Capital Punishment refers to the sentence or decision to a capital crime such as murder, rape, or assault. Many times,the sentence is life in prison or execution. Currently, theUnited States is the only western democracy that still hasexecution on the books. An alternative to execution is lifeimprisonment, which is common throughout the world. There aremany features, however of life imprisonment that are debated.Treatment of offenders of capital crimes is questionable incertain prisons. Also, the safety of society is a question athand when discussing life imprisonment assuming the prisonercould be up for parole or escape. Lastly, the rehabilitationprocess of offenders of capital punishment is a big questionmark. Many wonder what success it brings, just how effective itreally is, and what its purpose is for criminals who'vecommitted such horrible crimes as homicide, or other capitalcrimes.The Article "The Wrong Man" by Alan Berlow points outsome of the wrongs about the death penalty. There are numerousstories of men who spent their life on death row, only to bereleased days or hours before their death because of beingproved innocent. In his article Alan talks about "the growingnumber of innocent prisoner being discovered on death row" andhow the government needs to "wake up"(Berlow 7). This meansthat more and more cases are being rushed to execution withoutall of the facts. Remember, in order to give a sentence, theclient must be guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and it seemsthat this is sometimes ignored as unclear cases are beingpushed by officers and lawyers to executions. Another pointbrought up by Berlow is how good of a lawyer defendants have inthese capital cases. "Most public defendants are so poorly paidthat talented lawyers tend to stay away from this sort ofpractice (Berlow 9)." This means that defendants that are poor,which most are, cannot afford to get a lawyer that will lookinto the case as much as he can, and try to help ...
