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Is the Death Penalty Applied Fairly?

Decent Essays

Running head: The Death Penalty

Is the death penalty just and applied fairly?
Michael Wirth
PHI103: Informal Logic
Instructor Philip Bence
2 December, 2012

The Death Penalty
Capital punishment has been used around the world for many thousands of years as a way of enforcing justice when someone has done wrong by what standards that the cultures have. Over the past few centuries capital punishment has started to be questioned by many people in Europe and in the United States. Many people who support the death penalty cite reasons such as deterrence and not wanting to spend money a person who will never be a productive member of society again. Many who are in opposition to the death penalty say that the death penalty is …show more content…

There actually has been some statistical numbers which do in fact support this. In 1973, after the Supreme Court had declared Capital Punishment unconstitutional the number of homicides began to increase to numbers not seen since 1933 (Zimmerman, 2009). Homicide rates peaked in 1974, 1980, and 1990-92 (Zimmerman, 2009). The Supreme Court did legalize capital punishment in 1978 but some believe that it took time for people to realize what their crimes could do to them (William, 2000). In 1999, homicide rates finally fell to those not seen since the 1960’s. As much as these numbers help support the deterrent theory, this author considers them a weak argument that does not tell the whole story. Many believe that most people do not always think about the punishment prior to actually committing their crimes. These are called crimes of passion and they happen when people do not think about the consequences of their actions. There is also sociological data that shows crimes in relation to population age and unwanted pregnancies (Zimmerman, 2009). What has been learned is that we do not fully know how effective of a deterrence the death penalty has on society. Nobody wants to see innocent people get the death penalty but to get rid of death penalty all together is also not right because the death penalty is the only way for ultimate justice to be administered for victims provided that it is fairly administered. Now that opposing views have been shown one thing is clear,

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