Capital Punishment should not be Used as a Punishment in the United States

Hobey ho, let's go! ________________________________________________________________________________ First off. I'll make some observations. 1. There are three justifications for societal punishments. a) Safety b) Deterence c) Justice 2. So, if a punishment doesn't provide for these three justifications, it's obvious it shouldn't be used. 3. I will show that capital punishment does not provide for these three justifications. 4. All evidence is gotten from a single artice, written by Katherine Van Wormer and Chuk Odiah, found at this website-- . http://arapaho.nsuok.edu...(great%20article).pdf [Note: You will have to type in the last part of the adress due to the presence of parenthesis] 4. I reserve the right to clarify in later rounds. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Definition- (Dictionary. com) Capital Punishment- punishment by death for a crime; death penalty [Note: Throughout my first round, I will be providing definitions for pertinent words] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contention 1: Safety a) According to Van Wormer, "Violence breeds violence, a fact borne out of crime statistics. The average homicide rate in the twelve states prohibiting the death penalty, for example, is considerably lower than the average homicide rate in the thirty-eight states where execution is legal. The effect is interactive. A high crime rate leads to a cry for execution and execution itself may promote further violence. " b) What this piece of evidence says is that capital punishment leads to more violence. Is this safe for society? I think not. The fact that it causes more deaths shows that it is not safe for society to use, and therefore should not be used for this justification. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Analysis--- Suicide Murder-- *Psychology- According to a study by The Journal of Criminal Justice, written by Katherine Van Wormer and Chuk Odiah, suicide murder basically means that certain psychologically unstable people want to kill themselves, but do not have the courage to put a gun in their mouth or swallow pills. So, they get someone else to do this. The someone else in the article is the state government, in the form of capital punishment. These people want to die so badly that they kill in order to get the maximum punishment. Based on this analysis I will begin with my 2nd contention. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contention 2: Deterrence a) To deter, according to dictionary. com, is to discourage or restrain from acting or proceeding. So, when attempting to deter a crime, it should restrain citizens from commiting this crime. But, according to suicide murder theory, this is not true. b) According to Van Wormer, "Sometimes a person will kill, whether conciously or unconsiously, so that he or she may be killed in a final act of retribution by the state. A former director of a state department of corrections referred to this phenomenon when he wrote, 'I know of a number of murder victims who would still be alive if the death penalty had not been in effect. '" --This proves without a doubt that suicide-murder is real, and that it might not even be a concious effort to reach the final punishment of death. This means that not only is there no deterrence, but it also strengthens contention one. c) Case Studies-- (On the website, it goes into much further detail of the chilling actions of these murderers) i) Sherril Harston- "Here was a man so bent on death, apparently, that he had killed a young mother and her child, thereby conciously or unconciously moving himself toward a fate he believed was his. When Harston was given a life-sentence instead, he fired his attorney and filed for an appeal for a new trial. Once in prison, he threatened to kill again. " --Harston even wrote a song about his unconcious effort to be killed by electricution. (On website) ii) Gary Gilmore- ". .. a prime example of one who plotted his own dramatic end. After being paroled from Marion Federal Penitentiary, Gilmore seemed strangely driven to go to Utah where execution by firing squad, rather than his home in Oregon, then a non-death penalty jurisdiction. He fought his attorney for the right to be killed, and through extensive public attention managed to be immortalized in death as he could not in life. " --Gilmore moved to another state in order to die. He was willing to do anything in order to have the state kill him. iii)There are 22 examples of this on the website provided. I do not have the time nor patience to write them, but the two examples I have provided ought to be enough to prove my point. The death penalty is not a good form of deterrence. In fact, it causes the action it is supposed to protect from. Point made. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Contention 3: Justice a) Justice, defined by Aristotle, is giving each his due. I have some questions for my opponent. Are the victims of these crimes caused by the death penalty getting their due? Do these criminals get their due by getting the punishment they want? Is it really a punishment when the criminal wants it? No. There is not justice in the death penalty. Therefore, there is no reason for capital punishment in the United States. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conclusion: Capital punishment infringes on the justifications of a punishment. All of them. There is no way to excuse the allowance of death of innocents. I encourage anyone voting to go to the website provided and read the case studies provided. In fact, I encourage you to read the entire article. It is a great read. So, should capital punishment be used as a punishment in the United States? No. Thanks.