Capital Punishment helP!!!!?

Question

Can you please give me your veiws on how capital punishment is racially and ethnically biased. Can you please also give me your "con" views on capital punishment. Just give men anything. I am doing a debate on capital punishment and I am on the con side. Can anyone please help? That would be nice. [I'm not asking anyone to do my work for me, I'm just looking at everyone's perspectives to get a braoder view on what people think about capital punishment, and to also get a broader view of capital punisment itself.] So if anyone can help, please do!!!!

Answer 1

Here are some facts about the death penalty. All are sourced and verifiable-

Re: Possibility of executing an innocent person
Over 120 people on death rows have been released with evidence of their innocence. Many had already served over 2 decades on death row. If we speed up the process we are bound to execute an innocent person. Once someone is executed the case is closed. If we execute an innocent person we are not likely to find that out and, also, the real criminal is still out there.

Re: DNA
DNA is available in no more than 10% of murder cases. It is not a miracle cure for sentencing innocent people to death. It’s human nature to make mistakes.

Re: Appeals
Our appeals system is designed to make sure that the trial was in accord with constitutional standards, not to second guess whether the defendant was actually innocent. It is very difficult to get evidence of innocence introduced before an appeals court.

Re: Deterrence
The death penalty isn’t a deterrent. Murder rates are actually higher in states with the death penalty than in states without it. Moreover, people who kill or commit other serious crimes do not think they will be caught (if they think at all.) Note: epaq27 is using unreliable statistics- please look at the FBI source (in source list)

Re: cost
The death penalty costs far more than life in prison. The huge extra costs start to mount up even before the trial.

Re: Alternatives
48 states have life without parole on the books. It means what it says, is swift and sure and is rarely appealed. Being locked in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, forever, is certainly no picnic.

Re: Who gets the death penalty
The death penalty isn’t reserved for the “worst of the worst,” but rather for defendants with the worst lawyers. When is the last time a wealthy person was sentenced to death, let alone executed??

Re: Race and the death penalty
The death penalty is twice as likely to be sought in murder cases where the victim was white than where the victim was not white.
(That is, the race of the victim matters.)

Re: Victims families
The death penalty is very hard on victims’ families. They must relive their ordeal in the courts and the media. Life without parole is sure, swift and rarely appealed. Some victims families who support the death penalty in principal prefer life without parole because of how the death penalty affects families like theirs.

Opposing the death penalty doesn’t mean you condone brutal crimes or excuse people who commit them. According to a Gallup Poll, in 2006, 47% of all Americans prefer capital punishment while 48% prefer life without parole. Americans are learning the facts and making up their minds using common sense, not revenge.

Answer 2

lets first ask our selves a simple question, of how does the justice system work? why is it that if a man has money to hire a good attorney will not be executed, but, the man who does not have at least $100.000 in his pocket will face the death sentence?
statistics show that the poor is always the ones who pay with their lives, how is that Justice? lets consider the 47 men in Illinois were convicted and sent to death row, a reporter got interested and did his investigation, then he called in the F.B.I,. WHERE THEY PROVED 35 OF THESE MEN WERE NOT GUILTY, and that the prosecutor lied the cops had lied and the prosecutor knew some of these men were not guilty, the gov, of the state said no more executions in his state as long as he was gov, he lost the last election, and the prosecutor is now the states Attorney General, no charges have ever been filed against the prosecutor or any cop,
what about the Rampart scandal in Los Angles, wher thousands of people went to prison or death because the cops were committing crimes and placing the evidence on others.
after a F,B,I, investigation they found al of this out yet no cop has been indicted or even charged, now California has thousands of cases that have got to be retried,
so how can anyone justify taking some ones life when it is evident things of this nature happens pretty damned often,
so if you were on a jury and voted for the death penalty for a man he was executed, would youfeel like youhad murdered someone?
and is the state not just as guilty of murder as the man they just killed , including the jury , judge, prosecutor and any lieing witnesses,

Answer 3

With a yearly average of 15,000 murders, the fact that we are reaching 1,000 executions in only a little more than 30 years is proof that capital punishment has been reserved for the worst of the worst.

The most striking protection of innocent life has been seen in Texas, which executes more murderers than any other state. According to JFA (Justice for All), the Texas murder rate in 1991 was 15.3 per 100,000. By 1999, it had fallen to 6.1 -- a drop of 60 percent. Within Texas, the most aggressive death penalty prosecutions are in Harris County (the Houston area). Since the resumption of executions in 1982, the annual number of Harris County murders has plummeted from 701 to 241 -- a 72 percent decrease.

Abolitionists will claim that most studies show that the death penalty has no effect on the murder rate at all. But that's only because those studies have been focused on inconsistent executions. Capital punishment, like all other applications, must be used consistently in order to be effective. However, the death penalty hasn't been used consistently in the USA for decades, so abolitionists have been able to establish the delusion that it doesn't deter at all to rationalize their fallacious arguments. But the evidence shows that whenever capital punishment is applied consistently or against a small murder rate it has always been followed by a decrease in murder. I have yet to see an example on how the death penalty has failed to reduce the murder rate under those conditions.
So capital punishment is very capable of deterring murder if we allow it to , but our legal system is so slow and inefficient, criminals are able to stay several steps ahead of us and gain leeway through our lenience. Several reforms must be made in our justice system so the death penalty can cause a positive effect.

Answer 4

As we all saw with the OJ trial the US justice system is far from perfect and mistakes are made all the time including capital punishment cases only with those cases if the justice system makes a mistake an innocent person dies and there are no do overs for that which is why something as absolute as the death penality should not be used in an imperfect (only human) US justice system.

Answer 5

I thought Allah loved everybody, my mistake. Good luck waiting for the 70 virgins, you dork.

Support for the death penalty varies widely. Both in abolitionist and retentionist democracies, the government's stance often has wide public support and receives little attention by politicians or the media. In some abolitionist countries, the majority of the public supports or has supported the death penalty. Abolition was often adopted due to political change, such as when countries shifted from authoritarianism to democracy, or when it became an entry condition for the European Union. The United States is a notable exception: some states have had bans on capital punishment for decades (the earliest is Michigan, where it was abolished in 1846), while others actively use it today. The death penalty there remains a contentious issue which is hotly debated. Elsewhere, however, it is rare for the death penalty to be abolished due to an active public discussion of its merits.


Public execution in IranIn abolitionist countries, debate is sometimes revived by particularly brutal murders as a knee-jerk reaction, though few countries have brought it back after abolition. However a spike in serious, violent crimes, such as murders or terrorist attacks, have prompted some countries (such as Sri Lanka and Jamaica) to effectively end the moratorium on the death penalty. In retentionist countries, the debate is sometimes revived when miscarriage of justice occurs, though this tends to cause legislative efforts to improve the judicial process rather than to abolish the death penalty.

A Gallup International poll from 2000 found that "Worldwide support was expressed in favour of the death penalty, with just more than half (52%) indicating that they were in favour of this form of punishment." A break down of the numbers of support versus opposition: Worldwide 52%/39%, North America 66%/27%, Asia 63%/21%, Central and Eastern Europe 60%/29%, Africa 54%/43%, Latin America 37%/55%, Western Europe 34%/60%.[citation needed]

In the U.S., surveys have long shown a majority in favor of capital punishment. An ABC News survey in July 2006 found 65 percent in favor of capital punishment, consistent with other polling since 2000.[3] About half the American public says the death penalty isn't imposed frequently enough and 60 percent believe it is applied fairly, according to a Gallup poll in May 2006.[2] Yet surveys also show the public is more divided when asked to choose between the death penalty and life without parole, or when dealing with juvenile offenders.[3][4] Roughly six in 10 tell Gallup they don't believe capital punishment deters murder and majorities believe at least one innocent person has been executed in the past five years.[5] [6]

A recent poll on Aljazeera's website found that 52.7% were in favour of the death penalty being banned, 39.3% against it being banned and 8% undecided

Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is often the subject of controversy. Opponents of the death penalty argue that life imprisonment is an effective substitute, that capital punishment may lead to irreversible miscarriages of justice, or that it violates the criminal's right to life. Supporters believe that the penalty is justified (at least for murderers) by the principle of retribution, that life imprisonment is not an equally effective deterrent, and that the death penalty affirms the right to life by punishing those who violate it in the most strict form. Some arguments revolve around empirical data, such as whether the death penalty is a more effective deterrent than life imprisonment, while others employ moral judgements.

Answer 6

how about INNOCENT life lost, in the death penalty a few years afterwards they find out the person was actually innocent and not guilty, too late then. (risk of dna testing being wrong)

Answer 7

the death penalty is just retro-active abortion . bush is for one and against the other . a paradox of ideology don't you think ?