Capital Punishment Needs Abolished Essay - 1983 Words

Why Capital Punishment Should be Abolished Unlike popular belief, the death penalty does not act as a deterrent to criminals. As stated by Alfred Blumstein, quot;Expert after expert and study after study has shown the lack of correlation between the treat of the death penalty and the occurrence of violent crimes.quot; (Blumstein 68) Isaac Ehrlichs study on the limiting effects of capital punishment in America reveals this to the public. The study spans twenty-five years, from 1957 till 1982, and shows that in the first year the study was conducted, there were 8060 murders and 6 executions. However, in the last year of the study there were 22,520 murders committed and only 1 execution performed. (Blumstein 54) This clearly shows that†¦show more content†¦During this period, the prisoners flesh burns and the body shakes violently from the overdose of electricity. When it is all over, smoke is often seen coming from the head of the corpse. (Ernest Van den Haag 135) nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Officials often defend this punishment as not being cruel and unusual, but how can they defend the opinion in the case of John Evans who was executed by electrocution in 1983? According to witnesses at the scene of the death of Mr. Evans, he was given three charges of electricity over a period of fourteen minutes. After the first and second charges, Mr. Evans was still conscious and smoke was coming from all over his body, as a result from his flesh burning. An official at the prison even tries to stop the execution on account of it being cruel punishment, but the man was unsuccessful. Witnesses later called the whole incident quot;a barbaric ritualquot;. (Haag 221) nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Another method of execution is the gas chamber; during this procedure a prisoner is put in a closed chamber and forced to inhale lethal fumes from a sulfuric acid and a cyanide chemical reaction. (Haag 243) According to a statement given by the U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens concerning the 1992 execution of Donald Harding, there did not seem to be any civilized aspect of the gas chamber method of executingShow MoreRelatedAmerica s Debate On Capital Punishment760 Words   |  4 PagesAmerica’s Debate: Should the Capital Punishment be abolished in the United States? Violent crimes such a murder, rape, sexual assault, and robbery are perpetrated by criminals once every few minutes in this country. Lawmakers spend countless hours enacting laws to prevent these crimes. The introduction of the death penalty is an effort to deter criminals from committing heinous crimes. What exactly does the death penalty accomplish? The best description of the term death penalty is the legal executionRead MoreShould The Death Penalty Be Abolished?. The Death Penalty982 Words   |  4 PagesShould the death penalty be abolished? 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