The Death Penalty: The Atkins V. Virginia Case

Research Perspective: The Death penalty The death penalty in regards to our nation as well as our world is one of the biggest issues today because it plays god. The death penalty decides who can live and who dies. I got into this topic when I was reading about the Atkins v. Virginia case. Crimes and law has always fascinated me. The Atkins v. Virginia case was one of the biggest death penalty case in the past decade. This rose the question of, is the death penalty a good solution, do two wrongs make a right? The death penalty in the U.S should be used on rare cases. The death penalty in the U.S. may not be the best solution when dealing with criminals because there are times when we convict an innocent person. Innocent lives are at risk. We would be killing everyday people who haven’t committed a crime. “Since 1973, 151 people have been

We should make it only in rare cases and not sentence everybody we capture. “ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity.” Taking someone’s freedom is punishment enough because you have really giving them nothing else left. Sentencing them to death is the easy way out and makes us in the wrong for killing the criminal. These rare occasions would be if the criminal really has no empathy and a danger to himself and people in the prisons. An example of a rare case took place in the late 1800’s. Thomas Neill Cream hated women and poisoned them. He murdered multiple people and escaped prison once and killed again. Thomas did not have the right emotions, he would kill them all again and wouldn’t feel bad. The death penalty is and has been one of the biggest debates around the world. The united states are ranked 5th in the world for executions. Americans are stuck about 50/50 for being for the death penalty. I believe a good compromise is to only execute a human on rare occasions and to make sure you have strong evidence against the