Pro Death Penalty
...and whether or not it is fair and just to execute criminals. This debate is clouded over by many free-floating rumors and false claims made by both sides, but there is also critical information that must be considered if any kind of decision is going to be made. Two of the strongest claims made by the opposition address man’s strongest instinctual beliefs by claiming many innocents are being executed and there is no biblical support for the death penalty. The risk of executing the innocent, however slight, is worth the justifications for the death penalty, those being the incapacitation of murderous men, the deterrent effects on violent crime, and innocent lives therefore saved.
Background
More than 14,500 people have been executed in the United States since 1930. There is no way of knowing how many have been executed in U.S. history because executions were often local affairs, with no central agency keeping track of them. In addition to judicially imposed executions, from 1882 through 1951 there were 4,730 recorded lynchings by vigilantes in the U.S, with many of them being highly public affairs.(BJS, 2005) Even when miscreants were afforded a trial and executed in accordance with law, such events were often local in nature. For example, while states such as New York electrocuted condemned persons at Sing Sing’s electric chair as early as the late 19th century, in states such as Missouri hangings were conducted at local county jails as late as 1937. (BJS, 2005) The death penalty was often used in excess sometimes without proper proof of guilt, but this is no longer the case. Now only about 2 percent of the convicted murderers are executed each year. In fact the average convicted murderer spends more than eleven years on death row. (NCPA, 2007)
Incapacitation
The incapacitation effect saves lives - that is, by executing murderers, they are prevented from...
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