Capital Punishment :: Argumentative Persuasive Death Penalty Essays

Capital Punishment Capital punishment is defined in the Encarta Encyclopedia as the legal infliction of the death penalty. The death penalty is currently used as punishment for crimes of murder. The State of Florida supports capital punishment and carries it out by electric chair execution. According to The Death Row Fact Sheet published by the Florida Department of Corrections, 44 people have been executed since 1976 and another 372 inmates are currently on death row in Florida. †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Thesis†¦. Deterrence defined as†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. By the Encarta Encyclopedia. Under this concept, the individual committing the crime and society are prevented from committing this action again. In the case of the death penalty, an individual kills another human and he is "punished" for it by death. Punishment is supposed to be a temporary penalization for a wrongful action. Death is far from temporary. One is to learn from one’s mistakes. How can the person learn if they are paying for their mistake with their life? In George Anderson’s article, "Organizing Against the Death Penalty" he states, "The death penalty is our harshest punishment. It is irrevocable: it ends the existence of those punished, instead of temporarily imprisoning them." (13). By imposing the death penalty the individual does not learn from their mistakes and neither does society. Moreover, there are no reliable methods to measure the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent of future crimes. Peo ple who commit capital murders generally do not engage in probability analysis concerning the likelihood of getting the death penalty in they are caught (Freedman 48). In Louisiana, for example, during the summer of 1978, eight people were executed. During that same period the murder rate in New Orleans rose 16.9%, the highest in years (Cohen 29). Most of the costs of the death penalty are incurred before and during the trial, not in the appeals process after convicted. A 1982 New York study estimated the death penalty cost conservatively at three times that of life imprisonment, the ratio that Texas (with a system that is on the brink of collapse due to under-funding) has experienced (Freedman 49). As Anderson points out, "†¦the monetary cost of appealing a capital sentence is excessive." (14). Further, "†¦actual monetary costs are trumped by the importance of doing justice." (Anderson 14). Additionally there are specific costs associated with keeping an inmate on death row, (i.