Death Penalty Seminar

For:
The Death Penalty is very beneficial to our society. If a person is going to mur
der someone with an unknown punishment they may be more tempted to commit the cr
ime but if there was a capital punishment of a death sentence people would be de
terred from murder. Michael Summers, PhD, MBA, Professor of Management Science a
t Pepperdine University, wrote in his Nov. 2, 2007 article "Capital Punishment W
orks" in the Wall Street Journal: Our recent research shows that each execution c
arried out is correlated with about 74 fewer murders the following year... The s
tudy examined the relationship between the number of executions and the number o
f murders in the U.S. for the 26-year period from 1979 to 2004, using data from
publicly available FBI sources... There seems to be an obvious negative correlat
ion in that when executions increase, murders decrease, and when executions decr
ease, murders increase Many people say that the death penalty is immoral because
governments should never take human life and do the have the right to do so, no
matter what the crime. But that article was based off of faith, not off of fact
s. The death penalty honors human dignity, It gives the criminal an opportunity
to to be treated as a free moral actor who is able to control his own destiny fo
r good or for ill; it does not treat him as an animal with no moral sense which
is what prison would do. The death penalty provides the victims families to feel
safe and fair.
Against:
The death Penalty is immoral in principle, and unfair and discriminatory in prac
tice... No one deserves to die. When the government metes out vengeance disguise
d as justice, it becomes complicit with killers in devaluing human life and huma
n dignity. In civilized society, we reject the principle of literally doing to c
riminals what they do to their victims: The penalty for rape cannot be rape, or
for arson, the burning down of the arsonist's house. We should not, therefore, p
unish the murderer with death... Capital punishment is a barbaric remnant of unc
ivilized society. I believe that the sole reason death penalty's are supported i
s because they deter the murder from murdering. However the so called murder is
still a murder and jail is what provides the criminal correction. This system is
letting potential murderers from getting in trouble and has been proven to go a
gainst moral code. IF you kill someone you will be killed, How is this supposed
to scare someone from killing someone if it is okay for the government to do it?
If a poor person was innocent and convicted of murder they would not be able to
afford a lawyer that could properly defend them. However if you were rich and g
uilty you could have a good lawyer to defend you and avoid the death sentence. N
ot only does this punishment not agree with class but it also conflicts with rac
e. Death Penality Info states that a study in California found that those who ki
lled whites were over 3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those wh
o killed blacks and over 4 times more likely than those who killed Latinos. (Pie
rce & Radelet, Santa Clara Law Review, 2005) According to a survey of the former
and present presidents of the countrys top academic criminological societies, 88
% of these experts rejected the notion that the death penalty acts as a deterren
t to murder. (Radelet & Lacock, 2009)