CAPITAL PUNISHMENT Is There A Middle Ground Solution?

Arguments Under Mediation… Pro-Death Penalty 1.Death Penalty Deters Crime 2.Properly Serves Justice 3.Necessary for Victim’s Family Grieving Process Anti-Death Penalty 1.Does NOT Deter Crime 2.Rarely A Positive Experience In The Grieving Process

Statistics Found In Support of Death Penalty -From 1966 to 1976 (When Executions Were Made Illegal In The U.S.) Murders almost doubled from 11,040 to 23,040! -Murder Rate Also Climbed from 5.6 per 100,000 to 10.2! -When the death penalty was reinstated, this rate of 10.2 dropped to 5.5 by the year of This is a 46% reduction Just About Sold Right?

Anti-Death Penalty Rebuttal To These Statistics -American Civil Liberties Union says all positive deterrence results are not credible -States that do practice the death penalty experience the same murder rates as the states that do not -This means that positive deterrence results are inconclusive. There must then be other outlying factors that affect the national murder rates. Top U.S. Criminologists Were Polled On This Issue 88% do not believe that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide 87% believe that the abolition of the death penalty would not have any significant effect on murder rates (Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology)

If it does not deter murder, than does it help victim’s families and serve justice? “executions giving ‘closure’ to a tragedy is a myth and that to kill the person who has killed someone close to you is simply to continue the cycle of violence which ultimately destroys the avenger as well as the offender” (Raymond A. Schroth, Jesuit Priest and Community Professor of the Humanities at St. Peter’s College ) “Each court date, each appeal, each write-up in the newspaper, revisiting and revisiting the pain, each event keeping me that much further from healing” (Sandra Place, Daughter of Victim) “The death penalty brings as much pain as it does relief, that it creates an entirely new layer of pain” (Janice Greishaber, Mother of Victim)

My Mediation -I do believe that the death penalty is necessary in order to serve justice. A murderer being put to death could never match what their victim’s were put through -To kill all murderers though is infallible due to the drawn out court process -My solution is to execute those convicted of only extremely heinous murders -This is the best solution I could find because it executes murderers only on the principle of justice and not on beliefs of deterrence and the grieving process of victim’s families -How many people could argue against the execution of a child rapist/murderer or an insane serial killer?

Works Cited Sharp, Dudley. "Death Penalty Paper." Pro-death Penalty.com. 1 Oct Web. 30 Mar "Top 10 Pros and Cons - Death Penalty - ProCon.org." Death Penalty ProCon.org. 13 Apr Web. 30 Mar Radelet, M., and T. Ladoc. "Facts about Deterrence and the Death Penalty." Death Penalty Information Center. 18 Mar Web. 30 Mar Quotes by Families of Homicide Victims." Equal Justice USA. Web. 30 Mar Newport, Frank. "In U.S., Two-Thirds Continue to Support Death Penalty." Gallup. 13 Oct Web. 30 Mar Wright, Valerie L. Could Quicker Executions Deter Homicides?: The Relationship between Celerity, Capital Punishment, and Murder. El Paso [Tex.: LFB Scholarly Pub., Print. Miller, Karen S. Wrongful Capital Convictions and the Legitimacy of the Death Penalty. New York: LFB Scholarly Pub. LLC, Print. Zimring, Franklin E. The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. New York: Oxford UP, Print. Cole, W. Owen. "Book of Exodus." The Christian Bible. Oxford: Heinemann, Print.

Grading Rubric

Grade and Comments Overall Comments: Your paper on the controversy over Capital Punishment was hardly a bad job. Yet this presentation took the material to new levels of insight and clarity, and that’s something you should think about for the future. You have some innate skill, in arranging and presenting arguments out loud. This one uses the PowerPoint technology impressively, juggling images and words, and inserting certain words in different colors, in the right places (I should mention, though, that you use “than” for “then” at one point). You marshal statistics effectively as well, for instance when considering cases in different states, and you’ve dug up some pertinent quotes, especially against the idea of “closure.” As for the mediation, its main points would work under the present system, which demonstrates maturity. All this and a fine Works Cited! A or 95.