Death Penalty
The death penalty, otherwise known as capital punishment is one of the most controversial issues in our society. ... The following is a representation of pro-death penalty arguments researched and analyzed, with the anti-death penalty arguments refuted as well. ... Capital punishment, the penalty of death for the most heinous of crimes, has been implemented by societies for thousands of years. ... Good reasoning and recent evidence show much support for the death penalty. ... The constitutionality of the death penalty is of high importance. The death penalty is constitutionally sound. Many advocates against the death penalty interpret the 8th Amendment, prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishments”, as a provision that would not allow the death penalty. ... It is argued that a convicted murderer on death row suffers excess suffering and, therefore, his treatment is considered cruel, according to lex talionis (the rule of retaliation). ... In The Ultimate Punishment: A Defense, an essay confronting the death penalty issue written by Ernest van den Haag, he writes: Others insist that a person sentenced to death suffers more than his victim has suffered, that is this (excess) suffering is undue according to the lex talionis (rule of retaliation). We cannot know whether the murderer on death row suffers more than his victim suffered; however, unlike the murderer, the victim deserved none of the suffering inflicted. ... Clearly, the death penalty is not unconstitutional on the grounds of the 8th Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishments” clause. ... The constitutionality of the punishment itself is not affected, only the process through which the penalty was carried out. Anti-death penalty advocates continue on to say that uneven distribution of the death penalty is unconstitutional according the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause. Misdistribution of the death penalty among the guilty and the innocent is unjust, but this injustice does not lie in the nature of the punishment. ... If an uneven distribution occurs among those who do not deserve the death penalty because of race, sexual orientation, or gender it is the process that is at fault and not the punishment. ... “The fact that a murderer who gets the death penalty could point to a murderer who didn’t, doesn’t make him any less guilty,” (Haag 259). ... Innocent lives may have been lost to erroneous convictions leading to the death penalty but, as Stephen Markman said in his essay, Innocent People Have Not Been Executed, “through a combination of deterrence, incapacitation, and the imposition of just punishment, the death penalty serves to protect a vastly greater number of innocent lives” (Markman 84).