Should Capital Punishment Be Abolished.
In 2002, seventy-one people were executed in the thirteen different states. Some advocates for the death penalty say that this number is too low. They feel more people should be put to death because it will deter people from committing acts of murder. People that are against the death penalty say that this number is far too high and in fact the death penalty should be abolished all together. Although they have many claims, their biggest claim seems to be that the death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. .
Supporters of the death penalty feel "safer" knowing that harm will not come to them by another human being because the perpetrator is scared of harm his/herself. Mr. Breedlove of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty says "I would know I was safe if anyone that tried to fatally harm me would be put to death. But in this society when someone can kill someone, get sentenced to life, get paroled and then freed to go about and do the same crime again frankly scares me." The problem with this thinking is that someone that is committing a serious crime is not thinking about getting caught. Therefore, they are not thinking about the most severe punishment handed down if they were to be found guilty.
The people that are against the death penalty feel that the death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. This means that the death penalty is applied "randomly" and "discriminatorily." They claim that it is overused upon those people whose victims were white and minorities are unfairly targeted by a racist juror or jury. The problem with this claim is that there is evidence that shows minorities are not being singled out. Of the seventy-one executions in 2002, fifty-three of them were white.
Both sides seem to have good valid points but with every claim there seems to be a contradicting fact or valid reason why the claim is wrong by the opposite side.
