Death Penalty In The United States

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DEATH PENALTY Capital Punishment is defined as the legal infliction of the death penalty. Today, in modern law, the death penalty is corporal punishment in its most severe form. It ends the existence of those punished, instead of temporarily imprisoning them. Although capital punishment is not intended to inflict physical pain, execution is the only corporal punishment still applied to adults. The usual alternative to the death penalty is life-long imprisonment. The earliest historical records contain written evidence of capital punishment. Applied from ancient times in most societies, it has been used as punishment for crimes ranging from petty theft to murder. The bible called for more than thirty different crimes. The death penalty…show more content…
First, females are rarely sentenced to death and executed, even though women committed 20 percent of all murders that have occurred in recent years. Second, a disproportionate number of nonwhites are sentenced to death and executed. A black man who kills a white person is 11 times more likely to receive the death penalty than a white man who kills a black person is. In Texas 1991, blacks made up 12 percent of the population, but 48 percent of the prison population and 55.5 percent of those on death row are black. Before the 1970's then the death penalty for rape was still used in many states, no white men were guilty of raping nonwhite women, whereas most black offenders found guilty of raping a white woman were executed. This data can show how the death penalty can discriminate and can be used on certain races rather than equally as punishment for severe crimes. And third, poor and friendless defendants, those who are inexperienced or of court-appointed counsel are most likely, are most likely to be sentenced to death and executed. Defenders of the death penalty, however argue that, because nothing found in the laws of capital punishment causes sexist, racist, or class bias in its use, these kinds of discrimination are not a sufficient reason for abolishing the death penalty on the idea that it discriminates or violates the 8th amendment of the United States Constitution. Opponents of capital punishment have replied to this by saying that the death penalty is subject to miscarriage of justice and that it would be impossible to administer

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