FREE ESSAY ON DEATH PEANALTIES

DEATH PEANALTIES

The Death Penalty
I feel that this type of punishment is cruel and unusual. in violation of the Eighth
Amendment. I also say with the long wait on death row and the inefficiency of the
system, criminals are not deterred by this treatment. In addition, they ask, where is
the
line drawn for crimes punishable by death? Out of 3,860 inmates executed from 1930 to
1980, 3380 were executed for murders; however, about 500 more were put to death for
other crimes. There is also the possibility that a criminal might be put to death for a
crime
that another criminal in different state might have gotten a different punishment for.
And
more minorities and ethnic Americans are executed, for the same crimes, than white
Americans. If people want to punish some one , I think killing really isn't going to do
anything. When a person steps foot in the world of crime, they give up life. So how is
stopping life and giving up life really different. Death will approach them anyway, the
only different thing is who hand them it . I don't think Human have any right to take
someone's life, even our own. If people want to punish these criminals, punish them in a
way that they feel pain ,and agony, so that they ask for you to kill them. For the
people
who have no conscience, we need to create one for them, so they can at least know and
feel the guilt of what they've done. 
As of September 24, the United States set a new record by executing seventy-six persons
in 1999,
more than in any year since the death penalty's reinstatement in 1976. Nearly half of the
1999 executions
through September were carried out in Texas and Virginia. Among those executed in 1999
were foreign
nationals, a juvenile offender, and individuals who may have been mentally ill or
retarded. Approximately
3,500 people were on death row.
Doubts about the death penalty were particularly acute in Illinois: three of the six
persons
exonerated on grounds of innocence and released from death row during 1999 had been tried
and
imprisoned there. Illinois' dramatic cases in 1999-one of the death row inmates had come
within two days of
execution five months before his exoneration-sparked a number of investigations into the
state's use of the
death penalty. Governor George Ryan also signed legislation devoting public funds for
prosecution and
defense in capital trials, including monies for attorneys, investigators, and forensic
specialists. 
The US continued to be one of only six countries to execute persons who were younger
than
eighteen when the crimes for which they were sentenced were committed. The imposition of
the death
penalty on persons who were under eighteen years of age at the time of their offense
violated the provisions
of international and regional human rights treaties to which the United States is party.
Despite nearly
unanimous international condemnation of the use of the death penalty for juvenile
offenders, six countries in
the world-Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Yemen-were known
to have
executed juvenile offenders in the 1990s. The United States led the list with ten such
executions between
1990 and 1999. In 1999, the United States carried out the execution of one juvenile
offender, Sean Sellers,
marking the first time in forty years that the United States has executed someone for
crimes committed as a
sixteen-year-old. Seventy juvenile offenders were on death row in the United States as of
July 1, 1999.
In positive developments, the highest court of the US state of Florida ruled that the
imposition of
the death penalty on sixteen-year-old offenders was cruel and unusual punishment in
violation of the state
constitution; and effective October 1, 1999, the state of Montana abolished the death
penalty for those
under eighteen at the time of their crimes. As a result, of the forty states that
retained the death penalty after
October 1999, six allowed offenders sixteen years of age or older to be put to death.
Nineteen states limited
the death penalty to those seventeen or older at the time of their crimes, and fifteen
states restricted capital
punishment to adult offenders.
State authorities and US courts continued to disregard violations of the rights of
defendants who
were not US citizens. Under the Vienna Convention, these defendants were supposed to be
advised, upon
arrest, of their right to contact their embassies for assistance. In 1999, five foreign
nationals were executed
despite reports that their right to consular notification had been breached: Jaturun
Siripongs of Thailand;
Karl and Walter LaGrand, brothers from Germany; Alvaro Calambro of the Philippines; and
Stanley
Faulder of Canada. Pleas from their governments were ignored, as were appeals from the 
International Court of Justice in the cases of the LaGrand brothers and Stanley Faulder.
The US
State Department did show signs of increased concern about Vienna Convention violations:
Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright wrote to Texas Governor George Bush in an attempt to halt the
execution of
Stanley Faulder, and the department was reportedly publishing and distributing training
materials for police
regarding their obligations under the convention. In October, the Inter-American Court of
Human Rights
issued an advisory opinion regarding US obligations under the Vienna Convention and
opined that the
failure to notify foreign nationals about their right to seek consular assistance was in
all cases a violation of
due process under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the
American Convention on
Human Rights.
Bibliography
www.politicalissues.com