Free Essays on Capitol Punishment

Capital Punishment Introduction This day in age Murderers' actions are getting more and more incomprehensive. They are no longer just committing murder: they are torturing, mutilating and engaging in grossly inappropriate acts against fellow human beings. Behaviors such as this will continue if nothing is done to stop them. The death penalty is a humane way to punish the convicted and deter these gruesome acts. Early as 1930, we can find the first recorded execution. Between the times of 1930 to 1967 there was a recorded number of 3,859 people executed. The following nine years would bring victory for those against capital punishment, there was no executions done in this time frame. Gregg vs. Georgia, Supreme Court of 1976 made a ruling that "the death penalty does not violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment." The death penalty has been accepted by thirty-nine states of America (Newton, 1983). I will be showing how selections of death row are made. The last of subject matters that I will be touching on are the problems with the process of capital punishment and a possible more effective approach. I will also be concluding my findings and ending with a thought of my own. There are many logical factors that determine a person being sentenced to death. A criminal's past record and the seriousness of the crime currently committed are two major factors in determining death row sentencing. These factors are what have sent more men to death row than women. Some people believe that the selection of death row is unfair due to the number of men vs. women facing it. Jurors have many things to consider when convincing the accused. How brutal was it, how many people were killed, was it premeditated, was it torturous? These are all things that the jurors considering when determining the fate of the accused. Of course they also have to decide if the evidence proves, with out a doubt, the person is guilty. In se... Free Essays on Capitol Punishment Free Essays on Capitol Punishment Capital Punishment Introduction This day in age Murderers' actions are getting more and more incomprehensive. They are no longer just committing murder: they are torturing, mutilating and engaging in grossly inappropriate acts against fellow human beings. Behaviors such as this will continue if nothing is done to stop them. The death penalty is a humane way to punish the convicted and deter these gruesome acts. Early as 1930, we can find the first recorded execution. Between the times of 1930 to 1967 there was a recorded number of 3,859 people executed. The following nine years would bring victory for those against capital punishment, there was no executions done in this time frame. Gregg vs. Georgia, Supreme Court of 1976 made a ruling that "the death penalty does not violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment." The death penalty has been accepted by thirty-nine states of America (Newton, 1983). I will be showing how selections of death row are made. The last of subject matters that I will be touching on are the problems with the process of capital punishment and a possible more effective approach. I will also be concluding my findings and ending with a thought of my own. There are many logical factors that determine a person being sentenced to death. A criminal's past record and the seriousness of the crime currently committed are two major factors in determining death row sentencing. These factors are what have sent more men to death row than women. Some people believe that the selection of death row is unfair due to the number of men vs. women facing it. Jurors have many things to consider when convincing the accused. How brutal was it, how many people were killed, was it premeditated, was it torturous? These are all things that the jurors considering when determining the fate of the accused. Of course they also have to decide if the evidence proves, with out a doubt, the person is guilty. In se... Free Essays on Capitol Punishment The Ultimate Punishment Your choices would be either to die gasping and coughing to try to force toxic chemicals out of your lungs, or to be injected with a lethal mixture of chemicals until your body submits to the poison circulating in through your veins. That would be a rather tough decision to make. It is the decision made by a few inmates on death-row. These methods of murder are an example of inhumanities and injustices in today’s system of capital punishment. The commonly offered arguments for the death penalty are filled with holes. The death penalty has yet to be proven as an effective deterrent. And it is actually a continuation of the cycle of violence which â€Å"...degrades all who are involved in its enforcement, as well as its victim.†(Stewart 1) Realistically, the death penalty is an expensive and time consuming process. The death penalty is ineffective when it comes to serving justice to our society today. The most frequent argument for capital punishment is probably that of deterrence. The idea behind this is that criminals will choose not to do certain crimes for fear that a death penalty could be their punishment. Numerous studies have been created attempting to prove this belief; however, â€Å"all the evidence taken together makes it hard to be confident that capital punishment deters more than long prison terms do.†(Cavanagh 4) Going ever farther, the executive director of the Montgomery based Equal Justice Initiative, has stated that â€Å"people are increasingly realizing that the more we resort to killing as a legitimate response to our frustration and anger with violence, the more violent our society becomes†¦We could execute all three thousand people on death row, and most people would not feel any safer tomorrow.†(Frame 51) In addition, with the growing humanitarianism of modern society, the number of inmates actually put to death is lower than 50 years ago. This creates a situation in which the d...

Quotes From The Brothers Karamazov

Quotes From The Brothers Karamazov The Brothers Karamazov is one of the greatest novels of all time. The book was the final novel Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote before his death. This important Russian novel is often praised for its complexity. Quotations From the Novel Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end... but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature ... And to found that edifice on its unavenged tears: would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth!Im a Karamazov... when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and Im even pleased that Im falling in such a humiliating position, and for me, I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame, I suddenly begin a hymn. Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same time, but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, and I feel a joy without which the world cannot stand and be.Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I dont want harmony. From love for humanity, I don t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; its beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. Its not God that I dont accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket. Listen: if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it? It’s quite incomprehensible why they should have to suffer, and why they should buy harmony with their suffering.The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.Everything is permitted...All is lawful.There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all. Whereas by shifting your own laziness and powerlessness onto others, you will end by sharing in Satans pride and murmuring against G od. Viper will eat viper, and it would serve them both right!What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but thats a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, thats all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.I think the devil doesnt exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral; everything would be lawful, even cannibalism.Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.Hesitation, anxiety, the stru ggle between belief and disbelief- all that is sometimes such a torment for a conscientious man... that it’s better to hang oneself. In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too.Very different is the monastic way. Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet they alone constitute the way to real and true freedom: I cut away my superfluous and unnecessary needs, through obedience I humble and chasten my vain and proud will, and thereby, with God’s help, attain freedom of spirit, and with that, spiritual rejoicing!Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.I may be wicked, but still I gave an onion.A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. Wh en he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lyingto others and to yourself. Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain.So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are to blame for them.There are souls that in their narrowness blame the whole world. But overwhelm such a soul with mercy, give it love, and it will curse what it has done, for there are so many germs of good in it. The soul will expand and behold how m erciful God is, and how beautiful and just people are. He will be horrified, he will be overwhelmed with repentance and the countless debt he must henceforth repay. Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously.It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.Its the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.The more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.