Understanding of Death Penalty
Multi-Source Persuasive Essay
Length: no less than 1,300 words, double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12-pt. font size, one-inch margins
This essay is to consist of your own thoughts, words, and ideas with properly cited and documented secondary sources as support.
Case Assignment
For this assignment, you will write an organized and well supported Persuasive Essay using three or more points of analysis. You will be most successful writing on a topic that is of interest to you. The best ideas are topical; they are what people are talking about today. Your goal is to convince the reader to accept your point of view on a given topic, so you must be convincing.
A well-organized essay has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning, or introduction, should include an opening sentence to grab your reader’s attention. Follow the opening sentence with a brief background on the topic or situation. The last sentence of the introduction is the thesis statement. The thesis states the main point of the essay, which in this case, would be a statement affirming the main point of view on the selected topic.
A well-supported essay includes supporting points, details, and examples. Each body paragraph must support (explain) your reasoning (rationale) using specific details. Each body paragraph must have a topic sentence that states the main point of the paragraph.
The conclusion typically summarizes the main points of the essay and/or closes with a lasting impression that connects the reader to their world.
This essay must include a combination of no less than EIGHT in-text citations from three or more credible and reliable sources. Citations are to be a combination of direct quotations and paraphrased quotations with or without the author's name, and a Reference List in APA Style must be included.
Be sure to proofread your essay and edit for proper grammar, punctuation, diction (word choice), and spelling, as errors in sentence skills will lower a final grade. A grade will be determined based on the Module 4 Case expectations and the Trident University General Education rubric for English.
Assignment Expectations
Write a Persuasive essay (no fewer than 1,300 words in length) that states and supports an original thesis statement.
Make and support a Persuasive claim in a well-supported, organized, and cohesive essay.
Select credible and reliable sources for use in a well-supported and cohesive essay.
Use a direct quotes, paraphrased quotes, and summaries in APA Style.
Should the Death Penalty be Abolished?
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Should the Death Penalty be Abolished?
Over 60% of the world’s population lives in countries that still practice capital punishments CITATION Cor16 \l 1033 (Corteen, Morley, Taylor, & Turner, 2016). While the practice is widely spread, it has sparked heated debates, and over the last century, more countries have increasingly come out against it. The supporters of the death penalty cite that it is a deterrent to crime and reasonable retribution for some crimes such as murder. However, the reasons to abolish the death penalty outweigh the reasons for it. Thus, the death penalty should be abolished because it has been proven that it is not a crime deterrent and that some innocent victims may lose their lives because of the flaws of the criminal justice system, and it has been used disproportionately by some governments for relatively small crimes. Therefore, irrespective of the arguments for the death penalty, it should be abolished.
One of the main reasons the death penalty should be abolished is that it is irreversible, and some innocent people may be wrongly accused and end up losing their lives. The United States is one of the countries in the West that have the death penalty. According to CITATION Rob21 \l 1033 (Dunham, 2021), ‘1534 people have been executed, and 185 exonerated from death in the United States since 1970.’ That means 1 in every 8.3 people have been exonerated. At such a rate, there must be innocent people who have been murdered by their governments. Some people have been exonerated posthumously, which highlights execution as a flawed punishment. While their names may be cleared, their lives have been taken by their governments. The irreversibility of death is one of the most compelling reasons why the death penalty should be abolished. The criminal justice system is not perfect, and many times it puts innocent people behind bars and eventually on the electric chair for crimes they never did. There have been reports of forced confessions, mishandling of evidence, corrupt prosecutors, and many other reasons showing that the existing criminal justice system is marred with injustice. Since we know that the criminal justice system is flawed, we should not have an irreversible penal action. In the last few decades, at least 18 people have been found innocent and exonerated after serving time on death row CITATION Inn09 \l 1033 (Innocence Project, 2009). In other cases, it is impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the death row inmate was guilty of the crime. Troy Davis was executed even when there was an individual who had confessed to the murder of the victim, and several witnesses recanted their testimonies, citing that the prosecutorial team compelled them to give false witness accounts. Many of those exonerated have been lucky because of new evidence or technology to prove their innocence. Thus, such a flawed system should not be given the power to take lives because its actions are irreversible.
Secondly, studies have shown that capital punishment is not a deterrent to crime CITATION Mug20 \l 1033 (Jouet, 2020). Crime rates have remained somewhat unchanged with or without the death penalty. On the contrary, the countries that have abolished capital punishment seem to have lower crime rates. For example, murder is one crime that leads to the death penalty, and data has shown that the death penalty does not affect the prevalence of the crime. According to CITATION Amn \l 1033 (Amnesty international), ‘the average murder rate in US states that had the death penalty in 2004 was 5.71 for every 100,000 compared to 4.02 in the states that had abolished it.’ Similarly, the murder rate in Canada fell by 44% since 1975, when she abolished capital punishment CITATION Car15 \l 1033 (Hoyle, 2015). Thus, the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime because it assumes that criminals anticipate the consequences of getting caught and deem the punishment acceptable, which is wrong. Some crimes that attract the death penalty are committed on the spur of the moment by people who do not have a criminal history. The moment leaves little room for the individual to examine the potential punishments for their actions. In some cases, the death penalty may lead to more violence. For example, armed robbery carries the death penalty, and criminals may consider killing their victims because it does not affect the potential punishment they may suffer for their actions.
The death penalty is not proportional to the crime committed, even in the case of murder. In some cases, there is a very thin line between what counts as an offense punishable by death. For example, treason and drug peddling crimes. In most countries that have not abolished the death penalty, one of the crimes that can attract this punishment is treason. Some of the people accused of treason are just protesting oppression by their government. Some people who are handed the death penalty in other countries are accused of actions that would be cons...