Criminal Justice - Capital Punishment Thesis

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However, even with the restriction of capital punishment to crimes involving murder, several issues still remain that contribute heavily to public opinion.

Specifically, the methods used for execution in several states are susceptible to errors capable of causing extreme and prolonged suffering too often. That is because lethal injection involves the administration of several different intravenous drugs in a precise order; mistakes in the sequence can cause the condemned person to suffocate slowly while paralyzed instead of dying nearly instantaneously after the heart is stopped, as intended (Kaveny, 2008).

Another basis for moral concern expressed by many people is that poverty and minority racial classification are both statistically linked to higher conviction rates and capital sentences than non-minority citizens with financial resources (Schmalleger, 2001). Furthermore, DNA-based forensic techniques are now being applied to evidence preserved after its use at criminal trial decades ago. In several highly publicized instances, convict have been released from death row or from life sentences after serving many years for crimes that they never committed.

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In some cases, had the state involved still had the death penalty on its books, individuals wrongfully sentenced to life imprisonment would have been executed (Friedman, 2005).

Conclusion:

The death penalty has been part of human culture throughout recorded history. At the dawn of the 21st century, the U.S. is now among the comparatively few modern nations that still sanctions capital punishment. In the minds of American people, there are serious ethical concerns about the manner in which it is implemented, over its disproportionate effect on the poor and on racial minorities, and especially over the issue of wrongful conviction and execution of innocent defendants. In other respects, capital punishment may have international implications relating to the way Americans are perceived worldwide, by virtue of maintaining a practice possibly viewed as barbaric in much of the rest of the world......

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