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Jack Greenburg On The Death Penalty

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Death to the Death Penalty The Death penalty has been in practice since the ancient times. In the Code of Hammurabi, twenty-five different crimes are punishable by death. In society today, the debate of whether this archaic tradition should continue is a controversial topic. In the 1980’s Jack Greenburg, an American lawyer and legal scholar, discussed the idea capital punishment in, “Against the American System of Capital Punishment.” Greenburg poses ideas that question the idea of deterrence for the death penalty. Conversely, Ernest Van den Haag, a sociologist, defends the punishment in his article, “the Ultimate Punishment: A Defense.” He debates the seemingly “cruel and unconstitutional” perspective on the death penalty are false, because …show more content…

The theory is that the murders who meditate their crime will be deterred due to the effective system of capital punishment. Greenburg begins with the notion of how the deterrence theory initially presents the failings of the American Justice system. As he deciphers a killers mind, Greenburg reaches the conclusion of murder: those who made the decision to take a life, are disturbed to some level. Murder is a rash choice. Those who kill to a degree have impulsively made that choice. “But most killers do not engage in anything like a cost-benefit analysis. They are impulsive, and they kill impulsively. If capital punishment is to deter them, it can do so only indirectly: by impression on potential killers a standard of right and wrong, a moral authority, and influence on their superegos that, notwithstanding mental disorder, would inhibit homicide,” (Greenburg). This deterrence theory assumes killers have considered every option and been discouraged by their possible execution. However, in the event there was a deterred murder; it is impossible to discover. A murder that has not occurred is not a statistic. To the theory there is a layer of retribution. This layer reprimands the supportive nature of deterrence. If retribution were a strong theory more executions would occur; consequently, deterrence would finally be a strong case for the death penalty. Ergo, if a killer were to engage in “cost benefit-analysis,” the miniscule chance of them receiving the death penalty is not enough to prevent a would-be killer. The death penalty is too ineffective to become an adequate

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The death penalty on the other hand would have been effective if the overall public minded to consider it a system for ending criminal acts. While a monstrous number would ensure the nonattendance of the death penalty in their real system, the wrongdoing rate continues going higher for countries that still practice the death penalty. Regardless, there is lacking accurate data to exhibit that death penalty has been convincing similarly as maintaining a strategic distance from criminal acts. It infers

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Nathanson continues to argue against capital punishment by arguing not only against the equal punishment principle but also the proportional retributivism view. While Nathanson believes proportional retributivism plays an important role our determination of appropriate punishment for criminals, it does not, however, apply nor aide arguments in favor of the death

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He suggests that other social policies also lead to the death of innocent individuals, but they are not banned. The author presents deductive arguments to support his position, including the idea that murderers who are not executed have the potential to harm more innocent people. He believes that opponents of capital punishment should acknowledge their responsibility for innocent lives lost due to murderers who were not executed. Prager concludes that capital punishment is necessary to protect innocent lives. Opponents should confront their responsibility for every innocent already murdered and yet to be murdered by murderers who should have been

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In “Death Penalty Debates,” Kenneth Jost, author of the Supreme Court Yearbook talks about the issues of capital punishment. Jost went in depth about the opinions of people that are against the death penalty and the thoughts of people that supports the system. Opponents of the death penalty says that prosecutors are pursuing the death penalty less often as it gets very expensive to sentence and convict a person. In addition, jurors are worried about the risk of executing an innocent individual. However, supporters of the death penalty system stated that the costs are the outcome of death penalty lawyers that deliberately delay procedures.

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In his essay, "The Death Penalty," David Bruck hypothesizes that the American people will eventually find that the death penalty is not the best way to punish a convicted murderer. Bruck develops this hypothesis by countering all pro-death penalty arguments with previous cases and specific statistics that apply to the argument. David Bruck's purpose is to persuade the readers to think for themselves on the topic and use what they know as a basis. Bruck uses an educated tone to establish credibility with the reader. He takes apart the views of the local mayor in an attempt to prove anyone wrong who might disagree.

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This source of important information gives readers both sides of the debate on capital punishment. This article discusses the enhancement of the brutality of punishing unforgettable crime committers. This article also discusses the side views of allowing the death penalty to be inflicted on people who haven't committed the real crime, therefore, being framed. I hope to use this source as evidence for both sides of the argument surrounding justice for capital punishment.

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In recent years, anti-death penalty propagandists have succeeded in stoking the fear that capital punishment is being carelessly meted out. Ironically, Of the 875 prisoners executed in the United States in modern times, not one has been retroactively proved innocent. The benefits of a legal system in which judges and juries have the option of sentencing the cruelest or coldest murderers to death far outweigh the potential risk of executing an innocent person. First and foremost, the death penalty makes it possible for justice to be done to those who commit the worst of all crimes. The execution of a murderer sends a powerful moral message: that the innocent life he took was so precious, and the crime he committed so horrific, that he forfeits

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The death penalty as the book calls it, is a “socialization process” where individuals grow up learning the consequences and remain inherently good, rather than, having to weigh the pros and cons of a situation. Statistics show that there is no measurable correlation between murder and the death penalty. Statistics can always be skewed In that other factors

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This article discusses individual cases and crimes and gives analysis of the arguments made against death penalty in real world. Firstly it discusses the deterrence argument while going through a number of cases. The conclusion is that it has no effect on reducing homicides but ironically it breeds violence as in some cases offenders committed a capital crime in a territory where execution still prevails while they could have easily avoided it. Second thing discussed is the cost, the research in article shows that it costs significantly more money to put a convict to death than to incarcerate him for life in a prison. Moreover it is shown that in many cases criminals are executed while there are reasonable doubts in their convictions and some have avoided execution by just a few hours before being exonerated.

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25). Using national and state data to create a judicial experiment, Dezhbakhsh and Shepherd managed to prove that capital punishment lowers murder rates by giving evidence that discounted other outside sources that may affect crime rates. The Supreme Court made a moratorium in 1972 that outlawed the death penalty. In their article published in the Economic Inquiry in 2006, the authors compare the before and after data on murder and execution rates that were affected by the moratorium. Dezhbakhsh and Shepherd found, “We can identify three distinct periods in Figure 1: (1) the early 1960s with high (but falling) executions and falling murder rates, (2) 1964 to the mid- to late 1970s with very few executions and rapidly rising murder rates, and (3) 1990 to 2000 with soaring executions and sharply declining murder rates” (par. 25).

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Professor Roger Hood proposes four main objections to the use of capital punishment: (1) Capital punishment violates the fundamental right to life; (2) capital punishment is not a unique deterrent; (3) the administration of the death penalty, even in developed legal systems, is inherently and irredeemably flawed; and (4) its effect is counter-productive in that it gives out very confused moral messages. (Hodgkinson and Schabas, 2009,

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Jayda Colley Assignment 2 Criminological Theory Dr. Ruth Triplett 2-3-23 “Deterrence Theory” According to deterrence theory, rather than being driven by a strong moral sense, people refrain from committing crimes because of fear of being detected. The deterrence theory hypothesis claims that rapid, certain, and severe punishment is the most effective way to deter criminal behavior. According to the deterrence theory of punishment, the imposition of criminal punishment is ethically acceptable since it works to discourage crime.

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Defenders of the death penalty argue that people should pay for the crimes they have committed. If someone kills an innocent person, the murderer should be killed as punishment. If society voted to abolish the death penalty, one could argue that society is favoring criminals and not letting justice continue its course. Even though this relevant argument has several facts that can be supported by wide-ranging research, reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), prove this dispute wrong. The reports reveal shocking information, states with the death penalty in place, have higher murder rates than states that do not have capital punishment (Death Penalty Information Center).

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“Assume that all murderers would instantly die upon murdering. Murderers would then kill only if they wished to die themselves. Murder/suicide is an extremely small component of all murders. Therefore, if a swift and sure death penalty was universally applied to our worst criminals, it is logically conclusive that the death penalty would be a significant deterrent and that many innocent lives would be saved. In fact, swift and sure executions do result in deterrence”(Sharp).

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In the case of the death penalty, it has the added bonus in guaranteeing that the person would not offend again. Supporters of harsh punishments argue that the would-be criminal would consider the costs versus the benefits of committing a crime. If the costs outweigh the benefits, then it is assumed that he would stop what he is doing, effectively ‘deterred’. Furthermore, the usage of harsh punishments to effectively deter crime is ethically justified as it prevents more people from falling victim to crime. However it is extremely difficult to judge a punishment’s effectiveness based on its deterrence effect, consequently we must consider other variables that would entail a person to commit a crime.

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