Capital Punishment is Wrong
Igdirov Vepa
ESL 100D/E
For: Professor, Teddy Chocos
Assignment No.13
Academic Paper# 3
12/15/2013
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Government is an organization that helps to protect a nation, state or community.
Therefore, Every country has a system or organization that what we call in another word
“Government”. According to the Edward Kearny who wrote “ The American Ways “ on
the article “ Government and Polities in The United States “, he tells that US government
is divided into three separate branches: legislative, executive and judicial. The concept of
separation is whole power divided into three independent branches which in order to
balance the power of government. Each branch is theoretically equal to each of the
others. The branches check each other’s powers and use a system known as checks and
balances. Thus, no branch can gain too much power and influence, thus reducing the
opportunity for tyrannical government. If any of the three branches starts abuse its power,
the other to may join together to stop it. These three branches are a very powerful to
make laws, revise laws, change laws and fix laws; however, society can go against the
laws by made from these three branches and make it more liberal. For instance, one of the
very controversial laws is Capital Punishment, which become a state law. The majority of
the states support the Death Penalty; however, the rest of the people against death penalty
by giving many reasons and facts that death penalty is immoral, cost more money (the
expenses of death penalty) and innocent people on death row.
Capital punishment is a controversial subject with passionate debate from on
both sides, thus it is very balanced with people who are against and who are very
supportive. In the USA Capital punishment is a state law, so each state has their own
decision whether Death penalty should be legal or not. There are thirty-two states which
support death penalty, and nineteen against it including Washington DC. However, The
government is constantly talking about how to make the world better and how to make
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America a more civilized, but then he kills his own people. The death penalty is a form of
hypocrisy. We can conclude that murder is wrong, but the government's decision to
murder is an attraction in its own slaughter. This aspect of the death penalty is barbaric.
Lets take as a first example that no one disserves to be executed or immoral. It’s
one of the first arguments between both sides of the death penalty. According to the
religious people and also people who support death penalty says “ eye for an eye, and
tooth for a tooth. “ This is the phrase that they use to support their side, but the phrase
isn’t very meaningful and helpful to people to use in their argument. For instance, first of
all, if we use “ eye for an eye “ as our evidence, which come from years of century ago,
people will be blind, secondly, who is the one responsible to take an eye of murderers
murderer? This phrase shows that is going to be very continuously and makes people
blind. There is another idea comes from religious people but hided under the “ eye for an
eye “ phrase which is God is the one who can take soul because he is the given.
Moreover, death penalty shows and gives massages to the people that human
being has no values and it’s ok to execute them. The death penalty violates the right to
life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the United
Nations General Assembly in 1948).
There is another argument between both sides of death penalty that one side
people who support death penalty consider that life in a prison cost more expenses than
Capital punishment. However, Richard Williams who wrote “ The Cost of Punishment...”
article gives many facts that the Death Penalty is more expensive than life in prison. He
uses New Jersey as his evidence about expenses of death penalty. He states “ New Jersey
abolished its death penalty in 2007 in large part because the state had spent $254 million
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over 21 years administrating it without executing a single person.” The fact of R.
Williams is one of the basic keys to stop the death penalty, but people still argue about
giving lots taxes to the prisoners. Moreover, R. Williams shows on his article that many
states that support death penalty agree that Capital punishment is significantly more
expensive than housing prisoners for life without parole. He also shows one of the
amazing comparison facts about expenses both life in prison and capital punishment. In
2011 he researched how much money California spent for death penalty “ California has
spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment since 1978, executing 13 criminals.
That’s about $184 million more a year than life sentences would have cost.” More
importantly, putting murderers into prison instead giving them death penalty is more
mentally and financially helpful to the society. Let me now explain how is mentally
helpful to the people. For example, if a person kills another person, and you letting him
or her die bye capital punishment, you’ll murder too, and will think about entire your life
either you have done better job or worse.
Finally, Some believe it is necessary to execute certain prisoners to prevent them
from repeating their crimes. However, capital punishment doesn’t help to people stop
doing crimes or it’s not a massage for murderers. For instance, ancient years ago in
England crime executed by publicly, and they even executed pick puckers. In that
specific time other pick puckers were robbing people during the execution the pick
puckers. This may be a valid argument, but there is always a risk that someone innocent
will be executed. The death penalty will not prevent a person from repeating a crime he
or she did not commit in the first place. On the contrary, one study found that the death
penalty causes juries to acquit murderers due to the fear of making a mistake that would
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result in an innocent person being executed. Since 1973, more than 123 people on death
row have been freed after they were proved innocent with evidence. The poor and the
unlucky always suffer from the hands of law, it is quite natural that sometimes even the
innocent are wrongly accused and convicted. Often cops or lawyers plant evidence to
accuse an innocent, in order to get promotions and medals. They make false arrests and
take the entire situation in a totally different direction.
In addition, however, most of us people who support death penalty forget about
innocent people dying on the capital punishment by wrong DNA. There is a documentary
story about women who got raped by Afro-American man, and not killed. She worked
and studied hard with police officers to find that man who raped him. Finally, they found
one man who looked like a man who raped her. However, by wrong DNA and similar
face image, the innocent man was in the prison 10 years until the real man who did crime
find by the police officers. Hopefully, they did not put him on death penalty. There are a
lot of innocent people dyeing by the capital punishment.
In conclusion, Capital punishment is might be one of the hardest topic and very
contrast between both sides; however, government can find better way to stop killing
innocent people and people who did capital crimes because by killing murders doesn’t
help to stop doing crimes. Instead it shows more violence to the society and it also shows
that human being has no values to stop execution. In addition capital punishment doesn’t
help to people who lost their loved ones to return back, but mentally it hurts them
because most of them feel that they were taken someone’s live by putting murderers on
the death penalty.
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References:
Banner, Stuart. "The death penalty's strange career." The Wilson Quarterly 26.2
(2002): 70+. Academic OneFile. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.
Goldberg, Jonah. "Why Death-Penalty Opponents Can't Win." Rpt. in The Death
Penalty. Ed. Jenny Cromie and Lynn M. Zott. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013.
Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.
Kearny, Mary Ann., Edward Kearny, and Jo Ann. Crandall. The American Ways.
Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 1998. Print. Government and Polities in the United
States.
Williams, Richard. "The cost of punishment: the expense of the death penalty has
lawmakers reconsidering an old debate." State Legislatures 37.7 (2011): 55+. Academic
OneFile. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.
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