POL 210 MILESTONE ONE
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School
Southern New Hampshire University *
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Course
210
Subject
Political Science
Date
Jun 1, 2024
Type
Pages
4
Uploaded by ColonelLapwingPerson459
1
Davyon Gentles
POL 210
Milestone One
25 May 2024
Topic Proposal
The topic that i have chosen to write about within the criminal justice category is the
death penalty. I would like to research more into the disparities of how often the death penalty is
given between different races within America. I’ve noticed through news outlets and prior
research topics that there are obvious differences in the amount of sentenced time and severity of
punishment between races for similar crimes. For this assignment I think it would be insightful to
learn if this commonality is found within the death penalty as well. I hope to answer the
following questions:
1.) What are the racial demographics of those sentenced to the death penalty and is
there a trend of minorities being sentenced more often than their white
counterparts?
2.) What is the rate of those absolved of the death penalty having been found to be
innocent and is there a higher trend of falsely sentenced individuals when viewed
through the lens of race?
Their are obviously two very large viewpoints when speaking about the death penalty and
those are; anti death penalty and pro death penalty. Those that oppose the death penalty argue
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that it is an inhumane punishment that goes against the Constitution. This could be argued using
the 8th amendment that states the unlawfulness of, “cruel and unusual punishment.” Also it can
be argued that the death penalty disallows the opportunity to appeal at a later time or for the
person to continue to fight for their freedom.
In contrast to the above viewpoint there are those that agree with the death penalty. Most
who argue for this type of finality in punishment view it as needed for heinous crimes like
murder, sexual assault, or anything having involved the trauma of a child. There have been years
of dissent for the death penalty but those that are for it argue that the long process before the
sentence is incurred allows for the defendant to fight to prove his innocence sufficiently.
There are a couple of amendments that have a direct relation to my topic; the most
obvious being the 8th amendment as stated previously. Other amendments that call into question
the legality of the penalty are the, 5th, 6th, and 14th amendments. There have been instances
where the constitution was used to reverse the death penalty. For example in the 70s the death
penalty was found to go against the 14th and 8th amendments per the supreme courts who
deemed it as too severe of a punishment. This was not the end of the death penalty though as it
just allowed for state justices to change how they processed the death penalty in order to mitigate
the issues found by the Supreme Court and allow for its continuance.
Just from some basic research I have found a number of scholarly sources that give me
insight into how race impacts the amount of death penalties imposed. The first source I found is
from the American Sociological Review titled, “Racial Characteristics and the Imposition of the
Death Penalty.” This is a great resource because it allowed for insight into how effective the
changes made after the supreme court's rulings in the 70s were to closing the disparities in race
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