Death Penalty part 3

After reading the whole process behind a criminal getting the death penalty I see that there are more steps than I thought. This makes the chance of prosecuting an innocent man less likely. This doesn’t guarantee that all criminals are guilty, but it is the best I think that we can do without saying that half of the people convicted are innocent. One step that is designed to help less innocent people have to go to trial is the preliminary hearing where the prosecutor shows evidence to the court that must prove to be sufficient. Another step is the defendant’s case where the defendant has a chance to respond to the evidence against him that the prosecutors provided. This helps get the convicts half of the story.

After learning about the different types of execution that could be used, the most humane seems to be the lethal injection that all but one of the states that have the death penalty use. Out of all of the ways to be executed the least-humane seems to be hanging. This often times breaks the victims neck before strangling them of all of their oxygen. That being said I think that we should use the cheapest way of executing people which I doubt is the lethal injection. None of the other remaining ways are much more inhumane than the others and who says that they deserve to die in a humane way. Sure it is in the Constitution but there are other rights that are taken away when people are convicted of a crime like when they go to jail. Unless a murderer goes out of their way to make the death of their victim more pleasant, I don’t think that we should makes there’s more pleasant. Having in-humane death penalties could prevent even more crime than the humane one because it is not a good way to die. With the lethal injection they have nothing to fear because they won’t feel any pain so they are less afraid of the punishment making them more likely to commit the crime.

There is a lot of data about what types of people were on death row and it is hard to draw conclusions from these numbers. For example there are about the same blacks on death row and white people. This may seem like obvious discrimination towards blacks since there are so many less of them and yet there are the same amount of death row, but there are other factors that come to mind like what percentage of murderers are blacks which I’m sure is higher than the percentage of whites just because there are so many more white people in America and the same amount on death row. One thing that I can conclude is that the numbers of women are not even a percentage of the amount of men and yes fewer women commit murders than men but I think there is more to it. I think people would feel worse about putting a woman to death as opposed to a man which is unjust. One other conclusion that I came to is that there are a lot more people on death row than I thought. This forces me to believe that out of the thousands of people there have to be at least a couple who don’t deserve it. This goes back to a quote I remember that said I would rather set 100 criminals free than have 1 wrongly accused. After looking at all of the charts, despite the raw data there is more to it than those pie charts. I don’t think that race is involved in the decision of whether or not to give the death penalty, I could see this happening in the past when there was more racism in America, but now decisions need good reasoning. That makes the execution of one race or mostly just executing one race impossible.

Clifford Boggess execution

There are a lot of people who say that the death penatly is a good solution to extreme crimes that jail doesn't justify. They say this without looking at the criminal as a person but as the crimes that they commited. The reason I think we watched this film was to get to know Clifford as a person before we see him get killed so we can realize everyone who is killed by the death penalty are people too who made a mistake. I still think that he deserved the death penatly even though there were a lot of signs that showed that he was a good person. He strudied the bible, was a devoted christian, admitted that he had done the crimes, and he doesn't seem like a danger to society. However none of these things matter. He killed the two victimes simply for money and he didn't seem like a threat to society when he commited the crimes. No matter how much anyone changes in prison or the size of a relization they have, they are still a danger to society if they could've received the death penalty. There were a lot of signs that showed that he was a danger to society. he didn't feel anything for the victims, he even kept a picture of one of their tombstones with him in his cell. He was sober and stomped on one of the mens face and chest. There are other things that show this too. It is cheaper for him to be killed instead of paying for his meals, him taking up a cell, and other costs associated with being a prisoner. Also, the woman who told police that he was the killer was scared for her life even moving every couple of months. Killing him was the only thing that could bring her peace of mind. Also, life in prison which would be the sentence that he would recieve if not on death row proves to be dangerous because the inmates have nothing to lose, he is clearly capeable of killing so why not kill a prison gaurd or another inmate. Also, he could escape, in the video there was a painting that he had and under it was a painting of the prison fence which was thought to be part of an escape plot. Some would argue that he is a value to society as a christian and as an artist. I say that he had his change in society which he messed up, and the ammount of good he can provide isn't even close to the amount of bad he has done, and can still do.