The Death Penalty Essay -- Capital Punishment Essays

The Death Penalty The Death Penalty seems to haunt the US mindset. While more countries are dropping the procedure as cruel the US still holds on. Eighty percent of Americans are still for the Death Penalty, citing revenge as the main reason, which is why families are allowed to watch the execution . Organizations like Amnesty International condemn the US regularly, as well as most Democratic nations. What I want to address is why the dialogue is ineffective. The proponents of the Death Penalty make arguments aimed at people's deepest emotional fears. They develop an idea of revenge within people's minds by suggesting the death of family members and create sympathy for families' victims. On the other hand groups like Amnesty International argue the effectiveness of the Death Penalty as a deterrent. They show the inherent racism of a mostly white system convicting mostly minorities to the Death Penalty. And they attempt to demonstrate the cruelty of sentencing someone to death. It's causing sympathy for the murder victims that cause people who oppose the death penalty to blunder. Where proponents are able to garner sympathy by putting someone in the situation of a family member, opponents are unable to cause people to identify with a murderer. It is because we have no words to express their pain properly, that death penalty proponents fail to make stir sympathy, they have no way of expressing what it feels like to know the time of your death ahead of time, how it feels to be electrocuted, hung, shot, or poisoned. "Why not lock up criminals for life if the death penalty is not a deterrent?" pro-Death Penalty advocates ask. Because putting a person in jail for life doesn't put an end to their murdering. While... ...ames. http://law.about.com/newsissues/law/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.cpa.ca/cjbs/1996/ful%5Fogloff.html Morrison, John. http://www.mit-tech.edu/V113/N53/issue/ Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Thinking (Vol. 1). Harcourt Brace: NY: 1978 (182). Jacoby, Jeff. http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/Jacoby.htm Feder, Don. http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/don01102001.htm Bradbury, Michael. http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/affirmation.htm Bradbury, Michael. http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/affirmation.htm http://excalib1.aspensys.com/scripts/cqcgi.exe/@abstracts.env?CQ_SESSION_KEY=TYGAPHZBVPFW&CQ_TPT_FULL_RECORD=YES&CQDOC_ID=185634&CQDOC_NUM=2&CQBLOCKSTART=1&CQPAGE_NUMBER=1&CQBLOCK_INCREMENT=50 Murdock, Deroy. http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/murdock.htm http://roswell.fortunecity.com/blavatsky/123/polit.html