Death Penalty Final Response

The death penalty is the sentence of death to people by the state as a punishment for a crime. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. Due to this many people have been put to death as punishment of their crimes. However, because the process is not perfect there have been many innocent people put to death also. I believe that the abolishment of the death penalty in Illinois is just because it will save many innocent lives that could have possibly been killed because of the death penalty. The death penalty has proven that although it has released many innocent people, it has also killed many. During Gov. Ryan’s speech, he stated “Together they spared the lives and secured the freedom of 17 men - men who were wrongfully convicted and rotting in the condemned units of our state prisons. What you have achieved is of the highest calling - thank you!” This shows that there are many people who are wrongfully convicted people and it was because of the death penalty that they were even facing the possibility of death. I believe that the death penalty was abolished because too many innocent people were being killed. Gov. Ryan was saying how having to free seventeen people was too many and how they shouldn’t have been sent to death in the first place.

There are any people that argue over the death penalty and whether or not it should be legal or not. The death penalty has been killing people who are guilty and innocent, but even though this has been know, the debate for the death penalty has never gone far from the main topic of morals. The newspaper article stated “But for decades, the debate over capital punishment rarely strayed from whether it was right or wrong, a moral argument that was waged mostly by a narrow group of attorneys and abolition supporters that could be easily dismissed.” This shows that the innocent people being killed weren’t really taken into account when arguing if the death penalty should be legal or not. Due to this more innocent people continued to be killed and ignored. However now that more people are starting to realize this, as part of the reason more states are starting to ban the death penalty to save the innocent. I believe that to save lives of the possibly condemned innocent, the death penalty should be abolished so that they can be saved.

Death penalty Race and class

 In deadline, David Keaton was sentenced to death in Florida. Seven years later, he was proven innocent of the crime and was released from death row. His brother stated “Growing up black in this state, you know, you really didn’t have a chance when it came to a crime. You know, they say that justice is blind, but justice really isn’t blind.” I would agree to this statement because black people really do have a harder time because unfortunately racism still exists in this world. Justice is not blind and it is proven because there have been more black people convicted to death than white people. Growing up black must have been hard due to racism and knowing that they are being treated differently must have been hard. Race plays a role in capitol case because the color of your skin can play a role in what the sentence is. More than 80% of the people who have been executed, have been for the murder of white people. I believe that the conviction was because of the race. White people are treated better in court cases and other people are treated worse. This is shown because when white people are killed it is treated as a higher crime and sentence more people to death. People of color and low-income, are more likely to receive the death penalty. I believe that this is because they are seen as lesser people. Courts may see people of color and treat them differently and worse than they would white people, and low income people the court may see as not as high contributors to society and treat them differently than they would high income people. Vesiges of legal segregation and historic race-based policies impact the modern U.S. justice system because they treat people of color differently and may be more ready to convict them to death even if they haven’t committed the crime. Some steps that could be taken to ensure a fairer justice system could be making more black judges and that may eliminate some racism towards ethic people and create more fair trials that will give them a fair chance to get out of the death penalty. However the justice system is not perfect and people who are innocent will continue to be convicted until it is.

Additional background info

There are many steps that go into sentencing a person to death and carrying it out. However there are means of killing that seem to be unethical and can be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Stages that defend the rights of the accused are the; guilt phase trial, Penalty phase trial, and the post conviction review. These each give the defendant a fair chance to prove they are either innocent or not worthy of the death penalty. I do not believe that this is not able to guarantee that only the guilty are convicted because there have already been innocent people convicted. Also I don’t believe it because it does not seem like it is perfect in seeing if someone was either framed or not involved in it as much as the people would think. There are many different types of executions, but there are some that seem to be cruel and unusual punishment. Hanging is cruel because there is a chance that a person could be getting strangled for 45 minutes which no one should go through. Also firing squad is cruel because if the shooters miss the targets heart then he can die a slow and painful death. Also electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment because the person is electrocuted at thirty second intervals where if the person is still alive he is continued to be electrocuted. Also the gas chamber is cruel because it shows that the person is not immediately knocked unconscious and has signs that the person goes through extreme pain during the process. Injection can be considered cruel because if the doctor injects the needle into the muscle instead of the vain, then the person can suffer extreme pain while strapped to the gurney. The most humane method is injection because it is very unlikely that the professional will miss the vain and it causes a quick and painless death. This data shows that the death penalty is mostly enforced in the south. This may have to do with problems such as racism and segregation. Also people may be more ready to convict people to death in the south.  It also shows how there are many more people who support it in the south because that is the majority region that supports it. I think that the previous death penalty was fair because it only convicted those who killed many people, killed people trying to save others, or killed people while meaning to hurt them badly in the process. The removal of the death penalty is not specified but it is most likely because there were a lot of innocent people that were convicted to the death penalty and since there was no perfect plan send only the people who actually convicted the crime to jail, they wanted to save all the people that possibly could have been sent to death row. The chart showed that race does not have a big factor when sentencing people to death row because there were more white people convicted.