Death Penalty #3

STAGES: Protecting the rights of the accused starts with the preliminary hearing. This hearing is designed to see if enough evidence is able to be gathered in the accusation of a criminal.. In addition to the hearing the people who serve on the jury are examined thoroughly to determine if they are qualified to be a part of the jury. After aggravating and mitigating factors are reviewed by the jury and the jury has reached their decision on the case, the court then takes it upon themselves to decide whether or not a guilty criminal should be sentenced to death or to another punishment such as life in prison with out parole. If and once a person is declared guilty and sentenced to death, they have the right to appeal their case again in hopes of receiving clemency. To receive clemency there is another entire board of people reviewing the case, not just one in order to reduce bias and give the accused the fairest chance they have at receiving clemency. I do not believe that the justice system is such where only the guilty are convicted and the innocent are not. Juries are allowed to hold their own opinions on a case and vote in that manner whether it is actually valid or invalid. If an innocent criminal happens to have a bad lawyer, they are more likely to be convicted of the crime they did not commit and vise verse.

METHOD: Out of the given options I believe the most humane option is lethal injection. The only true problem I see with lethal injection is the fact that in the event that something goes wrong, it is dreadfully painful to the victim to go through with. Since a doctor is not allowed to actually do the procedure of the injection, the injectors may not be as well versed as to what could hurt a victim. The remaining methods all should be considered cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th amendment. Hanging, a fire squad, electrocution, and the gas chamber all will no doubtingly induce pain onto the victim in every case and may take longer to actually kill the victim. If a victim is to be sentenced to death, it should be done quickly and painlessly.

DATA: A huge and obvious conclusion that is drawn from the data is the majority of the executions nationwide are those of African American adult males. The top 3 states that have the most death row inmates are California, Texas, and Florida. This may be due to the size of the states. These states are larger than many other states and more densely populated. A direct relationship seems to be shown with the size of the state and the number of death row inmates. There are very few women on death row, the state with the highest number of women as inmates is California with 11 women. The most commonly used method of execution is lethal injection- in my opinion this is due to it being thought of as the most humane way of execution. Illinois like many other states does not allow juvenile persons to be executed. However interestingly enough, Illinois will allow an inmate to be executed even if the inmate is mentally retarded. It appears that Texas has had the most executions with a total of 405. The state by state data tells us that the death penalty is used more when there are more inmates in the jails. It also appears that when a state is more southern and has a bigger African American population, the likelihood of the death penalty being used is higher. This simply proves the point that the death penalty is an unequal way to go about punishing those who have commit heinous crimes. The death penalty is an arbitrary way that the court can go about serving punishment for a crime. There are obviously flaws in the justice system that should be evaluated before the death penalty continues.

CHART: My views from the previous response stay the same after looking at these charts. The information from the charts show that it is actually more economic to keep an inmate in prison for life with no parol than it is for an execution to occur however both are very costly. The charts on this website are very misleading. For instance, one chart says that 56% of White defendants are executed whereas 35% of African American defendants are. The information provided is not out of one whole but out of itself. To get 56% of whites being executed it may be about 56 out of 100 defendants versus the 35 percent of African American defendants being executed which may be 350 out of 1000. The charts show that its a pretty even split between people who prefer the death penalty versus the people who prefer life in prison with no parol. The Death Penalty Information Center has a multitude of information that if looked at briefly is very convincing. This information however is statically and strategically placed in a way that will make a person be swayed into the ideas that the organization holds. For my opinion to be completely true, I would need to see the sole facts that the organization used to come up with their statistics.

Death Penalty #1

Clifford Boggess was rightfully executed. He murdered two elderly men and even though he claimed to be repenting for the terrible crimes he had commit, there is no way that he can honestly say he has forgiven himself for the horrific times he has caused both families. I do not believe that people can so easily change as to one day be a murderer and a few months later be an avid christian that has been released of all his sins. I think that by acting like he thinks "Jesus has forgiven me of my sins because I have forgiven myself" was a way that Boggess tried to mitigate his case.

I do hold sympathy for Boggess due to his home life growing up. If I were a lawyer I would consider his childhood a huge mitigating factor. It is important to note that Boggess' childhood was terrible. He was abused verbally, mentally, and physically. The average child who was abused as a child is more likely to be an abusive person as they age. Maybe if Boggess was not abused as a child he would not have grown up to be what he became: a murderer.

However above his horrific childhood, his lack of remorse of what he had done was a greater aggravating factor. Boggess, in the documentary, seemed as if he didn't care that he was on death row. Why should society care about the life of Clifford Boggess if Clifford Boggess failed to even care about his own life. Sure he may have been an influential artist- he had a lot of talent, but that doesn't make up for the fact that he took the life of two people. Everyones life is meaningful there is no doubt about it. But when one person takes the lives of others, why should they deserve to live?

Justice was not what the families of the victims got. Even they said that they did not feel any better after the death of Boggess than they did when he was in jail. The families of the victims have a complete right to feel hatred towards Boggess but that hatred wasn't just going to erase itself after Clifford Boggess was put to rest. To come to terms with the death of their loved ones, the families need to find their own ways to move on but the death of Clifford Boggess will not achieve that for them.

yours truly,
Amy