Death penalty is wrong.

she seems to have gone con saying the death penalty is wrong and I am the pro saying the death penalty is good. I believe that the name of the topic was misleading but that is besides the point. I will defend the death penalty as best as i can. 1)The death penalty does not condemn the innocent to die There is absolutely no proof for this statement. Before any person is executed in this country, twelve members of a carefully selected jury have to decide -- beyond a reasonable doubt -- that a defendant is guilty. The possibility of an innocent person being executed is extremely small, and continues to decrease with the improvement of forensic science. It is true that death row prisoners have been released, but it is not always true that they were innocent. Consider the following fact: A judgment of acquittal is final.Even if overwhelming evidence is later uncovered, the prosecution can never appeal. A retrial would constitute "double jeopardy" which is not permitted under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Likewise, if a conviction is reversed on appeal because the evidence of guilt was legally insufficient to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, then the defendant cannot be retried. Furthermore, if a court decides that the evidence brought against the defendant was legally insufficient, it is not saying that the defendant was actually innocent. By making this decision, the court is merely saying that the prosecution did not prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Dudley Sharp notes, "It is important to preserve the distinction between acquittal and innocence, which is regularly obfuscated in news media headlines." The media often overlooks this distinction, and thrives on causing widespread panic that an innocent person was falsely convicted. Being acquitted, however, does not mean that the defendant did not actually commit the crime. A jury must acquit "someone who is probably guilty but whose guilt is not established beyond a reasonable doubt." Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 225 (1976). 2)The death penalty is a crime deterrent The death penalty as a deterrent to crime is not the issue. Capital punishment is, pardon the redundancy, a punishment for crime. As a punishment, the death penalty is 100% effective--every time it is used, the prisoner dies. Additionally, the death penalty is actually 100% effective as a deterrent to crime: the murderer will never commit another crime once he has been executed. While there is no proof that any innocents have been executed in this century, there is an abundance of evidence that prisoners who either escaped or were released early murdered innocent victims again.Professor Paul Cassell points out that Out of a sample of 164 paroled Georgia murderers, eight committed subsequent murders within seven years of release. A study of twenty Oregon murderers released on parole in 1979 found that one (i.e., five percent) had committed a subsequent homicide within five years of release. Another study found that of 11,404 persons originally convicted of "willful homicide" and released during 1965 and 1974, 34 were returned to prison for commission of a subsequent criminal homicide during the first year alone. Even those who are not released but still serve life terms murder again. Cassell further notes that, "At least five federal prison officers have been killed since December 1982, and the inmates in at least three of the incidents were already serving life sentences for murder."Had these prisoners been executed, innocent lives would have been saved. The death penalty is, without question, a deterrent to murder. 3)The death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment. The framers of the Constitution supported the death penalty, and in fact constructed laws in order to carry it out, so it is ridiculous to claim that cruel and unusual punishment refers to the death penalty. Justice Antonin Scalia observed, The Fifth Amendment provides that ' no persons shall be held to answer for a capital...crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury...nor be deprived of life...without the due process of law.' This clearly permits the death penalty to be imposed, and establishes beyond doubt that the death penalty is not one of the 'cruel and unusual punishments' prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The American draftsmen were primarily concerned with proscribing "tortures" and other "barbarous" methods of punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court noted in Gregg v. Georgia that In the earliest cases raising Eighth Amendment claims, the Court focused on particular methods of execution to determine whether they were too cruel to pass constitutional muster. The constitutionality of the sentence of death itself was not at issue... (emphasis mine). The Senate Judiciary Committee once noted, murder does not simply differ in magnitude from extortion or burglary or property destruction offenses; it differs in kind. Its punishment ought to also differ in kind. It must acknowledge the inviolability and dignity of innocent human life. It must, in short, be proportionate. Furthermore, it is logically impossible to be cruel while punishing a guilty murderer for murdering an innocent victim. I have tried to argue here that the death penalty is moral and just. We must never forget that no one has to be executed; if no one murders, no one is executed. Murderers are not innocent people fighting for their lives; that statement describes their victims. Let us work in America to get back the mentality that victim rights are more important than criminal rights.