Jonathan Rothschild
Capital Punishment essay
Inhumanity of Capital Punishment Capital punishment is not a humane way of making a suspect suffer as worse as the victim who got killed suffered that day. It might seem that the cost of keeping someone in jail might be more than the death penalty but according to deathpenalty.org, the cost of keeping someone in jail is only a fraction of the cost of the death penalty. In California, the state spends 184 million dollars a year on the death penalty and is on track to spend 1 billion dollars over the next 5 years. Also, the death penalty doesn’t prove that people are innocent before being proved guilty because innocent people have died years before evidence was found that they were really innocent. There have been many debates
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Having a bad lawyer can lead you to being found guilty and left to die. In some cases, a lawyer showed up under the influence of alcohol or showed up unprepared with little to none experience. This usually occurs when the suspect can’t afford a good lawyer with experience of the death penalty so they are assigned a lawyer that isn’t prepared for the job. Almost all defendants in capital punishment cases can’t afford their own attorneys. Since “almost two-thirds of the current population of juvenile offenders on death row are persons of color,” most of these suspects live under the poverty line and can’t afford a lawyer. Also the judges on death row are racially biased and during the 1980s, prosecutors in Georgia sought the death penalty for 70% of black defendants with white victims, but for only 15% of white defendants with black victims. While some people may say it’s a coincidence that more African Americans were guilty than white defendants were or that African Americans and Latinos are more prone to committing violence, people against capital punishment say that the judges are racially biased towards white people and therefore sentence African Americans more often
There are apparent arbitrariness and unpredictability in the outcomes of capital cases. The second flaw is unfairness. Extralegal factors such as race still play a significant role in determining which defendants are sentenced to die and which get to live. The research conducted focuses on those serious flaws and how capital jurors’ lack of instructional comprehension contributes to not only confused decision-making but also to racially discriminatory death sentencing. The authors also conducted a study that focused on the “White male dominance” effect on capital jury deliberations.
Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Criminal Justice Stevenson through his book has provided various examples that show that people of color and low-income individuals are more likely to be presumed fully prior to presenting their cases. The author has stated that executions are a good example of how norms and policies are used for the purposes of punishing and controlling the people of color For instance, he argues that one in three black people are expected to be sent to jail in their lifetime. Further on, eighty percent of people on death row are black while 65 percent of homicide victims are black.
The biggest disparity that was found was when a death penalty case involved a white victim and a black defendant. After reviewing the death penalty cases, there was an indication that “twenty-two percent of cases received the death penalty when a black defendant and white victim were involved….compared to only three percent when there was a black victim and white defendant involved.” The study broke this data down further and looked at the percentages of when a prosecutor seeks the death penalty. The study found that prosecutors sought the death penalty in “seventy percent of cases that involved white victims and black defendants and only nineteen percent when the roles were reversed.”
With the bar for execution being that the defendant needed to be shown to be a danger to society the testimony of the psychologist stating that a person 's race is a deciding factor in predicting future violent acts clearly brings the question of race into the supreme court. The appeal states “the latent association of African Americans with violence continues to distort perceptions of reality and result in racially biased assessments—and the risk of such bias is especially acute in death penalty proceedings. The Constitution, however, forbids racial stereotypes from affecting the administration of justice, expressly
It would make sense then that the criminal justice system is unfair to African Americans if the people creating it are biased against
African Americans face harsher circumstances in death row sentencing’s than any other race. In a study published in 2009 by Scott Phillips, a University of Denver sociology and criminology professor, conducted research between 1992 and 1999 in Harris County, Texas when an astonishing “504 defendants were indicted for capital murder” (O’Hare, 2010). At the end of his research, Phillips found that “convicted capital murderers were six times more likely to get a death sentence when they killed married whites or Hispanics with college degrees and no criminal record — as opposed to unmarried black or Asian victims with records and no college degrees” (2010). Phillip’s study proves that death row sentencing is bias as African Americans were more likely to be put on death row if their victim was of a higher social class than them. Florida’s death penalty sentencing in recent years has been extreme.
Throughout time the death penalty has not been administered equally, and the Innocence Project has been receiving a lot of attention for allowing information such as this to be surfaced. The Innocence Project has been created to help exonerate those that are seeking death row. The Innocence Project has created a statistic from their own findings as a result will be used to show what really happens behind the scene of death row through a lenses that most people would not hear. The Innocence Project receives about 8000+letters each year from .prisoners seeking help with their case. Race plays a big factor in the decision process during trials.
George Woodworth once examined the death penalty rates among all death eligible defendants in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania between the years of 1983 and 1993. The results of their study proved that the odds of receiving the death penalty in Philadelphia increased by 38% when the accused was black. (“Race and the Death Penalty | American Civil Liberties Union”) This shows that the justice system is biased and proves that a black person is more likely to receive a death punishment for committing the same crime as a white person. Another example of discrimination is when death penalties are given to those that are poor and grow up in underprivileged backgrounds.
It shows its head on every front of life. The death penalty process is not excluded. Racial and economic bias is a valid argument against capital punishment as well. Pretexts to discrimination are provides in this current case of Vernon Madison who is one of Alabama’s longest-serving death row inmates. Vernon was convicted in the April 1985 slaying
“The law may be color-blind as it is written, but not as it is enforced.” Racial bias in the death penalty can be traced back to Furman v. Georgia, where handing down the death penalty sentence, unfairly, constituted as a cruel and unusual punishment, violating the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The reinstatement of the death penalty with its new sentencing guidelines, implemented by the Supreme Court, was to ensure that the death penalty sentence was used in a constitutional way. Despite these guidelines, somehow, racial bias has found a way to thrive. It has been documented that an individual is more likely to receive the death penalty in a case where the victim is White than in cases where the victim is Black.
Annotated Bibliography Draft Student name : Haider Zafaryab Student number: 2360526 Thesis Statement : Capital Punishment is a very controversial topic around the globe. I believe that it does more harm than good and breeds violence in society. Source 1: Radelet, M. L., & Akers, R. L. (1996).
They frequently are wrongfully accused, also they serve longer sentences in prison. Though the United States has improved greatly in the past century on how we view race, there still is a massive issue with how the Criminal Justice System treats them. In Bryan Stevenson’s TED Talk , “Let's Talk About Injustice,” he talks about how the United State’s Criminal Justice System is different than justice systems in other parts of the world; the United States has one of the highest incarceration rates. Stevenson states that one out of nine people who face the death penalty are later proven innocent.
Madison Bushloper Ms. Thomas AP Seminar 10/29/2015 High Cost of the Death Penalty Many issues present themselves dealing with the economic impact of the death penalty, as its more popular execution methods can be pricey, the trials held involving sentencing a felon to death row can be expensive, and the fact that when trying to sentence a supposed criminal to death, the costs of investigating the matter can be quite high. The death penalty has been widely used in the United States by 34 states since its reinstatement in the year 1976. However, one must call into question its costly effects on the nation as a whole, with the negatives outweighing the positives in the administration of the death penalty.
Capital Punishment is the death penalty for those who commit murder. The thought behind this punishment is a life for a life. There has been debate on if the death penalty is right or wrong. Some poeple want the death penalty to be illegal while others argue it is needed to deter crime. There are many valid arguments regarding the death penalty.
Close your eyes, and imagine you’re at work. It’s 3:00 pm and you know your ten-year-old daughter is about to leave elementary school. The thought of anyone harming her rarely ever crosses your mind.