Death Penalty Has no Place in U.S.

Capital punishment, the death row or the death penalty is an officially permitted process wherewith someone is condemned to death by the government as a penalty for a crime commitment.

In each country which has authorized the death penalty there is a debate that occurs between the representatives of two opposing points of view. Some people consider the death row to be extremely beneficial for the society and believe it will make the country free from criminal activity. Others think that a civilized society does not regard death as the only way to penalize any misdemeanor or criminal. During its old history, the death penalty caused a lot of hue and cry. People who do not support the capital punishment explain their thoughts by the brutal, unjust and cruel nature of the punishment or the one that according to jungles laws sounds as “a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye”.  It is indicated that any civilized state cannot have the death row.

According to the article “Death Penalty Has no Place in U.S.” by Cynthia Tucker, capital punishment has to be done away from the United States of America. In her article, Tucker concludes that she is against the death row. During the whole text the author asks the readers the following questions: whether the U.S.A. deserves the capital punishment and whether it is an effective penalty for those guilty. However, there is no excellent argument in support of the capital punishment. Cynthia Tucker in her article examines some arguments against the death row and tries to explain the reader that the U.S.A. would be better without it.

 In her article, author differentiates three main questions which relate to the thesis statement which is “Death Penalty Has no Place in U.S.A.”. First of all, the capital punishment is not equally relevant to everybody. It dishonestly discriminates black and Latino people. Later, the author makes a connection between the judiciary in the past ant the justice system today. As it was a long time ago, judiciary in the past discriminated people due to the color or their skin and the same happens today. She argues that in the past a black person’s life was worthless in comparison with a white person’s life. In a case when a white man killed black or Latinos, the biggest penalty he could achieve was a slap. On the contrary, when a black man killed a white, he would probably be put to death, and his family would suffer from being terrorized in his absence. The same things can be noticed today. Tucker affirms that black people and Latinos are the ones immensely sentenced to death before. The system of justice still recognizes minority’s lives as less worth than the one of the white people. 

The next argument the author proposes is that the capital punishment does not decrease the level of crimes. A lot of people who support the death penalty do not think the same way. They say if the U.S.A. did not have the death row, the crime rate would be much higher. However, the author claims it is not true.

The third argument Tucker enlightens in the article is that many people were enduring the period of the death penalty even after it was found that they were wrongly condemned. So it followed that the capital punishment was so imprecise. A lot of innocent people suffered from it, and even one death is a lot for law-abiding citizenship. Cynthia Tucker uses these points to show Americans that the capital punishment can never be good and useful for a society.

There are several facts that can be used to oppose to author’s arguments that the capital punishment has to be abolished because it is not equally relevant to all people. Some could argue that this is just a little problem, which has to be somehow solved. It does not require a lot of efforts. Moreover, the death penalty has not to be abandoned as a procedure. The U.S. States Supreme court held that it is unconstitutional to sentence a person to death row when he or she committed a crime of the first degree of seriousness. Besides, the statistics remnants that more white people were killed by the capital punishment than black or Latinos all counted. The same should happen to the people who committed any crime. It does not matter whether they are black or white.

Above arguments do not influence the fact that mostly poor people are sentenced to the death row. The statistics reveals that the number of executed people does not depend on the color of one’s skin. In other words, no matter whether a person is black or white corporal punishment depends on a socio-economic position of the convicted.  A lot of studies were done inferring that irresistible majority of executed people were poor and had a low social status. This happens because of the amount of money one should pay for a professional lawyer. Mostly often these people are stuck with public lawyers who cannot offer them the appropriate juridical help. Black people, as a rule, have lower social status, thus more black are executed, which is unfair.

Author claims that there is a great possibility for the innocent people to be sentenced to death penalty. The killing of even one innocent is a sufficient reason to abolish the capital punishment. The government makes a lot of mistakes during this procedure. It is a crime to kill innocent people or a person who does not deserve such treatment. The government let others off in the name of keeping the capital punishment entirely for those who actually are worthy of it. When someone makes a mistake allowing other to die, there is no way back. It is not the government’s duty to sentence people for a death. Much better alternative is to put a criminal to the jail, which will act the same. The government removes the guilty person from the society and he or she will not be able to kill anyone or to commit the crime one more time.  

As everyone noticed, there are incompatible opinions about the fact whether death penalty should be abolished or not. That is why, it is obligatory for a reader or listener to think logically and critically to make their own decisions and summaries.