Analysis Of Zachary Shemtob's Executions Should Be Televised

Imagine, your children are flipping through the channels and they come to find a prisoner being displayed ready to be executed. They have just witnessed a person's life being taken away. Zachary Shemtob teaches Criminal Justice at Central Connecticut State University; David Lat is a former federal prosecutor. Together, they worked on an essay and published it in the New York Times in 2011. The essay is an analysis of whether, "Executions Should be Televised." Shemtob and Lat strongly agree that executions in the United States ought to be made public. Also, they argued that reading about an execution and watching an execution has a big difference. Also, public executions declare a message to the audience. I disagree with Zachary Shemtob and

Being numbed to violence can be very dangerous as many children will find violence a normal thing to do. In this case, it will make killing seem normal. According to Douglas A. Berman, a law professor, "[I] fear that people might come to equate human executions with putting pets to sleep" (63). Rather than fearing death or execution, killing will feel like blinking your eyes or breathing in air. I fully agree with Berman as bringing visibility to executions will have people from all ages view the death penalty. As a new generation of innocent children turn on the television, and accidently flip to a random channel to find someone put to death, they may be feared for a while. Eventually, they watch it countless amount of times until it becomes regular to them. What

"There is a dramatic difference between reading or hearing of such an event and observing it through image and sound" (Shemtob and Lat 62). There is no reason for us to care about criminal's privacy as they have committed an immoral act. If the criminal is truly guilty, they should lose their rights to privacy and shouldn’t be protected by the government. Also, they believe once capital punishment has been spread throughout the media, people see that crime has real consequences and generations of people may be less likely to participate in criminal activity. Making it viewable for everyone will greatly cut down on numbers of violent crimes, which will eventually create a world with no crime and execution free. According to Richer C. Dieter, an Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, DC, executions in public gave an impactful message to the society. "Hangings were a public warning, intended to impress the local community with the consequences of crime" (798). I totally disagree with these statements as everyone's privacy should be protected and the warning towards the public only adds unnecessary fears. Every people in the states have the rights to have their privacy protected and need to gain the individual's explicit consent before releasing information about the criminals. Most importantly we need to