Capital Punishment Essay - The Fatal State of the Death-Penalty System

The Fatal deduction of the Death-Penalty System In 1997, the affirm of Florida botched Pedro Medinas execution. When the switch was flipped on the 50-year-old electrical chair, nicknamed Old Sparky, the mask covering Medinas face caught on fire. Flames up to a foot long shot of his face for 6-10 seconds. A thick, black gage filled the room, and the prison guards closed the curtain, hiding the rest of the job from the take aback witnesses. Bob Butterworth, then Floridas attorney general, said that Medinas agonizing dying would be a deterrent to crime. People who want to commit murder, he said, break not do so in Florida because we may have a problem with our electric chair. Such cases are likely to horrify death penalty proponents and foes alike. (After another botched execution in 1999, this time with the impudently electric chair, Florida gave inmates the option of lethal injection or the chair). What is even to a greater extent abominable than these clear in offices of c ruel and unusual punishment, however, is the mounting evidence that more people being convicted of murder, sent to death path, and probably even penalise in the United States are simply not guilty. The only panache to reasonably evaluate the system without running the risk of executing more innocents in the process is for Congress to issue an immediate national moratorium on executions. On Jan 31, 2000, Governor George Ryan (R-IL), a death-penalty proponent, announced a moratorium on executions in his state until the system is investigated. Governor Ryan had more than sufficient grounds to show that Illinoiss criminal-justice system is fraught with error Since 1977, when Illinois reinstated the death penalty (following a 1976 Supreme-Court judgment allowing states to do ... ...s-16,000 of them, dating back five years. While rapists can be feed from prison if DNA evidence clears them, executions are irrevocable. Given the problems in state and national DNA databanks, it is cr ucial that those on death row get more time to explore any evidence that could muster out them. Governor George W. Bush of Texas (where 463 people are on death row) maintains that he is certain that every person of the over 100 who have been penalise during his tenure is guilty. The fact that Texas has no public-defender system and that Bush has spent such(prenominal) time over the past year campaigning outside the state has not made a dent in Bushs certainty. For those who, regardless of their stance on the death penalty, would like to take the time to examine the evidence and aim for a higher standard, state and national moratoriums are immediately the best course of action.