Looking out for the state of the public's satisfaction in the scheme of
capital sentencing does not constitute serving justice. Today's system of
capital punishment is frought with inequalities and injustices. The commonly
offered arguments for the death penalty are filled with holes. "It was a
deterrent. It removed killers. It was the ultimate punishment. It is
biblical. It satisfied the public's need for retribution. It relieved the
anguish of the victim's family."(Grisham 120) Realistically, imposing the
death penalty is expensive and time consuming. Retroactively, it has yet to
be proven as a deterrent. Morally, it is a continuation of the cycle of
violence and "...degrades all who are involved in its enforcement, as well as
its victim."(Stewart 1)
Perhaps the most frequent argument for capital punishment is that of
deterrence. The prevailing thought is that imposition of the death penalty
will act to dissuade other criminals from committing violent acts.
US gas chamber usage
Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of ...
An ad from the Ecologist Green Party in Mexico pro...Numerous
studies have been created attempting to prove this belief; however, "[a]ll
the evidence taken together makes it hard to be confident that capital
punishment deters more than long prison terms do."(Cavanagh 4) Going ever
farther, Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Montgomery based
Equal Justice Initiative, has stated that "...people are increasingly realizing
that the more we resort to killing as a legitimate response to our
frustration and anger with violence, the more violent our society becomes...We
could execute all three thousand people on death row, and most people would
not feel any safer tomorrow."(Frame 51) In addition, with the growing
humanitarianism of modern society, the number of inmates actually put to
death is substantially lower than 50 years ago. This decline creates a
situation in which the death penalty ceases to be a deterrent when the
populace begins to think that one can get away...