Capital Punishment has NO Place in Civilized Society :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

metropolis Punishment has no Place in Civilized Society Since our nations founding, the judicature -- colonial, federal and relegate --has punished murder and, until recent years, rape with the net sanction demolition.  More than 13,000 sight deplete been legally executed since colonial times, closely of them in the early 20th Century.  By the 1930s, as some(prenominal) as 150 peoplewere executed each year.  However, public scandal and legal challenges causedthe practice to wane.  By 1967, capital punishment had virtually halted in theUnited States, pending the outcome of several court challenges. In 1972, in _Furman v. Georgia_, the Supreme Court invalidated hundreds ofscheduled executions, declaring that then existing state laws were applied in anarbitrary and capricious manner and, thus, violated the eighth Amendmentsprohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and the Fourteenth Amendmentsguarantees of equal protection of the laws and out-o f-pocket process.  But in 1976, in _Gregg v. Georgia_, the Court resuscitated the expiration penalty It ruled that thepenalty does not invariably violate the Constitution if administered in amanner designed to guard against arbitrariness and discrimination.  Severalstates right away passed or reenacted capital punishment laws. Thirty-seven states now have laws authorizing the death penalty, as does themilitary.  A dozen states in the Middle West and neon have abolishedcapital punishment, two in the last century (Michigan in 1847, Minnesota in1853).  Alaska and Hawaii have never had the death penalty. near executions havetaken place in the states of the Deep South. More than 2,000 people argon on death row today.  Virtually all are poor, asignificant number are mentally retarded or otherwise mentally disabled, morethan 40 percent are African American, and a disproportionate number are NativeAmerican, Latino and Asian. The ACLU believes that, in al l circumstances, the death penalty isunconstitutional infra the Eighth Amendment, and that its discriminativeapplication violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Here are the ACLUs answers to some questions frequently embossed by the publicabout capital punishment. Doesnt the Death Penalty admonish crime, especially murder?  No, there is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime. Statesthat have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates thanstates without much(prenominal) laws.  And states that have abolished capital punishment, orinstituted it, show no significant changes in either crime or murder rates. Claims that each execution deters a certain number of murders have beendiscredited by social perception research.  The death penalty has no deterrenteffect on most murders because people commit murders largely in the heat ofpassion, and/or under the influence of alcohol or drugs, giving little thought