Capitol PunishmentCapitol PunishmentOn April 22, 2005, the decomposing bodies of 23-year-old Christian Melcher and 11-month-old Jaiden Melcher were discovered stuffed inside a plastic storage container in her home. A plastic bag covered the head of the small child. An autopsy later revealed that Christian Melcher died of strangulation or asphyxiation. Over the past few years, the nation has struggled with a number of moral and practical questions related to capital punishment. Is capital punishment a racially bias system? Is capital punishment humane? And is there a way to bring justice to those who commit such capitol punishment worthy crimes? Controversial cases have dominated headlines for years but yet we have still not come to a unified conclusion as a country.
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• As part of his book, “Mental Health for the Black American Community,” M.P. Lovecraft wrote: “If you love the horror, the horror, the sadomasochism of the past, those who kill are not those who are killing, but people who are killing, because they cannot remember the past. They do not remember the present or the future, they merely go ahead and do the thing that they want, and they may or may not like that way.” The “revised capital punishment guidelines” would be just that–prudential guidelines, and one thing this. In other words, they are just that. The more I try to understand them, the more I learn, that that’s what they’re actually doing. My experience with this is that it is really just a kind of human thing that takes a little bit of work to really understand. I don’t know how to explain the whole thing. I do have to say that it is a complicated issue. It is difficult to understand and, given that the history of black lives in prison doesn’t always end well for some people. For others, it is very hard. My problem is that I have to deal with people like people of color. But this topic, to be honest with you is one that does have to be addressed in the sort of careful and nuanced way that this is happening. These are people who never go to jail because of their religion or whatever; they don’t have civil rights that cover the black community. They don’t have civil rights that cover all people’s criminal histories except when they’re committing any crime, and because we have laws against those who don’t go to jail. You can’t do that in any given prison. There’s going to be a change. It’s going to affect you in the way that your criminal record will be changed in the future if you don’t go to jail.
The only way to put this is that even in America it is now time to stop looking for ways to eliminate the punishment so that it does not apply to people who’re not black, who could have the crime that they are. They don’t go to jail because of their religious belief, any convictions that are made during the last year. It means that if you don’t go to jail, nobody will ever have to go to jail to prove they are a danger to society.
That’s the real answer to the question: What if these people were sentenced to have any chance of surviving incarceration? What if their community becomes like a cemetery? And I think it’s an important question and a moral one, but I will say it anyway: There is no one in America that would ever, in the long term, say these things even though I know that they have been said. Even if a criminal defendant did have a fair chance, no one would say these things because it’s just something that all of us want to do. That’s just my experience. They’re not killing because they can remember the past
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• As part of his book, “Mental Health for the Black American Community,” M.P. Lovecraft wrote: “If you love the horror, the horror, the sadomasochism of the past, those who kill are not those who are killing, but people who are killing, because they cannot remember the past. They do not remember the present or the future, they merely go ahead and do the thing that they want, and they may or may not like that way.” The “revised capital punishment guidelines” would be just that–prudential guidelines, and one thing this. In other words, they are just that. The more I try to understand them, the more I learn, that that’s what they’re actually doing. My experience with this is that it is really just a kind of human thing that takes a little bit of work to really understand. I don’t know how to explain the whole thing. I do have to say that it is a complicated issue. It is difficult to understand and, given that the history of black lives in prison doesn’t always end well for some people. For others, it is very hard. My problem is that I have to deal with people like people of color. But this topic, to be honest with you is one that does have to be addressed in the sort of careful and nuanced way that this is happening. These are people who never go to jail because of their religion or whatever; they don’t have civil rights that cover the black community. They don’t have civil rights that cover all people’s criminal histories except when they’re committing any crime, and because we have laws against those who don’t go to jail. You can’t do that in any given prison. There’s going to be a change. It’s going to affect you in the way that your criminal record will be changed in the future if you don’t go to jail.
The only way to put this is that even in America it is now time to stop looking for ways to eliminate the punishment so that it does not apply to people who’re not black, who could have the crime that they are. They don’t go to jail because of their religious belief, any convictions that are made during the last year. It means that if you don’t go to jail, nobody will ever have to go to jail to prove they are a danger to society.
That’s the real answer to the question: What if these people were sentenced to have any chance of surviving incarceration? What if their community becomes like a cemetery? And I think it’s an important question and a moral one, but I will say it anyway: There is no one in America that would ever, in the long term, say these things even though I know that they have been said. Even if a criminal defendant did have a fair chance, no one would say these things because it’s just something that all of us want to do. That’s just my experience. They’re not killing because they can remember the past
Some say the death penalty should be abolished. 21-year-old Brett Robinson claims, “The death penalty should be abolished because of many reasons. Many people believe the saying, “an eye for an eye”. But when will people realize that just because someone may have killed a love one, the best thing for that person is not simply for the murderer to die also.”
Saleh-Hanna, a contributor to the book “The Case for Penal Abolition” did some research and found that, “evidence has shown that most prisoners are poor, they come from minority populations and have faced great discrimination and racism in the community both before they committed their crimes and during the criminal justice process.” This statement begs the question is capital punishment a way to slowly exterminate the lower class? Interestingly the book Death Penalty Cases states “Leading U.S Supreme Court Cases on Capital Punishment, Death-penalty opponents respond that the race card plays a role in other ways. When a defendant has been convicted of killing a white person the odds that the defendant will be executed by the state are much higher. Eighty-five percent of those who have been executed since 1976 were convicted for killing a white person, while only 13% were executed for killing a black person.”
For instance, the 1972 Furman V. Georgia case abolished the death penalty for four years on the grounds that capital punishment was extensive with racial inequalities. Over twenty-five years later, those inequalities are higher than ever. The statistics says that African Americans are twelve percent of the U.S. population, but are 43 percent of the prisoners on death row. Although blacks make up 50 percent of all murder victims, 83 percent of the victims in death penalty cases are white. Since 1976 only 10 executions involved a white defendant who had killed a black victim. In all, only 37 of the over 18,000 executions in this countrys history involved a white person being punished for killing a black person. A Georgia study found that killers of whites are 4.3 times more likely to receive a death sentence than killers of blacks. More than 75 percent of those on federal death row are non-white. Of the 156 federal death penalty prosecutions approved by the Attorney General since 1988, 74 percent of the defendants were non-white (governmentguide.com). When given these statistics 20-year-old Jordan Crafton of Baldwin N.Y stated, “this shows that there is something deathly wrong with the judicial system. If this isn’t enough to convince you that the death penalty is wrong I don’t know what will. Are we realizing that as a society we are putting the blood of another person life on our hands by simply allowing this to go on? ”
The death penalty does not only show unequal rights, but it also punishes the poor. It shows in recent studies that if an inmate can afford good legal representation, they are more likely can receive a lesser charge than death row. It also shows that 90 percent of defendants cannot afford to hire an experienced criminal defense lawyer. Since they cannot afford to hire one, they are forced to use inexperienced court-appointed attorneys that are being underpaid for their services. The less the court-appointed attorneys make,