The two other liberals Justices Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were undoubtedly sympathetic. A large majority of liberal Democrats (82%) and a smaller, though still substantial, majority of conservative and moderate Democrats (70%) say the death penalty does not deter serious crimes. Or are you universally opposed to capital punishment? Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. 9 min. Opponents counter that it is an immoral and costly practice that is particularly vulnerable to racial bias. Gillespie, Nick. 1. What Are the Pros of Abolishing the Death Penalty? Emotional outburst disrupts death penalty trial in NY attack The sobbing father of a man convicted of killing eight people on a New York City bike path has apologized to victims and professed love for his son in the death penalty phase of the defendant's trial Feb. 22, 2023, 6:08 PM ET (AP) GOP Oklahoma lawmakers join call for death penalty pause Pros and Cons of Abolishing the Death Penalty, The death penalty should be abolished because it violates the Eighth Amendment's protection against ". Or is capital punishment cruel and unusual and therefore prohibited by the Constitution? The article is very straightforward with little to no emotional appeal. Exoneration occurs when a person's conviction is overturned. Why its a good source: This article gives a lot of good statistics and links about public perception of the death sentence and how it has changed over time. There are substantial demographic differences in views of whether death sentencing is applied fairly across racial groups. Justice Ginsburg, who died in September, had joined the dissent. Despite this surge in federal executions in 2020, state executions reached their lowest number that year since 1991. Sentencing a person to death for the rape or murder of an innocent person affirms the value of the life of the victim, and should bring more comfort to the victim's family. The article goes on to explain that Justice Stephen G. Breyer issued a dissent on Friday as the Supreme Court cleared the way for the last execution of the Trump era, complaining that it had not sufficiently resolved legal questions that inmates had asked. What its about: This article discusses the history of the death penalty from hanging to the electric chair to lethal injection. The federal government lifted its capital punishment moratorium in 1988, though it did not carry out another execution until 2001. Most states authorized a system of allowing the jury to decide the guilty party's punishment, though some allowed judges to make the decision or retain the right to overrule the jury. One year after the announcement federal executions resumed, and ten prisoners were executed by the federal government in the last six months of 2020. In your opinion, should pharmaceutical companies have the right to refuse to sell drugs for executions? Capital punishment has been a part of American society since before the constitution, however in todays' climate it has become a much more contentious topic. As inhumane and morbid as it may sound, the death penalty is something that should remain in the United States. Do you have worries about the fair application of the death penalty, or about the possibility of the criminal justice system executing an innocent person? (+1) 202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries. Moral arguments. The dissenting opinion argued that the defendant had, in fact, sufficiently demonstrated that the use of lethal injection in this case met the standards for an Eighth Amendment challenge previously established by the court itself. Steiker, Jordan. 14 Jan. 2015. Majorities of White (63%), Asian (63%) and Hispanic adults (56%) favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder. Death Penalty Repeal: Its Necessary to Use Capital Punishment in a Free World. Mic. By the 1800s, federal law not only permitted capital punishment but required it in cases involving certain crimes. What role do you think disability or trauma history should play in how someone is punished, or rehabilitated, after committing a crime? Since 1978, California has spent more than $4 billion administering the death penalty, or more than $308 million per person for each of the 13 people who have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated. Most of the country did not use the death penalty, he said, and the United States was an international outlier in embracing it. The death penalty remains a controversial political and legal issue in the United States. For example, Black people are overrepresented on death row, and a recent study found that defendants convicted of killing white victims were executed at a rate 17 times greater than those convicted of killing Black victims. Does this information change or reinforce your opinion of capital punishment? It eliminates sympathetic reactions to someone charged with a capital crime. It concludes by stating that the execution of criminals is a deterrent for murderers and ultimately saves innocent lives. Republicans ages 18 to 34 are less likely than other Republicans to say they favor the death penalty. Capital Punishment refers to the practice where a person is killed by a State as a punishment for a crime. Improperly trained defense lawyers, racial discrimination by juries, judges that dont follow protocol, and rushed post-conviction procedures are all cited as reasons for so many executions. Other states sought to carry out their scheduled executions using experimental combinations of drugs. If you've looked for capital punishment essay topics, you're in luck! That cautious step, taken to ensure undoubted compliance with court orders, is irreconcilable with the suggestion that the department rushed the execution or disregarded any law. A similar ruling was handed down by the court in Moore v. Texas (2017), which stated that the standards used to determine intellectual disability in Texas created an "unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disabilities will be executed.". Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. This requirement that justice be served is not weakened by charges that only the black and the poor receive the death penalty. People with four-year college degrees (68%) also are more likely than those who have not completed college (50%) to say that Black people and White people are treated differently when it comes to the death penalty. Seven state executions took place in 2020, the lowest annual number of the twenty-first century. While public support for the death penalty has changed only modestly in recent years, support for the death penalty declined substantially between the late 1990s and the 2010s. The answer was unequivocal: He would stay as long as it took. Pro death penalty persuasive speech. Web. The authors find that the rhetoric around abolition in these regions has been framed differently over time, with more recent arguments focusing on the relationship between wrongful convictions and executions. California, Texas and Florida hold nearly half of the country's death row prisoners, according to a new Bureau of Justice Statistics report. High quality drugs with speedy delivery. The cost of capital punishment is extraordinary. However, he backs up his emotional statements with statistics and links to studies that indicate that the death penalty is costly, doesnt necessarily deter murders, and is imposed on people who are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. Sophisticated studies at the state level show that the death penalty costs taxpayers more than life without parole. But as a legal issue, it is straightforward. "The Death Penalty is Cheaper Than Feeding a Murderer for Life" According to the Death Penalty Information Center, independent studies in several states, including Oklahoma, reveal that capital punishment is actually far more expensive to administer than life imprisonment. In Death Penaltys Steady Decline, Some Experts See a Societal Shift. The New York Times. Until July, there had been no federal executions in 17 years. Is it ever justified, such as for the most heinous crimes? As John Duncan was dying of cancer in 2018, he asked family members to promise they would witness the execution on his behalf. Just over six-in-ten Republicans in this age group (64%) say this, compared with about eight-in-ten Republicans ages 35 and older. Among Republicans who oppose the death penalty, about half (53%) say this. CORRECTION (July 13, 2021): The following sentence was updated to reflect the correct timespan: Last year, in part because of the coronavirus outbreak, fewer people were executed than in any year in nearly three decades. The changes did not affect the reports substantive findings. Crimes punishable by death are called capital offenses. Furthermore, a 2009 survey of criminologists revealed that "over 88% believed the death penalty was not a deterrent to murder.". Addressing the Counterarguments. The death penalty ensures that the individual involved will no longer be able to create havoc for the general population because they are no longer around. Capital punishment enables the state to assert its authority over the people and serve in its role as the administrator of justice. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Over four ATP surveys conducted since September 2019, there have been relatively modest shifts in these views from a low of 60% seen in the most recent survey to a high of 65% seen in September 2019 and August 2020. "Save taxpayers money" and "they deserve it" tie as the second-most-popular reasons Americans volunteer in this open-ended measure, at 14% each. The Economist Newspaper Limited, 26 Apr. Among Republicans and Republican leaners who favor the death penalty, 94% say it is morally justified; 86% of Democrats and Democratic leaners who favor the death penalty also say this. Just 25% of those who oppose the death penalty say it is morally justified. Among other factors, scholars determined that the races of both the victim and the defendant often influenced sentencing. Only three people in the United States have been executed by hanging since 1965, and only four people have faced a firing squad since 1960. Under what conditions, if any, do you think a court should sentence a person to death? Jacoby then goes on to give evidence of studies correlating lower homicide rates in states with the death penalty. Choose your death penalty articles from a variety of sources. For federal offenses, the government uses the methods of execution authorized by the state in which the court imposes the punishment. Like earlier appeals in defense of the men's lives, this argument proved ineffective. Web. John Duncan the father of the victim Lori Duncan and grandfather of her slain daughters, Kandace (age 10) and Amber (age 6) had urged Mr. Honkens execution for years. The New York Times Company, 19 Dec. 2013. On July 14, Daniel Lewis Lee was executed for the 1996 murder of a family, including an 8-year-old girl, by suffocating and drowning them in the Illinois Bayou after robbing them to fund a white-supremacist organization. If you use the citation in your paper, dont forget to update the access date (in this case 14 Jan. 2015) to the date you accessed the site. Since our nation's founding, the government -- colonial, federal, and state -- has punished a varying percentage of arbitrarily-selected murders with the ultimate sanction: death. What its about: This article is not directly for or against the death penalty in general; it instead points out the situations that lead to the high number of death penalty sentences and executions in Texas. He said that death row exonerations were frequent, that death sentences were imposed arbitrarily and that the capital justice system was marred by racial discrimination. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/learning/should-the-death-penalty-be-abolished.html, free digital access to The New York Times, Expedited Spree of Executions Faced Little Supreme Court Scrutiny, barring the execution of juvenile offenders, people convicted of crimes other than murder, The Death Penalty Can Ensure Justice Is Being Done,, free daily writing prompts for remote learning. Abolishing the death penalty is the only way to prevent bias in its application and ensure that no person is executed by the government erroneously or unconstitutionally. Instead of serving a lifelong custodial sentence, the criminal will wait on 'death row', eventually being executed. Those who oppose the death penalty, will ALWAYS state that the death penalty is given to more blacks, which in return makes it racially biased and unfair to the black community. Mr. Rosen is the deputy attorney general. Those who favor the death penalty consistently express more favorable attitudes regarding specific aspects of the death penalty than those who oppose it. 108 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while 144 countries have abolished it in law or practice. The DPIC Death Penalty Census Published: Jul 20, 2022 In the July 2022 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham and 2021 - 2022 DPIC Data Fellow Aimee Breaux discuss the making of DPIC 's groundbreaking Death Penalty Census database and Discussions With DPIC In the years since the McCleskey ruling, opponents of capital punishment have continued to voice concerns about the role of racial bias in death penalty sentencing. The 2001 execution of Timothy McVeigh, convicted for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, marked the first federal execution carried out since 1963, with Juan Raul Garza executed eight days later. More than 14,000 people have been legally executed since colonial times, most of them in the early 20th Century. For decades, the death penalty has been decreasing around the world, but it hasn't disappeared yet. In the face of an extraordinary run of federal executions over the past six months, they have been left to wonder whether the court is prepared to play any role in capital cases beyond hastening executions. Opponents of the death penalty have also focused their arguments on the mental capacity of those found guilty of capital offenses. A third faction also exists that is indecisive and therefore . This relationship holds among members of each party. Students, read the entire article, then tell us: Do you support the use of capital punishment? The death penalty is permanent, meaning if someone is wrongfully convicted, the effects are irreversible. The court's ruling is believed to have made proving racial discrimination more difficult. That process creates peace for the victims, their families, and society in general. Giving the death penalty as a punishment simply restores order to society and adequately punishes the criminal for his wrongdoing. (Retribution) 3.05: 1.28: 2.88: 1.31: 0.78 The death penalty is a more effective deterrent than life imprisonment. Toobin, Jeffrey. And Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who held the decisive vote in many closely divided cases until his retirement in 2018, had written the majority opinions in several 5-to-4 decisions that imposed limits on the death penalty, including ones barring the execution of juvenile offenders and people convicted of crimes other than murder. In Expedited Spree of Executions Faced Little Supreme Court Scrutiny, Adam Liptak writes about the recent federal executions: In 2015, a few months before he died, Justice Antonin Scalia said he would not be surprised if the Supreme Court did away with the death penalty. It also goes into some detail about the numbers of death penalty sentences and executions lowering in Texas and California, where historically they have been very high. In a pro death penalty article, the author . 14 Jan. 2015. Republicans are consistently more likely than Democrats to favor the death penalty, though there are divisions within each party by age as well as by race and ethnicity. Only 30% of death penalty supporters and just 6% of opponents say adequate safeguards exist to prevent innocent people from being executed. Correctional Facilities Directory By State. It also provides links to a study from the University of Colorado and a paper from Emory University to help back up these claims as well. Scheidegger is a California lawyer who is a staunch pro-death penalty supporter. The rulings followed the appointment of five members of the conservative Federalist Society to the court in under a year. Yet support for the death penalty is strongly associated with a belief that when someone commits murder, the death penalty is morally justified. The death penalty articles Ive listed below focus less about whether the death penalty is right or wrong, and more about the problems with the current system. Among those with postgraduate degrees, a larger share say they oppose (55%) than favor (44%) the death penalty. Find all of our Student Opinion questions in this column. Have an idea for a Student Opinion question? Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), the Court invalidated existing death penalty laws because they constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The Federal Death Penalty Act prohibits the government from executing an inmate who is mentally disabled; however, in the recent executions of Corey Johnson, Alfred Bourgeois and Lisa Montgomery, their defense teams, families and others argued that they had intellectual disabilities. Critics accused Arkansas officials of carrying out executions in an "assembly line" fashion, and drug companies also objected to the state's use of a pharmaceutical formulation in lethal injections. However, death penalty supporters decried the ban, arguing that judges should be able to decide if the death penalty is warranted based on the circumstances of each case. McCleskey's attorneys argued that his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated because his race made it statistically more likely that he would receive the death penalty. Why its a good source: This article also gives important points to work from, similar to the previous article, and it works to detract from the arguments of death penalty supporters. These decisions allowed the reinstatement of state death penalty laws. It also gives in-depth information about the lethal injection drug shortage and statistics on the publics views on the death sentence. A grand jury determined in 2016 that state officials had committed a long list of oversights and avoidable mistakes in carrying out executions. Also, check with your teacher to see if you should be using a different type of citation style in your paper (such as APA or Chicago). When researching a topic for an argumentative essay, accuracy is important, which means the quality of your sources is important. As of March 2021, the death penalty had been abolished in twenty-three US states and the District of Columbia. Want to Read. 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