death penalty

With that, I will get into it. Now, as this is a discussion of expanding the death penalty, most of the harms I'm going to cite will be focused on harms of the death penalty as a whole, though I have some points that apply solely to this case. 1) It completely defies one of the most important reasons why we have a criminal justice system: rehabilitation. It used to be important. "Until the mid-1970s, rehabilitation was a key part of U. S. prison policy. Prisoners were encouraged to develop occupational skills and to resolve psychological problems--such as substance abuse or aggression--that might interfere with their reintegration into society. Indeed, many inmates received court sentences that mandated treatment for such problems. "[1] But not anymore. Now, the justice system is encouraged to focus on the punitive aspects. Great, how's that working out? "As a result, the United States now has more than 2 million people in prisons or jails--the equivalent of one in every 142 U. S. residents--and another four to five million people on probation or parole. A higher percentage of the population is involved in the criminal justice system in the United States than in any other developed country. "Many inmates have serious mental illnesses. Starting in the late 1950s and 1960s, new psychotropic drugs and the community health movement dramatically reduced the number of people in state mental hospitals. But in the 1980s, many of the mentally ill who had left mental institutions in the previous two decades began entering the criminal justice system. Today, somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of people in prison are mentally ill, according to U. S. Department of Justice estimates. "[1] Great. So we're going to take this punitive system and make it even more punitive. Remember, that system has produced more criminals, a higher amount of resurgence of criminal activity from those who are on parole, and major mental issues. Not only does this suffice as a measure of cruel and unusual punishment, but it exacerbates criminal harms rather than reducing them. 2) The innocent will have no chance at redemption. I think this is self-evident, but if someone who is convicted of a given crime is killed shortly thereafter, there is no opportunity for that verdict to be overturned. The average number of years between sentencing and exoneration is roughly 10 years, and new technologies have played a substantial role in this, with DNA evidence being used to establish the innocence of many. [2] As technology advances, we are likely to discover more methods to determine the relative guilt or innocence of an individual. Wrongful executions do happen, and since 1973, 143 such individuals have been documented in the U. S. From 2000-2007, an average of 5 exonerations have occurred every year. Now, someone might ask, why should we care more about these people? It's because we as a nation have long since decided that this is all important. We have the presumption of innocence in this country, "innocent until proven guilty," for a good reason. It's in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it follows from the 5th, 6th, and 14th amendments. What's more, it has been supported by two Supreme Court cases: Coffin v. United States and In re Winship. [2] 3) Cruel and unusual punishment. This is relatively straightforward as well. There are multiple concerns here. On a very basic level, most of the execution methods are currently allowable in the U. S. While many of them are out of style, electrocution, the use of a firing squad, hanging, and lethal gas remain legal in several states. Since these states will have more people on death row, they will also be more likely to engage in these practices. For each of these, death is not at all certain, while pain and injury are more likely. Each is a form of excruciating torture that may require multiple tries to be effective. As for lethal injection, the most commonly used form of the death penalty, there's a lot of uncertainty here as well. It's not actually painless, resulting instead in a form of anesthesia awareness where the victim is forced to consciously endure a terrible death while completely paralyzed. They will endure suffocation due to the paralytic effects of pancuronium bromide and the intense burning effects of potassium chloride. [3] 4) Unfair, unjust system. Among the factors involved in determining a person's likelihood to receive the death penalty, one of the most important is their representation. Almost all of the people on trial for these crimes cannot afford their own attorney, and the ones they get appointed to them are overworked, underpaid, or lacking in experience. [4] One in four condemned inmates has been represented by court-appointed attorneys who have been disciplined for professional misconduct. [5] Stories of these attorneys arriving drunk or sleeping through parts of the trial, or even sabotaging a case, regularly surface. [6] Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it best: "People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty. .. I have yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay application in which the defendant was well represented at trial. "[7] 5) Justice vs. vengeance. The death penalty is nothing but a system of institutionalized vengeance. It utilizes emotional impulse to decide the appropriate punishment, essentially doling out the pain of the victims' family as though it were justice. It is not. The notion of an eye for an eye, or a life for a life, is a simplistic one which our society should not endorse. We do not torture rape victims. We do not chop of the hands of thieves. It benefits us not at all to utilize the death penalty to punish those we deem as harmful to society. And remember, not everyone on who gets life imprisonment gets there because of some violent crime, so this isn't even all retributive. People who receive that sentence due to the three-strikes law or treason won't get any special treatment here. They'll receive the same vengeance. 6) Court clog and cost. This is, perhaps, the most important part of my argument. Why are people put on death row vs. life imprisonment? In a lot of cases, it's left up to whether or not they confess. They do this specifically to avoid receiving a death sentence. Not one of these people is going to confess to their crimes. If they are guaranteed to receive the death penalty no matter their choice, they will decide to fight it in court for as long as possible. This is a big problem, and the reason why is the same reason why the death penalty costs so much - appeals. The death penalty is much more expensive than life in prison because of a combination of trial costs and appeals. The cost of the death penalty in California alone amounts to some $4 billion since 1978 because of these, and ending it would result in "immediate savings of $170 million per year, with a savings of $5 billion over the next 20 years. "[8] Courts will have to cover these cases, at the expense of time spent on other crimes and important issues. But that's chump change compared to the other major cost. The families will have to endure this elongated procedure. They will often have to appear and reappear in court. The mental trauma will be stretched out for years. 1. . http://www.apa.org... 2. . http://www.deathpenalty.org... 3. . http://www.bbc.co.uk... 4. . https://www.aclu.org... 5. . http://www.texasappleseed.net... 6. . http://www.nytimes.com... 7. . http://www.deathpenalty.org... 8. . http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...