Death Penalty Deters Violent Crimes Summary

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In “Death Penalty Deters Violent Crime”, Senator Strom Thurmond starts by asking the question, “Does the death penalty have a legitimate role in our efforts to punish vicious criminals?” (56). Thurmond makes the argument that the death penalty is just. He supports this claim by saying, “The death penalty recognizes society’s belief that there some crimes which are so vicious, so heinous and brutal that no penalty lesser than death will suffice” (56). Thurmond then goes into three different cruel murder stories to support his claim that the death penalty deters crime. The three stories of the cruel murderers do not support his claim because in the telling of the third murder account, Thurmond mentions that the defendant committed a murder before: “On July 5th, 1978, just six months after he completed a 2 ½ -year prison term for beating a man to death. Harris decided to rob a bank in San Diego” (57). The threat of receiving the death penalty as punishment had no effect …show more content…
This claim is not well supported because Thurmond does not elaborate on what justice means. He also says that the American public supports the death penalty, and from that means that the death penalty is just. To support this, he states statistics from a Gallup Poll about the death penalty: “A recent Gallup Poll shows that public support for the death penalty is at the highest point recorded in more than half a century, with 79 percent favoring the death penalty for murder” (56). This statistic that Thurmond mentions is not reliable because he says, “The American people agree with me” (56). This statement would imply that the Gallup Poll conducted asked every individual from all 50 states if they supported the death penalty. The American people is not just one state or ten states. It is a vast majority of people all across America. The Gallup Poll takes a small percentage of people into their surveys and estimates the

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