Death Penalty

The aspects of the stages in a capital punishment case that are designed to protect the rights of the accused are the direct appeal, post-conviction review, federal habeas corpus, and the clemency process. I believe this system is sufficient enough to guarantee only the guilty are convicted. There are multiple steps for the defendant to appeal his decision and on top of that, there is the clemency process. The clemency process is the act of reducing the sentence or pardoning the persons crime if a governor, for a state offense, or a president, for a federal offense, sees fit. This could be because the person needs specialized medical care or the person may be innocent. Under all of the appeals that could happen and the clemency process I believe this system is sufficient enough to guarantee only the guilty are convicted.

The most humane method, I would say, is lethal injection. This is due to the reasoning that you are unconscious at first so the idea is you feel no pain. For all the other methods there is a lot of pain to the point where your eyes pop. For the firing squad the person must bleed out before they go into shock. Only if lethal injection is done properly is it the most humane way to give someone the death penalty.  Hanging should be considered cruel and unusual according to the 8^th amendment because there is so much that can go wrong. All measurements need to be precise. Without precise measurements the result is the person is left hanging there for 45 minutes to suffer. For firing squad the person bleeds out and if the people miss the target of the heart the person bleeds out longer. Electrocution is torture. The person is usually cooked, and the process is repeated until the person is killed. The eyes pop and the skin turns red. The autopsy cannot even be done until after the body cools down because it is so hot from the electrocution. Gas chamber is also, as we know from the person nodding his head if he felt pain, painful. You are supposed to take deep breaths so you die quicker, but the result is most people try to hold their breath as a natural instinct. That is why when lethal injection is done properly it is the most humane because the person is unconscious before they are killed.

           Source: http://media.timesfreepress.com/img/news/tease/2010/12/02/Lethal_Injection101202_.jpg

            While this comic is going against my view of lethal injection being the most humane way to kill someone, I would argue, in the picture they are also saying there is no humane way to execute someone. No matter the way you put someone to rest, at the end of the day the person will still be dead. This than would bring up the controversy if someone should be put to rest based on the crime he or she committed.

            After looking at the statistics of the murder rate it makes me wonder if the death penalty is actually effective. While Arizona, who does not use the death penalty, has a murder rate of 8.8 people, Louisiana, who does have the death penalty, has a murder rate of 11.8 people. With the other states that do not have the death penalty the murder rate numbers are generally low. To me there is no indication that having a death penalty reduces the murder rate. This could mean the death penalty is not viewed as a threat to murderers. Another conclusion, slightly obvious, is far more men are put on death row than women. Looking at California alone there are 17 women on death row compared to the men in California on death row, which is 685. This shows how there is not much equality between men and women, but also woman might commit fewer crimes than males do so it is hard to say for sure. In California though we do see women getting less sentences on death row, 685 men to 17 women clearly shows a bias.

            I think that the death penalty in Illinois was fair because committing these crimes shows there is a degree of cruelty. Armed robbery would be the only one I would disagree with for being a death row candidate. If an armed robbery is committed and no one is harmed there is no reason why he or she should be killed because of a robbery. Life sentence maybe, but death just seems really harsh for a penalty like that. A reason why there is no more death penalty in Illinois could be because before 1976, there were 348 people executed. After 1976, only 12 people have been executed. This drop, in executions, could be a reason why Illinois just decided to get rid of the death penalty.

            Since 1983 the number of people executed has gone up till today peaking in 1999, with 98 executions. The lowest in time period was in 1988 with 11 executions. I was not expecting for the amount of executions to go up over 27 years. The most shocking piece of evidence I read while looking at the various charts was the white defendant and black defendant cases. When the victim was black and the defendant was white only17 people were executed. When flipped, the victim was white and the defendant was black, 255 people were executed. This is shocking to me that race is that large of a factor when looking at interracial murders. I would not expect the results to be that biased.

            If Dexter, from the television show Dexter, should not be given the death penalty because of who he has killed. Dexter kills based on a set of morals, which now that I am typing this doesn’t say much. Watching Dexter, as the viewer we get this idea that he is doing these actions for good, and as the viewers we like Dexter is taking care of these people while still having a set of morals so innocent people do not get killed. If you look at Dexter though from the viewpoint of the justice system, while Dexter is doing a good job of killing these people who get away with murder, but he is still killing people. On top of Dexter killing these people he is enjoying killing in general. This is someone who on record should be put to death, but to me personally I would not like him to receive the death penalty since the people he kills are murderers.