Myth 2.The death penalty is handed out to the worst criminals who have committed the worst crimes

Myth 1.The death penalty is deterrent to murder.

SEVEN MYTHS WHICH SUPPORT THE DEATH PENALTY

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Task 1. Read & comprehend the text.

The death penalty may, in fact, add to the violent nature of society and increase the murder rates. The FBI Uniform Crime Reports Division publication, Crime in the US, released in 1980, showed murder rates in states which have abolished the death penalty averaged 5.1 per 100.000 population while states still using the death penalty averaged 9.1 per 100.000. This data is consistent with a study on deterrence by the Council on Crime and Delinquency in 1992.

The state may be used as an instrument of suicide by self-destructive persons who lack the will to take their own lives.

Murder is a horrible crime and this in and of itself is a powerful deterrent. State sanctioning of murder reduces the horror of murder, but our society is not improved by habituation to the taking of lives.

The truth is that the death penalty is reserved for a particular group of people who commit murder rather than punishment for a particular kind of murder that is committed. As such, the death penalty is arbitrary and capricious.

It is a form of racism and classism that punishes severely those who kill people society holds in high regard. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, in his opinion in Godfrey vs. Georgia (1980) writes, “The task of eliminating arbitrariness in the infliction of capital punishment is proving to be one which our criminal justice system – and perhaps any criminal justice system – is unable to perform.

Myth 3. Victim’s families want the death penalty.

“My brother, William S. Abner, age 54, was fatally shot in the back by a business associate in 1974. My opposition to the death penalty is grounded in my Christian faith that the redemptive love of God is for all people and that no human being has the right to take the life of another. Our dealings with each other should be such that the redemptive love of God can work in our lives and that is not possible if we kill each other.” Tennala A. Gross of Greenville.

“May 6, 1995, marked the twentieth anniversary of the murder of my daughter Betsy, in Raleigh. After waiting almost eight years for a trial in her case, which resulted in a sentence of two consecutive life sentences, I was relieved to know that her murderer would be in prison for the foreseeable future. I do not “deserve” to live, but am persuaded against capital punishment because of what it does to us individually and to our community as a whole. The basis for my conviction is my belief in the sacredness of human life. The process of deciding legally to terminate the life of a convicted person seems to draw everyone into a vortex in which personal responsibility is shifted to someone or something else. It develops an energy as system which is difficult for an individual to resist or escape. A Roman Circus atmosphere envelopes those who stand outside a prison as the time of scheduled execution approaches, and their celebration of the death of another human being desensitizes all of us to human pain and suffering. I would rather their energies be used to meet the needs of the survivors of the victim of that executed person’s crimes. The elimination of the death penalty frees us as individuals and society from a Dance of Death into a creative Affirmation of Life.” Betty Parks of Fletcher, North Carolina.

“I have always opposed the death penalty. Although both my husband and my mother-in-law were murdered, I refuse to accept the cynical notion that their killer deserves the death penalty”, Coretta Scott King.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-17