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The legal infliction of death for the purpose of retribution has been associated and interwoven into the human existence since the earliest of times. ... ” However, the status quo at the time envisioned death as not a “cruel or unusual punishment.” As a result, the death penalty fell under two jurisdictions of our government: the federal and the state. ... ”
As of late, in the provision added by Congress as part of the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill, it became the jurisdiction of the federal government to moderate crimes which not only include offenses such as treason and espionage, but also involving murder of children, court officers or jurors, federal judges, law enforcement officials, members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, the President or Vice President, murder within a foreign country, terrorism, genocide, smuggling of or death related to aliens and the like (46 Henderson). ... According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), today, there are thirty-seven states that incorporate the death penalty in their state law and twelve that do not. ... For a few hundred and some odd years, this state held that the death penalty be administered to those who committed first degree murder in conjunction with one of twelve aggravated factors. However, on June 24, 2004 the death penalty in New York was ruled unconstitutional amid the case of People V. ... The Court of Appeals concluded that the death sentence of Stephen LaValle was imposed on the jurors although they did not feel he deserved it; instead they felt that it was necessary because they feared that the LaValle might someday be released, resulting in a deadlock which suspended the death penalty in this state.
The suspension of the death penalty in New York State has been recently brought up into questioning. ... Pataki introduced a new bill which would fix the section of the states capital punishment law that resulted in the suspension of the death penalty in the first place:
“Specifically, the court found that the statute improperly required judges to tell jurors in capital cases that if they deadlocked and failed to reach a verdict during the penalty phase of a trial, the judge would impose a sentence that would leave the defendant eligible for parole after 20 to 25 years. ...
Governor Pataki proposes this bill to bring back the death penalty in this state. However, I propose we remove and abolish the death penalty from United States law completely; instead, we should enact life in prison without parole as the ultimate punishment of this supposedly “civilized” nation. ... The death penalty is unfair to minorities, the poor, is unproductive, has been noted to execute the innocent and will in the future, and finally has become way too complex: the process is inefficient and the limitless appeals make capital punishment way too costly.
First off, I argue that the death penalty is unfair to the poor. ... The poor as well as minorities (which “coincidentally” make up a large portion of the poor) are much more likely to actually receive death sentences than the wealthy. These disparities have a simple reason to them that will always deem the death penalty unfair to the people of poverty class: lack of proper representation. ... This reason, combined with the fact that the death penalty is statistically often gone after in crimes against wealthy white murder victims, has guaranteed the poor an everlasting discriminatory and prejudiced case. ... “The fact of the matter is that the death penalty is awarded to the lowest bidder time and time again. ...
Not only has the application of the death penalty been completely unfair to the poor, but it has massive discriminatory effects on minorities, primarily blacks, as well. ... North Carolina, the court ruled that “the fundamental respect for humanity underlying the Eighth Amendment… requires consideration of the character and record of the individual offender and the circumstances of the particular offense as a constitutionally indispensable part of the process of inflicting the death penalty” (Williams 7). Our Fourteenth and Eighth Amendments of the Constitution tell us that all people should be judged as equals; however, since this supreme court ruling in 1970s, we now are allowed to legally include our “consideration of the character” of the individual, which in my opinion leaves a huge door open for prejudice, discrimination, and personal poor judgment as a result of previous biases against a specific class or even race; leaving jurors who already may be prejudice to express this unfair bias. ... In another case we have a Florida judge during 1987 who stated: "Since the nigger mom and dad are here anyway, why dont we go ahead and do the penalty phase today instead of having to subpoena them back at cost to the state” (Dieter). ... So how then can we put people to death knowing that our judgments can total up to one hundred percent validity along this innumerable, delicate, fragile, and if I may so myself: feeble chain of justice. ...
This, however, does not demonstrate and portray the raw pain and death that has come out of discrimination in the death penalty. ... In Philadelphia, researchers came together and did a ten year study from 1983 to 1993 and found that, “even after controlling for case differences, blacks in Philadelphia were substantially more likely to get the death penalty than other defendants who committed similar murders. Black defendants faced odds of receiving a death sentence that were 3. ...
This particular study which was dubbed as the “Philadelphia Study” by the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, had another alarming statistic which Richard Dieter exposed.
Approximate Word count = 4619
Approximate Pages = 18.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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