TOBY'S CORNER

Date: November 4, 1998

Re: The Crucible, by Arthur Miller

Capital Punishment

Each year there are about 250 people added to death row and 35 executed. The death penalty is the harshest form of punishment enforced in the United States today. Once a jury has convicted a criminal offense they go to the second part of the trial, the punishment phase. If the jury recommends the death penalty and the judge agrees then the criminal will face some form of execution, lethal injection is the most common form used today. There was a period from 1972 to 1976 that capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Their reason for this decision was that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment under the eighth amendment. The decision was reversed when new methods of execution were introduced.

Capital punishment is a difficult issue and there are as many different opinions as there are people.

I think capital punishment is used as a kind of scaring of people from murdering or raping their fellow men. But the question is, does this kind of punishment keep criminals from murdering or raping? I think it does not, because the United States have a very high murderer rate although there is the capital punishment. There is also another morally question: Is a country which is against killing people justified to execute murderer? And can you be really sure that you don`t execute an innocent person?

In The Crucible innocent people were killed only because of some not provable accusations. This show how people can use the law and in this case the capital punishment to harm their fellow men, especially the ones they don`t like and get rid of them.

I am of the opinion that capital punishment is in our civilization absolutely unnecessary. I have some arguments against capital punishment:

- Sometimes a person might be put to death who is innocent.

- Capital punishment is inflicted disproportionately on the poor and minorities.

- The claim that the threat of capital punishment reduces violent crime is inconclusive, certainly not proven, and extremely difficult to disprove.

- If there were ever any reason to the deterrence argument, it is negated by the endless appeals, delays, technicalities, and retrials that keep persons condemned to death waiting for execution for years on end. One of the strongest arguments right now against capital punishment is that we are too incompetent to carry it out. That incompetence becomes another injustice.

- Persons who commit vicious crimes have often suffered from neglect, emotional trauma, violence, cruelty, abandonment, lack of love, and a host of destructive social conditions. These extenuating circumstances may have damaged their humanity to the point that it is unfair to hold them fully accountable for their wrongdoing.