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The Death Penalty

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The Death Penalty
The Death Penalty: It is Never Justified A young man has been charged with the brutal murder of a seventeen year old girl after raping and mutilating her body. This crime was so heinous and unthinkable that the only punishment that seems to fit the crime is capital punishment; there is merely one problem—the man convicted is innocent. The public is so caught up in bringing justice to the murdered girl that through capital punishment more injustice is brought into the world and the life of another innocent being is taken. There is no going back and undoing the mistake. There is no undoing in the matter of death. The accidental murder of an innocent person through the death penalty is just one way in which the death penalty is a completely unethical, flawed, and unjustified form of punishment. Problems associated with the death penalty such as it being inhumane, discriminatory, and an unfair form of punishment, are reasons that capital punishment is never the answer to aggravated murder [claim]. The death penalty is extremely inhumane. Three common techniques used to perform the sentence include the electric chair, gas chambers, and lethal injection. Supporters of the death penalty argue that modern science has eliminated the factor of pain by lethal injection [rebuttal], but how can this truly be proved? The scientific journal the Nature Publishing Group [backing] reported that almost half the prisoners are still conscious although paralyzed during the lethal injection as the drug stops the heart. The NPG then goes on to state, “If suitably qualified individuals refuse to help prepare a new protocol, the state will face the prospect of continuing to use amateurs to kill people with arbitrary and outmoded technology” (“Amateur” 2) [evidence]. Dying is a painful thing. The punishment of death is already extreme, but the fact that the prisoner is being put down with chemicals that aren’t even provided by physicians or scientists is cruel and lacks any compassion.


Cited: "Amateur Night." Nature 441.7089 (2006): 2. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Apr. 2012. Bruck, David. "The Death Penalty." The New Republic 20 May 1985. Print.Phillips, Scott. "Criminology: Legal Disparities In The Capital Of Capital Punishment." Journal Of Criminal Law & Criminology 99.3 (2009): 717-755. Academic Search Premier. Web. 10 Apr. 2012. Koch, Edward I. "Death and Justice: How Capital Punishment Affirms Life." The New Republic 15 Apr. 1985. Print. Stephen, Andrew. "A Stay Of Execution?." New Statesman 136.4872 (2007): 32-33. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Apr. 2012.
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