Albachiara

Nicole Albachiara
English 102
Professor Adam Padgett
3 April 2016
Research Paper- Is the death penalty inhumane?
Topics that have lots of emotion and controversy are the ones that we usually try to steer
away from. At first, I did not want to think about the death penalty because that meant I had to
understand the effects it had on the families of the criminal and victim. What I soon realized was,
if I was going to research something in such detail, it has to be an intense subject with lots of
depth, views and emotion. After completing a lot of research, it became clear that the United
States of America should eliminate the death penalty because it is inhumane.
The first article I read was, Death Penalty: Another View by Xiaohua Zhu. It is
interesting how one article can change your views on a topic so quickly. In this article, the author
holds a strong stance that the death penalty is necessary for having a consequence that is great
enough to decrease the amount of murders that occur within our country. He holds a credible
stance since he had a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and was a writer for Economic and
Political Weekly. The reason I choose to discuss this source first was because it shaped as well as
changed how I analyzed the sources that I found after studying this one. The biggest thing I kept
in mind during the research process was to go in with an open mind and not have a predetermined view on the topic. When I read this article, I was instantly swayed to believe that we
should indeed have the death penalty. However, if you noticed, this was not my end conclusion
after researching. This article had the strongest influence on my research topic, not because it
shaped my stance but because it helped me understand the importance of collecting all the data

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and seeing when the author used rhetoric to convince me of something. The author of this article,
Xiaohua Zhu feels that, The death penalty serves at least two useful purposes. The first is to
punish those who have committed atrocious crimes, usually murder or genocide, against other
individuals or a society. Touching on the contradicting argument, he states that, Opponents to
the death penalty argue that the execution of criminals is no less barbaric than the murders they
are convicted of and that it will not restore the life of the victim anyway (Xiaohua). He
continues on to state that we might protect the life of the felon by eliminating the death penalty
but put in jeopardy the life of many more innocent people, especially the weak and vulnerable
(Xiaohua). This part of the article makes many assumptions. The author almost assumes that if
we do not sentence criminals to death, they will be set free and hurt another person. Most of
these criminals will be sentenced to life in prison without any chance of parole so this is not a
strong argument. Finally, he uses pathos to emphasize how the weak and vulnerable will be at
more risk (Xiaohua). This does not hold true because if someone has committed murder against
an innocent person in the past, all people are at equal risk since there is no reasoning behind the
person he or she will choose to kill.
Another big argument is that capital punishment is a way to control crime. In the article,
"The Case Against the Death Penalty," by The American Civil Liberties Union, it expresses that,
When police chiefs were asked to rank the factors that, in their judgment, reduce the rate of
violent crime, they mentioned curbing drug use and putting more officers on the street, longer
sentences and gun control. They ranked the death penalty as least effective. The death penalty is
not the only effective way to remove criminals from normal society so this should not be a
leading argument for those who stand for it. Without the death penalty, these criminals will face
time in prison and Americas citizens will remain safe. If anything, sentencing murderers to death

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is giving them an easy way out because they do not have to deal with the consequences of their
actions and live with the fact that they took away an innocent humans life.
The biggest argument against the death penalty is the risk that innocent people
will be sentenced to death wrongfully. In the Times article, "The U.S. May Have A Lot of
Innocent People on Death Row," it states that that approximately 120 of the roughly 3,000
inmates on death row in America might not be guilty, while additional scores of wrongfully
convicted inmates are serving life in prison after their death sentences were reduced over
technical legal errors. These statistics are credible because the author of this article is a
Columbia University professor who is a leading authority on statistics and the law (Drehle). As
well as, The American Civil Liberties Union informs us that, Since 1973, over 140 people have
been released from death rows in 26 states because of innocence. Nationally, at least one person
is exonerated for every 10 that are executed. These numbers make us stand back and reevaluate how we can justify killing someone without a guarantee that they are guilty without any
question.
Another counter argument to eliminating the death penalty was stated in the article
written by Nancy Berns. It states that, Pro-death penalty advocates have countered the
innocence argument by denying that any innocent person has been executed and arguing that
safeguards are in place to prevent wrongful conviction. Xiaohua Zhu restates this contradiction
when he says, the right way to avoid such error is not to abolish the death penalty, but to
improve the legal system and the administration of justice. By improving our legal system or
putting measures in place, we may decrease the amount of false convictions by a certain
percentage but it will never be as high as eliminating it by 100% by eradicating the death penalty
all together. In Contesting the Victim Card: Closure Discourse and Emotion in Death Penalty

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Rhetoric by Nancy Berns, she states the importance of understanding that the growing
evidence that innocent people are being convicted and placed on death row has been the lynchpin
in the new abolitionism. Research indicates that it is an argument that may be having significant
impact on reshaping the public opinion. This quote is verified when Xiaohua Zhu states that,
Perhaps the strongest argument against capital punishment is the irreparable consequence of an
error in the process of justice. These two quotes combined emphasize how the counterargument
is held in order to persuade their audience, and it is very clear that they are not only arguing the
chance of error to protect the people on death row.
Almost everyones biggest fear is getting a call that they have lost a loved one. Now
imagine getting a call that a loved ones life was taken away for no reason. People feel that the
death penalty is closure for the victims family. The author of the article Contesting the Victim
Card: Closure Discourse and Emotion in Death Penalty Rhetoric touches on the idea that giving
closure to the victims family is used as a rhetoric strategy to have abolitionists be on the side
of innocent people rather than just murderers- a strategy that appeals to a larger section of
society (Berns). By using moral outrage and closure as a leading argument as a reason why the
death penalty should remain in tact, it uses pathos to connect those who disagree to imagine how
they would feel if someone they loved lost their innocent life. After realizing the strategy that
goes into this argument, it is easier to rationalize it. Everyday millions of people lose family and
friends and they must find closure without having the option of sentencing someone to death.
Vengeance is not the only way to heal and move forward from losing someone special; there are
other healthier methods to move on.
One of the most black and white arguments that comes along with discussing the death
penalty is if it is in accordance with the Constitution. In the ACLU article, they feel that capital

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punishment denies the due process of law (Bedau). This is because if a person is sentenced to
death, it does not allow them the opportunity for them to benefit if new evidence has been found
that could exonerate them. One of the most popular documentaries on Netflix right now is
Making a Murderer. This proves how as years go on and technology advances, cases may be
reviewed and there is a chance that murderer's and other criminals could be released as new
evidence is discovered that proves them not guilty. The American Civil Liberties Union also
states that, The death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection (Bedau).
This is because not all criminals have the same level of defense teams and sentencing often
depends and racial color and other factors. In The American Death Penalty and the (in)visibility
of Race by Carol S. Steiker and Jordan M. Steiker, they serve to show how the death penalty
has been corrupt for many years. Moving through history, they focus primarily on the unfairness
against races and social classes (Steiker). They state, not only did the number of blacks
executed surpass the number of whites executed during the eighteenth century, but blacks were
often executed for different crimes (Steiker). To further understand how this denies the
guarantee of equal protection and has slipped through our legal system, It states that, the birth of
the Supreme Courts constitutional regulation of capital punishment was largely devoid of
mention of racially inflected history of the law and practice of the death penalty, despite how
central the issue of race was to the litigation effort that forced the Courts hand (Steiker). It
almost seems as if this is a subject that many people just look away from and have been for many
years. Until we can guarantee that everyone has equal protection, the death penalty should be
considered inhumane.
Finally, if we look at statistics from, "Hardening of the Attitudes: Americans' Views on
the Death Penalty" by Samuel R. Gross and Phoebe C. Ellsworth, it shows how Americas

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attitude towards the death penalty is at a record high. The author also points out in the past 30
years capital punishment has been abolished in West Germany, Great Britain, Canada and
France, despite majority support (Gross, Ellsworth). This goes to show that the majority of The
United States is not educated on this matter and our justice system is not standing up and
stopping what they know goes against our constitution. The death penalty must be eliminated
immediately because it is inhumane due to it taking innocent peoples lives, going against the
constitution and being racially unjust.

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Works Cited
Bedau, Hugo Adam, Ph.D. "The Case Against the Death Penalty." American Civil Liberties
Union. ACLU, 2012. Web. 31 Mar. 2016. <https://www.aclu.org/case-against-deathpenalty>.

Berns, Nancy. Contesting the Victim Card: Closure Discourse and Emotion in Death Penalty
Rhetoric. The Sociological Quarterly 50.3 (2009): 383406.
Drehle, David Von. "The U.S. May Have A Lot of Innocent People on Death Row." Time. Time,
n.d. Web. 01 Mar. 2016.
Gross, Samuel R., and Phoebe C. Ellsworth. "Hardening of the Attitudes: Americans' Views on
the Death Penalty." University of Michigan Law School, 1994. Web. 1 Mar. 2016.

Radelet, Micheal L., and Marian J. Borg. "The Changing Nature of Death Penalty Debates." Annual Review of Sociology, 26(1):43. Annual Reviews, 2000. Web. 01 Mar. 2016.
Steiker, Carol S., and Jordan M. Steiker. The American Death Penalty and the (in)visibility of
Race. The University of Chicago Law Review 82.1 (2015): 243294.
Xiaohua Zhu. Death Penalty: Another View. Economic and Political Weekly 33.19 (1998):
10711071.