Contenido

Open statement.................................................................................................................................1
BIBLE..................................................................................................................................................1
Which Crimes "Deserve" the Death Penalty?.....................................................................................1
COSTS.................................................................................................................................................2
How much does it cost to execute someone?.....................................................................2
How many of those executed via the death penalty were later found to be innocent?....................3
No other way......................................................................................................................................3
Retribution NOT revenge...................................................................................................................3
Deters crime.......................................................................................................................................4
Unfair and racially biased...................................................................................................................4
Facts...................................................................................................................................................5

Open statement
Death Penalty punishment is a difficult and emotional topic for many. Although it
has been abolished in two-thirds of the world's countries, it has a long history and
is still used in many places.
The three main purposes of the death penalty are:
1. To prevent the worst criminals from ever committing any further crimes.
2. To deter people from committing serious crimes
3. Achieve justice for the family and friends of the victims of serious crimes.
Death penalty is an important tool for preserving law and order, deters crime, and
costs less than life imprisonment. The argue is that retribution or “an eye for an
eye” honors the victim, helps console grieving families, and ensures that the
perpetrators of heinous crimes never have an opportunity to cause future tragedy.

I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that
there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate. — Jack
Kevorkian.

BIBLE
 You know, the Bible is so clear. Go to Genesis chapter nine and you will find
the death penalty clearly stated in Genesis chapter nine... God ordains the death
penalty! — Rafael Cruz.
 It is quick, painless, and humane. The methods of execution have gradually
become more humane over the years.
 It varies state by state, but the methods (listed from most to least common)
are lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber, hanging, and firing squad.

Which Crimes "Deserve" the Death Penalty?

The US government lists 41 capital offenses (different from those listed by
separate states) that are punishable by death. They include:

 genocide,
 war crimes,
 treason,
 espionage,
 terrorism,
 extensive drug trafficking,
 murder-for-hire,
 murder involving torture,
 and attempting to kill a witness, juror, court officer, or state or local law
enforcement official.

COSTS
 It is a cost-effective solution. The idea put forward by abolitionists that it
costs more to execute someone than imprison them for life is simply not true, and
there is plenty of evidence to show this.

How much does it cost to execute someone?

The average cost of a death penalty case is $2.4 million.

Death penalty cost so much, mainly due to the legal costs being greater. Because
there is a life at stake, there are many lawyers, judges, and other people working
for a long time to prepare, try and review all of the issues. Prisoners on death row
also cost more to house than general prisoners.

Some of the reasons for the high cost of the death penalty are:
 Legal costs.

 Pre-trial cost.
 Jury selection.
 Trial.
 Incarceration.
 Appeals.
 Claimed ‘cost studies,’ are frequently so incomplete as to be false and misleading.
For example, they don’t take into account the increase in the cost of life without
parole cases if there were no death penalty. Criminal defendants who are facing
the death penalty often want to make a deal by pleading guilty to first degree
murder in exchange for a sentencing recommendation of life without parole. The
existence of the death penalty as a possible sentence leads to guilty pleas that
save the money spent on trials and limit the opportunity for appeals.

It is not cheaper to keep a criminal confined, because most of the time he will
appeal just as much causing as many costs as a convict under death sentence.
Being alive and having nothing better to do, he will spend his time in prison
conceiving of ever-new habeas corpus petitions, which being unlimited, in effect
cannot be rejected as res judicata. The cost is higher.

How many of those executed via the death penalty were later found to be
innocent?
 The legal system constantly evolves to maximize justice. Just because it is
feasible that a wrong decision could be made by the legal system doesn’t mean
that the death penalty is wrong. Every effort is made to give death row prisoners
opportunities to challenge the court's decisions. Modern methods of crime
detection, such as DNA testing, also give greater certainty of guilt than existed in
the past.
According to some accounts, the number of those executed via the death penalty
that were later found to be innocent might be as high as 4.1%, one in 25 sentenced
to death is innocent.

No other way
I believe that there are some defendants who have earned the ultimate punishment
our society has to offer by committing murder with aggravating circumstances
present. I believe life is sacred. It cheapens the life of an innocent murder victim to
say that society has no right to keep the murderer from ever killing again. In my
view, society has not only the right, but the duty to act in self-defense to protect the
innocent

It’s also necessary to have capital punishment because some crimes simply are so
horrific that any other punishment, including life in a cage, is insufficient.

Retribution NOT revenge

 Retribution is not the same as revenge. Retribution is a necessary part of
the punishment process—without it, the friends and family of the victims, as well as
the public in general, would not feel that justice had been served.
 It appeases the victims or victims' families. The death penalty can provide
families of victims with some closure, which may help them to deal with their
suffering.
People often confuse retribution with revenge… Revenge signifies inflicting harm
on the offender out of anger because of what he has done. Retribution is the
rationally supported theory that the criminal deserves a punishment fitting the
gravity of his crime…

Retributivism is not based on hatred for the criminal (though a feeling of vengeance
may accompany the punishment). Retributivism is the theory that the criminal
deserves to be punished and deserves to be punished in proportion to the gravity
of his or her crime, whether or not the victim or anyone else desires it.

When a society fails to punish criminals in a way thought to be proportionate to the

gravity of the crime, the danger arises that the public would take the law into its
own hands, resulting in vigilante justice, lynch mobs, and private acts of retribution.
The outcome is likely to be an anarchistic, insecure state of injustice.

The death penalty is a necessary and appropriate punishment. Many people treat
‘retribution’ as an unworthy purpose for such a harsh punishment. But criminal
punishments are retribution for crimes. One cannot reject capital punishment
because it is retribution.

Deters crime
 It deters criminals from committing serious crimes. Common sense tells us
that the most frightening thing for a human being is to lose their life; therefore, the
death penalty is the best deterrent when it comes to discouraging people from
carrying out the worst crimes.
 Without the death penalty, some criminals would continue to commit crimes.
Giving up on the death penalty would mean giving up on justice for crime victims
and their families. Having a functional death penalty law will help to protect the
public from society’s worst criminals and bring some measure of closure to the
families whose loved ones were cruelly taken from them.
Immanuel Kant said a society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who
has taken somebody else’s life is just immoral. So the question really… when the
system works and when you manage to identify somebody who has done such
heinous evil, do we as a society have a right to take his life? I think the answer’s
plainly yes. And I would go with Kant and I would say it is immoral for us not to.
Studies of the death penalty have reached various conclusions about its
effectiveness in deterring crime. But… the majority of studies that track effects over
many years and across states or counties find a deterrent effect. In the U.S. a
recent research shows that each execution carried out is correlated with about 74
 fewer murders the following year… The study examined the relationship between
the number of executions and the number of 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 correlation in that when executions increase,
murders decrease, and when executions decrease, murders increase…

Unfair and racially biased

Death penalty opponents state it is inherently unfair and racially biased. The facts, I
believe, are otherwise…

The racial breakdown for those sentenced to death since 1977 is as follows: 48.6
percent white; 40.9 percent black; 8.9 percent Hispanic; and 1.6 percent other. The
race of defendants executed in the U.S. since 1976 is 56 percent white; 35 percent
black; 7 percent Hispanic; 2 percent other.

Facts
 Japan is the only advanced democratic country, besides the United States,
that has the death penalty.
 The five countries that carry out the most executions in the world are China,
Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the USA.