Death Penalty Research Paper

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Kaye Chester
Capital Punishment
“The crime is clear the truth is not”. That’s the tagline for the movie The Life of David Gale. The movie is about a man against capital punishment accused of murdering a fellow activist and sent to death row. Growing up in Texas, I had a strong belief in favor of the death penalty. It wasn’t until I saw this fictional movie that I began to wonder if capital punishment is wrong. Recent polls conducted by Gallup, and CNN indicated Americans' support for the death penalty is continuing to decline. According to Gallup's 2011 poll, the percentage of Americans approving the death penalty as a punishment for murder dropped to its lowest level in 39 years. Still 61% are supporters standing strong for the death penalty and making sure that they are heard. But is capital punishment in America just and impartial? Do Americans feels safer whenever the justice system takes the life of a murdering villain? Or are they beginning to see that the punishers of the villains are murderers too?
Thomas Eddlem thinks it pertinent to review the faulty reasoning of capital punishment opponents. He believes that the public has been misinformed. Eddlem author of “Essay Ten Anti-Death Penalty Fallacies: The Case Against Capital Punishment Relies on Myth, Misinformation, and Misplaced Emotionalism” says fallacies about racism, cost, innocence; just to name a few, can stand to be corrected. Correction: The claim that the death penalty unfairly impacts blacks and minorities is a deliberate fraud, Correction: While these figures are dubious at best, this argument deserves no response; Eddlem carries on this way through his entire essay, poking fun at any liberal idea that opposes capital punishment. He goes on to describe pale comparisons. Eddlem closes his essay by saying, “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to dawn on proponents employing this faulty reasoning that perhaps a just punishment in this world would best prepare a criminal for the next.” Eddlem is trying to suggest that anyone against the death penalty needs to be enlightened, that the death penalty will keep criminals from killing, and that without it, they might as well be handing a killer an axe.
Its takes a brave person like veteran police officer Norm Stamper to come forward and speak against the death penalty. In fact it was Norm Stamper who wrote an article in the Huffington Post titled, “Cowardice Killed Troy Davis” (Troy Davis was a man convicted of and executed for the August 19, 1989, murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia, but later evidence clearly showed blatant points of innocence.) Stamper describes the acts of all persons involved in Troy Davis’s execution as cowardice. He lists the cowards beginning with Davis’s own defense team and goes all the way up to the President of the United States. Stamper claims that the public defense system is weak and criticizes the way that prosecutors depend strongly on the reliability of jailhouse informants. Stamper doesn’t hold his tongue calling the some prosecutors unlawful and says that America has a failing justice system. Stamper makes a strong point about the fear of those
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