POL303: The American Constitution

Respond to Peers: Respond to at least two of your classmates’ posts by Day 7. In your responses to your peers of at least 200 words, extend the conversation by examining their claims or arguments in more depth or by responding to the posts that they make to you. Keep the discussion on target and try to analyze things in as much detail as you can. For instance, analyze your classmate’s argument concerning age in the application of the death penalty.  Are the examples they provide balanced or biased towards one viewpoint? Also, support your analysis with examples from the required material(s) and/or other scholarly resources, and properly cite any references.

When it comes to the death penalty there has always been controversy. When it comes to using the death penalty, the courts should make sure they have correct evidence that that person did it before being able to kill them.  In the US, there are five legal methods of execution: lethal injection, electrocution, firing squad, hanging, and gassing.  These are all intended to be as painless as possible, but they all run the risk of accidents. Instead of giving inmates the death pentaly they should lock them up for life in a tiny cell if the courts cannot prove 100 % they did the crime. For example Joseph O'Dell was convicted and executed in Virginia in 1997. Death Penalty Information Center (2015) states that “New DNA blood evidence has thrown considerable doubt on the murder and rape conviction of O'Dell. In reviewing his case in 1991, three Supreme Court Justices, said they had doubts about O'Dell's guilt and whether he should have been allowed to represent himself. Without the blood evidence, there is little linking O'Dell to the crime. In September, 1996, the 4th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals reinstated his death sentence and upheld his conviction. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review O'Dell's claims of innocence and held that its decision regarding juries being told about the alternative sentence of life-without-parole was not retroactive to his case. O'Dell asked the state to conduct DNA tests on other pieces of evidence to demonstrate his innocence but was refused. He was executed on July 23rd.” This should have never happened, the courts should have had to make sure there was no way he could have been innocent before killing him. It is not right to kill someone just because you think they are guilty. 

When it comes to criminals that have no remorse for what they have done or have done the crime over and over and it can be proven then I would agree that the death penalty would be appropriate. If a person kills and innocent person then they should receive the death penalty. This would keep them from doing it again. For example the case of Coker v. Georgia, Petitioner Erlich Anthony Coker, while serving sentences for murder, rape, kidnapping, and assault, escaped from a Georgia jail He broke into a house, raped and kidnapped the resident woman and took her car (procon, 2008). After they found him they sentenced him to the death penalty. 

The argument that is the most credible, reliable and valid is that in order for the courts to sentence someone to the death penalty they should have to have no dought that that person did what he/she is being accused of. They should have to be 100 % sure that way they are not killing an innocent person. 

Reference
Death Penalty Information Center (2015) Executed But Possibly Innocent. Retrieved from:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executed-possibly-innocent
Pro Con (2008). Major Death Penalty Cases in the US Supreme Court 1972 – 2008. Retrieved from:
http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=001769