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Argumentative Essay: Capital Punishment In The United States

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Capital punishment has been used in the US since before its independence from England, however, in 1972, capital punishment was suspended because in the Furman v. Georgia case, the Supreme Court found that the death penalty was being imposed in an unconstitutional manner (“United”). This ruling never governed that the death penalty was unconstitutional, so in 1976, it was re-instituted into the United States as a result of Gregg v. Georgia. Worldwide, 22-36 countries actively practice capital punishment, ~103 countries have abolished it, and no other western countries, expect the US, still use it (“Capital”). In the Amnesty International report of death sentences and executions, China’s executions have stopped being counted as, not only …show more content…

Since 1976, African American executions account for 41.66% of all executions and white people account for 42.73% (“Executions”). Similarly, persons executed for interracial murders since 1976 shows staggering evidence that race plays a huge role in whether or not a defendant will be sentenced to death row. In fact, in 1990 the United States General Accounting Office, Death Penalty Sentence said, “In 82% of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, ie, those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks” (“Executions”). According to the statistics found at deathpenaltyinfo.org, since 1976, only 31 white people who murdered an African American person were sentenced to death but 295 African Americans who murdered a white person were given capital punishment (“Executions”). Another example of this blatant racism is the state of Colorado. In Colorado’s history, only three people have ever been put on death row; however, these three people are all African American and do not include the offenders of two of Colorado’s most well-known, heinous crimes (“International Perspective”). For example, Nathan Dunlap has been on death row since 1996 when, three years earlier, he shot and killed four employees, critically injuring a fifth, at a Chuck E. Cheese he

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