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Death Penalty 101

Welcome to Death Penalty 101:
Here are the main points of interest for today's class.

• Due to the stages of the capital crime process everything that takes place after the penalty phase trial and before the execution are in place to protect the rights of the accused. Technically the guilt phase and the penalty phase of the trial are also in place to protect the rights of the accused, but the technical defenition of "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" has sort of disappeared these days and therefore does not protect the rights of the accused anymore. After the penalty phase you have all of the appeal phases including the direct appeal, the post-conviction review, federal habeus corpus, and the clemency phase, are all appeals that are there to make sure that the accused actually deserves to be sentenced to death. Those all are in place to insure that the right decision was made. Even though all those processes are in place to make sure that the right decision is made, there seems to still be the few innocent people being sentenced to death and some even receiving the death penalty. Therefore I still think that the system is a flaud system and that it is insufficient.
• Of the methods of execution used by the U.S. there is only one humane method. That is the execution by lethal injection. The reason that this is humane and the others are not is because this one is the one with no pain involved. The criminal is given an injection in each arm and it slowly puts them to sleep and then kills them. The other methods, those being hanging, fire squad, gas chamber, and electrocution, should all be considered cruel and unusual by definition of the 8th amendment. They all involve a painful death and therefore should be banned. Especially the execution by gas chamber, that is of too much resemblence of the Holocaust, and therefore should be the first abolished. All of them should be abolished but if there is one that were to stay, it should be lethal injection.
• I believe that when you want to look for a conclusion to come to about the death penalty you need to date all the way back to pre-Civil War to get the conclusion. It is still really the battle between the North and the South. It is no surprise that the states that have the most death row inmates and also the most executions are the states of the South. Texas, Virginia, Oklahoma, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisianna are all in the top of the statistics when it comes to inmates and use. It tells us that the North will always be the North and that the South will always be the South. What I mean by this is that things will never change. Since the 1800s we have been fighting slavery and racism. It was thought to have been overcome after the North won the Civil War and Lincoln abolished slavery, it wasn't. It was thought to be overcome after the civil rights movement and after everyone was considered to be equal. Guess what... it wasn't. There is still racism that goes on, and you can see it in the judicial system, being that most of the inmates on death row are black, and that the states with the most inmates and most executions are the southern states (i.e. the one's who were in favor of slavery).
• In comparison to the demographics of the U.S. the number of blacks on death row, although less than whites, is still a higher percentage of their population. By this I mean that there are more whites in the U.S. then blacks but that the percentage of whites on death row to number of whites in America is less than the percentage of blacks on death row in comparison to blacks in America. In recent years the numbers in favor of the death penalty have decreased, the population is quickly turning against it. The reason for this is that people are finally realizing that the death penalty is actually costing them more money than holding them in jail. Since America is a country based on making and saving money, that is a huge determining factor is whether it stays or goes. The Death Penalty center is cleary against the death penalty being that is shows all the stats about money against the death penatly. It might be convincing to those who believe otherwise, but for those like myself who already know that the death penalty should be abolished, the facts are only reassuring. They should explain to people how holding the inmates in jail costs much less than when they convicted go through the appeals process and then the actual cost of the executions. It would make a very convincing argument.

That is all for this discussion, you are now dismissed from today's lecture on Issues in the American society. Tune in next time when I will be discussing the next topic that Mr. Kramer asks us to discuss. I have to get back to watching Sunday Night Football on NBC.

Death Penalty #1 Re:

Clifford Boggess, was a murderer. He admitted to doing it. He was waiting on death row for the last of his appeals, and the only thing he could try and prove was that he was not worthy of the death penalty. He had to try and prove that he was a changed man, through his paintings and his bible studies. Clifford Boggess was a mentally unstable man, and I think that is something that should have been seen. He killed without any guilt at the time, and after the fact, years later, he hopes for the families forgiveness. Claiming to have found God, he thinks that when he gets to heaven the people he murdered are just going to forgive him. Even if that was possible, I don't think that was going to happen. In his last days, Boggess was happier then ever, accepting death, he was ready to go. He took advantage of the moment, finishing his last paintings. He had potential with those paintings, in which if he was able to keep doing I believe that there was some promise. But Clifford Boggess life had come to an end, on his birthday, the day he chose. He felt it was sort of symbolic for him to go out on the same day he came in. Clifford Boggess was given the death penalty, lethal injection, and the families of his victims were there to watch. Some of his last words were "Remember today that I'll be with Jesus in paradise." Clifford Boggess was a mentally insane man, his belief of finding God, was actually more reason to believe that he was insane. He did not deserve the death penalty, nobody does, he deserved to be sentence to the care of a mental institution because the guy was unstable. I think the fact that years later he still hadn't accepted that his murders were wrong, and that he was just going to be forgiven by the families, is the main factor that his appeals of death penalty were not held up. If he had actually learned something on his time in death row, then maybe, but he did not show any improvement, besides his artwork and his religous belief. I think originally the families were anticipating the day and wanted this guy to get what he deserved, but when it was all over, I don't think they felt the same way walking on of the building. They seemed disturbed and they think that he got the easy way out. The death penalty is creul, it is not the easy way out. The two main mitagating factors in this case are that he tries to prove to the jury that he is changed through his art and through religion. As he awaits the death penalty he has become a born again Christian and claims to have found Jesus. And his paintings, which he does of life on death row, he sells by having pen pals. The problem is that the aggrivating factors of the case are to strong on the jury. The thought that he had not learned the wrong in what he had done is strong enough for the jury to uphold the sentence.
This is where my real opinions come out to play:
Clifford Boggess was a terrible man, who killed old men with no real cause except to put money in his pockets. What he did was so terrible that he may have been worthy of capital punishment. Here is the opinion. NOBODY DESERVES THE DEATH PENALTY! It is cruel and it is basically saying that you killed someone, we are going to kill you now, on this date at this time. Nobody deserves to die that way. If there is really a God, which is in question, then it will all be made up for in the long run. Death for these actions should not be considered the easy way out, it is inhumane and that is what is in question. Clifford Bogges although his actions are terrible and horrific, he should not have gotten the death penalty.