Should There Be A Death Penalty? The issue of the death penalty is widely disputed. So disputed that maybe I shouldnt have picked this topic. But nevertheless, the death penalty is an issue that needs to be addressed. Should the death penalty be abolished from our criminal justice system? Well, that depends on whom you ask. If you ask me no. I personally dont see anything wrong with the death penalty because there are a lot of criminals that are just too dangerous to society and death is the only punishment they deserve.I know that it is in the eighth amendment that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, and I cant think of a greater punishment for a crime than death, but I believe that exceptions should be made.Despite U.S. Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, many death penalty opponents consider capital punishment in and of itself to be cruel and unusual. They believe the death penalty to be a barbarous practice that should be discarded. Specific methods of execution also frequently come under attack as violating the Eighth Amendment. Death penalty advocates counter that the framers of the Constitution took capital punishment for granted, and did not consider it cruel and unusual. Some proponents of the death penalty believe some methods of execution, such as lethal injection, are more humane than others. (http://ethics.acusd.edu/death_penalty.html)From 1930, the first year for which statistics are readily available from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, to 1967, 3,859 persons were executed. During this period, over half (54%) of those executed were black, 45 % were white, and the remaining 1% were members of other racial groups -- American Indians (19), Filipino (13), Chinese (8), and Japanese (2). The vast majority of those executed were men but 32 women were executed from 1930 to 1967 as well. Most of these executions were for the crime of murder, 455 were for the crime of rape, and 70 were for other violent offenses.(http://...
