Death Penalty Information

1. I believe that the death penalty does enough to protect the wrongly accused to find a way out of the death sentence. One thing that helps people keep away from the death penalty are the mitigating factors and that should help with avoiding the death penalty. There can also be motion for a new trial if new information becomes available which may show the defendant is not guilty. There is also Federal Habeas Corpus which makes sure that the person who is being tried in the court has the power to imprison a person and make sure it is not illegal. There is also Clemency which, if there is new or sufficient evidence, will allow that person to be found guilty.

2. Which of these (if any) are the most humane? Should any be considered “cruel and unusual” according to the 8th Amendment? If so which? Why?
Hanging is very much cruel and unusual punishment because instantaneous death very rarely occurs and the person being hung normally ends up with slow asphyxiation and is a painful and slow death sometimes taking up to 45 minutes.
 Firing squad is not as inhumane or cruel as hanging but still is. If the firing squad misses on purpose or on accident the person will die a slow death from blood loss.
The electric chair is also cruel and unusual because sometimes the person will survive the 30 second shock and they will have shock after shock until they die which I believe is very inhumane.
Using a gas chamber is also cruel and unusual because this way of death is can be slow and painful. This way of killing someone is basically the same as strangling someone to death and I believe that it is very inhumane and wrong to kill someone by strangling them to death.
Lethal injection is the only humane way of killing someone because most people do not feel pain while they die. They are put to sleep and because of this, the feel no pain while they die and I believe that because there is such a low chance of a painful and slow death, it is the most humane.

3. Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia all have more death penalties than inmates in death row which is interesting because many of the states either have more inmates such as California which has 633 inmates and 13 people executed which is drastically different than these states. Many of the states use lethal injection as either their primary way of using the death penalty or their secondary option which must seem like the most non-cruel and unusual punishment and the most humane way to execute someone. The southern states have many more black people that have been executed than the northern states and after taking a look at the number of white people executed, it seems to be a more equal number between the south and north. It seems that the south has a bias of wanting to kill more black people than what the north does. Also, the south has more people executed than the north which is an interesting concept.

4. I believe most of the death penalty was very fair except for the part which describes how someone can be sentenced the death penalty if they kill someone under 12 years old. I believe that it does not matter how old the victim is. If a person kills someone else they should receive this penalty or a life in prison. I do not understand why if the person is under 12 it matters more than a 13 year old. I believe that all of the reasons for the death penalty were fair yet I do not believe the death penalty should be allowed because for many, it does not bring the family of the murder any better feelings of healing once that person has been executed.
The death penalty does not exist in Illinois anymore and I believe this is because of the amount of innocent people on death row whom were found innocent. Also a great deal of people were allowed clemency and it seems that the death penalty was just not working for Illinois.

5. I believe that the guesses I had made in the previous answer were correct because I guessed that the death penalty just did not work for Illinois and this is an obvious truth for all of the people who looked at all of the statistics of the death penalty. It seems that there is a 97% chance for someone to receive the death penalty if they killed a white person vs. a black person or other person. Every state releases people because of evidence of their innocence and this number increases each year which could show that many people have been wrongly convicted in the past. Public support has also been dwindling down over the years as people are not supporting the death penalty as much as they used to. Nearly sixty percent of people believe that the other options such as life without parole or life in jail would suffice rather than using the death penalty. It is also interesting that there are so many more cases of the death penalty have had executions in the south than in the north east. 1032 people have been executed in the south compared to the amount of people executed in the north east which is 4. This is a drastically different number and there must be something going on behind this with such a drastically amount of people who have been executed. From looking at the Death Penalty Information Center, I have come to the conclusion that they are trying to show that the death penalty is not in the favor of many and that there are many inconsistencies which makes me lose much of my faith in the death penalty. Mainly in the part of there being so many mistakes with people being innocent and yet recieving the death penalty or people being found not guilty after a closer looking at their case.


http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf