwrecks but we don’t know how many ships were saved. We will never know how many people don’t commit murders because of the threat of the
I agree that the people who kill should be punished severely and depending on the case sometimes be put to death. I also agree that it is possible that the death penalty may deter people from killing because of their fear of death, but I don’t think it would deter as many people as Pojman may think it will. I am confident enough to believe that while someone is committing a cold-blooded crime like killing someone what is going through his or her head is not the possible consequence. They are usually acting out of passion or out of fear, not thinking about how this may put them in the electric chair. You can also look at the situation of criminals that get out of jail but when they get out they keep committing crimes because they are so into what they are doing they forget that they are going to be punished. That is the main argument against the idea of deterrence, along with the fact that here is absolutely no evidence in the states with the death penalty that there are fewer murders. Actually many states in the south have the death penalty and at the same time have higher murder rates than states in the northeast without the death