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Death Penalty Criminal Justice 1010 Ashley Fernandez

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The death penalty isnt supposed or shouldnt be taken lightly. A person life is on the line. Not only is the person being wrongfully punished in my opinion but the family is being too. Youre not only deliberately hurting the person but youre hurting everyone around them as well. Society strongly has a high interest in preventing murder according to the website http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/arguments/argument1a.htm which brings no surprise to me. What rubs me the wrong way is that in preventing murder they need to have the death penalty hanging in front of the accused faces. Society believes having the death penalty discourages criminals in murdering a person and they believe that sense this is the highest interest in preventing murder that death penalty should then be the strongest punishment available to deter murder and that potential murders will think twice before killing. A real dangerous murder wouldnt blink an eye to this, they will simply do whatever they want to do what they please. This interest in preventing murder by letting society know that murdering can lead to yourself being killed is only hitting the minds of people who more fantasize it than actually doing the actual murder. In other words I believe that people who murder are sick and honestly dont know what theyre doing and need rehab rather than dying because that would be the easy way out. They say that criminologists are reporting that this reduces murders, but what kind of murders is the question. Anyone can say Oh I really want to kill that person, and not mean a word of it but the ones that actually do go through with it, I believe, has a mental problem and once again arent going blink an eye knowing that there is a death penalty. When reading along in this subject I came across the website called http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/node/8 in which I couldnt agree with more. In this persons opinion they are stating that The death penalty is not a deterrent because most people who commit murders either do not expect to be caught or do not carefully weigh the differences between a possible execution and life in prison before they act. Frequently, murders are committed in moments of passion or anger, or by criminals who are substance abusers and acted impulsively. As someone who presided over many of Texas's executions, former Texas

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Attorney General Jim Mattox has remarked, "It is my own experience that those executed in Texas were not deterred by the existence of the death penalty law. I think in most cases you'll find that the murder was committed under severe drug and alcohol abuse. After reading that I couldnt help but nod my head in agreement. This was exactly what I was trying to state above but couldnt get my words in order. Everyone goes on about how the death penalty is an eye for eye sort of thing. I think its just another word for revenge. I believe that its human nature to want to have that eye for an eye, especially after having a lost one past on such a horrible event. Instead of having the first impulse to demand pain on someone we should use mature standards in dealing with the matter. Killing someone is just extends the chain of violence. Allowing executions to do this is a form of pay-back. Using an execution to try to right the wrong of their loss is only going to cause them more pain in the long run. According to http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/arguments/argument2b.htm The

notion of an eye for an eye, or a life for a life, is a simplistic one which our society has never endorsed. We do not allow torturing the torturer, or raping the rapist. Taking the life of a murderer is a similarly disproportionate punishment, especially in light of the fact that the U.S. executes only a small percentage of those convicted of murder, and these defendants are typically not the worst offenders but merely the ones with the fewest resources to defend themselves. In another note people who do support it say that its justice and that it is bringing closure to the crime. People in favor of this go on to say that if the person is still living whether that be in a prison cell say its always going to bring up the crime knowing that this person is still breathing and living and that theyre going to continue to live in anger and sadn ess. A quote from the website http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/arguments/argument2a.htm says, For justice to prevail, some killers just need to die.

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We all know that killing an innocent person is wrong but as we know it still happens. Not only does it happen in society but it happens in the government as well. Looking through the internet I found many cases where people were convicted wrong and got the death penalty. When reading up on this I found this website called http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/The_Innocent_and_the_Death_Penalty.php and when going through the site its said to be that, Eighteen people have been proven innocent and exonerated by DNA testing in the United States after serving time on death row. They were convicted in 11 states and served a combined 229 years in prison including 202 years on death row for crimes they didnt commit. I find this to be very disturbing and upsetting that this happens in our country. Its easy to say that this should have never happened but we also got to think about how we didnt have near the technology we do now back centuries ago. I would think that it would be harder to commit someone to death row when there innocent because of the amazing technology we have now but because we are human mistakes are made and the sad mistakes do happen from time to time. I found an interesting CNN Heading on the CNN website http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/justice/exonerated-prisoner-update-michael-morton/, Innocent man: How inmate Michael Morton lost 25 years of his life. This article talks about how a father and a mother of a 3-year-old child is celebrating a birthday and celebrating the childs life after surgery from a heart defect. Michael Morton, the wrongly convicted from a crime held on August 12, 1986. His wife was attacked and killed at their home in Texas. Michael was at work at the time of the killing but the authorities still suspected him. He told them that he had nothing to do with the killing but believed nothing he had to say and was put on trial.

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The prosecutor was speaking to the jury in a very emotional matter saying that Morton was upset that his wife refused to have sex with him on his birthday. But because there was no other suspect the jury convicted him this leading to Morton spending 25 years in prison. A few years ago a group of attorneys were working on the behalf of Morton and got the bandana tested for DNA that was used in the killing. The bandana was found nearby the home. After the DNA testing a man named Mark Norwood came up to light and finally it was a sure thing that Morton didnt kill his wife but that Norwood had killed her. Morton was freed on October 2011, he was now 57 years old. Many people say that one of the only reasons we have the death penalty is because its cheaper that way. They couldnt be more wrong! Its actually more expensive to kill someone that to hold them life in prison. When reading the website http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42 it was saying that because the death penalty is much more expensive than life without the parole because the constitution requires a long and complex judicial process for capital cases. The process is needed in order to ensure that innocent men and woman are not executed for crimes they did not commit, and even with these protections the risk of executing an innocent person cannot be completely eliminated. According to this website, If the death penalty was replaced with a sentence of Life Without the Possibility of Parole*, which costs millions less and also ensures that the public is protected while eliminating the risk of an irreversible mistake, the money saved could be spent on programs that actually improve the communities in which we live. The millions of dollars in savings could be spent on: education, roads, police officers and public safety programs, afterschool programs, drug and alcohol treatment, child abuse prevention programs, mental health

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services, and services for crime victims and their families. California could save $1 billion over five years by replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment. Cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment means having someone boiled or burned at the stake are cruel unusual punishments. According to the website called http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/cruelunusual.html In Frances v Resweber, the Court considers whether a state can put a condemned man on an electric chair a second time, after sending a non-lethal bolt of electricity through him in its first attempt. By a 5 to 4 vote, the Court in Frances permits the second execution, with the majority concluding that the "cruelty" of the punishment at issue should not be measured by what happened in the past or the mental anguish the prisoner might feel as he awaits his second date with the chair. The four dissenters, however, contended that the sequence of events was relevant, and that no one would doubt but that a punishment that consisted of two jolts of electricity weeks apart would be cruel. The most recent case is a case called Roper V Simmons which was in 2005. The website says, The court considered whether it was cruel and unusual punishment to execute a prisoner for a crime he committed when he was a minor. In previous decisions, the Court had found it unconstitutional to execute persons who were less than 16 at the time of their crime, but had upheld executions of those 16 and 17 at the time of their crimes. (The Court had also, in 2002, held it to be a violation of the Eighth Amendment to execute mentally retarded persons.) Voting 5 to 4, the Court in Roper cited recent evidence to conclude that the execution of persons who were minors at the time of their crimes now violated "evolving standards of decency" and, hence, the Eighth Amendment. Doing this paper I learned a lot about the death penalty. Some people believe its the right

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thing to have and some people, such as myself believe its the wrong thing to have, I guess it just depends on how you look at it. I believe that the concept an eye for an eye isnt going to solve anything or put anything to rest. I strongly recommend the government to not have the death penalty anymore in any of the existing states that still have this because we could be saving money like billions of dollars, also that people need to learn that having the death penalty isnt cheaper like they believe it is. I hope after reading this it sheds some more light about how people think of the death penalty and what as a whole what society has done with the death penalty.

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Resources 1. http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/arguments/argument1a.htm 2. http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/node/8 3. http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/arguments/argument2b.htm 4. http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/arguments/argument2a.htm 5. http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/The_Innocent_and_the_Death_Penalty. php 6. http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/justice/exonerated-prisoner-update-michaelmorton/, 7. http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42 8. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/cruelunusual.html