Capital Punishment: Examining Arguments, Trends, and Execution

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of capital punishment, exploring its various facets and implications. It begins by defining capital punishment and its role in the justice system, followed by an examination of its advantages, such as potential deterrence and cost-effectiveness, and disadvantages, including ethical concerns and the risk of executing innocent individuals. The essay delves into the role of aggravating and mitigating circumstances in sentencing, the impact of capital punishment on state policies, and the execution trends in specific states like Alabama and Georgia. It further discusses the Supreme Court's stance on the death penalty, including current practices and recommendations, emphasizing the need for abolition due to its irreversible nature and inhumane execution methods. The essay concludes by referencing sources and acknowledging the contributions of the author.

Capital Punishment
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author note

Capital Punishment
It is a practice that
is sanctioned by the
government
An individual is put
to death for the
crimes in capital
punishment

Advantages of Capital
Punishment
Capital punishment
can help in deterring
the criminal acts in
the society
It can cut down the
cost as the
imprisonment of
criminals can prove to
be expensive
Disadvantages of
Capital
Punishment
It is indicative of an
act that is inhumane
The innocent people
have been found to
be executed

Capital Punishment
as a Deterrent
States not having
death penalty have
lower rate of the
murder
Capital punishment
is not successful for
changing the
behaviour of the
criminals

Role of aggravating
circumstance in
sentencing process
A criminal having
the prior record of
similar conviction
and yet committing a
crime can be stated
to be an aggravating
factor
Role of mitigating
circumstance in
sentencing process
The defendant in the
event of playing a
minor role in that of
the crime can be a
mitigating
circumstance

Adoption and rejection of
death penalty by states
It has been found with the
help of research that the
number of the global
executions have fallen by
that of one-third in the
present age
The countries like Belarus
and that of Singapore have
seen rise pertaining to
number of the executions

Trend of Death Penalty
in Alabama and
Georgia
It has been found with
research that 44 people
are being put to death
within Alabama out of
one million residents
Georgia has executed
73 people from the
year 1976

Supreme Court and
Death Penalty
US Supreme Court has
stated that the applying
of the death penalty is
unconstitutional
In the present age,
Supreme Court have left
the practice of that of
death penalty to
discretion of state

Recommendation for
governor
Death penalty is non-
reversible and hence
it should be abolished
in the present time
Method of execution
is brutal that
demands the abolition
of the system of
capital punishment

References
Amnesty.org. (2019). The world saw a dramatic fall in global
executions in 2018. Retrieved 5 August 2019, from
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/04/death-pe
nalty-dramatic-fall-in-global-execution/
Bohm, R. M. (2016). Deathquest: An introduction to the
theory and practice of capital punishment in the United
States. Routledge.
Deathpenaltyinfo.org. (2019). Georgia. Retrieved 5 August
2019, from
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-and-federal-info/state-by
-state/georgia
Eji.org. (2019). Alabama's Disproportionately High Death
Sentencing And Execution Rates At Odds With National
Trend. Retrieved 5 August 2019, from
https://eji.org/news/alabama-death-sentencing-and-executi

Mahfood, V. W., Longmire, D., & Halperin, R. (2018).
Economics of capital punishment. In The Economics
of Human Rights (pp. 32-94). Routledge.
McCafferty, J. A. (2017). Capital punishment.
Routledge.
Sarat, A. (2018). When the state kills: Capital
punishment and the American condition. Princeton
University Press.
Theatlantic.com. (2019). Debunking the Court’s Latest
Death-Penalty Obsession. Retrieved 5 August 2019,
from
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/su
preme-court-defends-death-penalty-again/591682/

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