Should Capital Punishment Be Abolished
A compound word that sparks great controversy is capital punishment. Supporters of capital punishment believe that people who commit heinous crimes should be treated with the same disregard they had for the victim’s life and should not be allowed to live. Opponents argue that society and its members do not have the right or power to end another person’s life as a form of punishment. After decades of controversy, the question that remains is whether or not capital punishment should be abolished in all of the United States. Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, has been a controversial issue since the 1960s, but started with the hanging of a Virginia colonist in 1608 (Barta 1431-1432). ... In the 1960s people started questioning capital punishment as a legal measure to punish capital felons (Barta 1432). Opponents of capital punishment consider it a form of cruel and unusual punishment and argue that it is unconstitutional based on the Eighth Amendment. ... In addition to being cruel and immoral, opponents argue that the legal system practices selective punishment and that it contains flaws, which undoubtedly causes an innocent person to be convicted and eventually sentenced to death. ... The results of an error in a capital punishment trial can be tragic. The Death Penalty, a website that deals with the facts of capital punishment, stipulates that “once an inmate is executed nothing can be done to make amends if a mistake has been made.” Columbia University Law School found that two-thirds of all capital trials contained serious errors.