Captial Punisment Essays - Sentencing, English Criminal Law

Captial Punisment Putting to death people who have been judge to have committed certain extremely heinous crimes is a practice of ancient standing. But in the United States, in the latter half of the twentieth century, it has become a very controversial issue. Changing views on this difficult issue led the Supreme Court to abolish capital punishment in 1972 but later turned to uphold it again in 1977, with certain conditions. Indeed, restoring capital punishment is the will of the people, yet many voices have been raised against it. Heated public debate have centered on questions of deterrence, public safety, sentencing equality, and the execution of innocents, among others. One argument states that the death penalty does not deter murder. Dismissing capital punishment on that basis would require us to eliminate all prisons as well because they do not seem to be any more effective in the deterrence of crime. Others say that states which have the death penalty have higher crime rates than those that do not. And that a more sever punishment only inspires more sever crimes. But every state in the union is different. These differences include population, the number of cities, and the crime rate. Urbanized states are more likely to have higher crime rates than states that are more rural. The state that have capital punishment have it because of their high crime rate, not the other way around. In 1985, a study was published by economist Stephen K. Layson, at the University of North Carolina, that showed that every execution of a murderer deters, on average of 18 murders. The study also showed that raising the number of death sentences by only one percent would prevent 105 murders. However, only 38 percent of all murder cases result in a death sentence, and of those, only 0.1 percent are actually executed. During the temporary suspension on capital punishment from 1972 - 1976, researchers gathered murder statistics across the country. Researcher Karl Spence of Texas A&M University came up with these statistics, in 1960, there were 56 executions in the United States and 9,140 murders. By 1964, when there were only 15 executions, the number of murders had risen to 9,250. In 1969, there were no executions and 14,590 murders, and 1975, after six years without executions, 20,510 murders occurred. So the number of murders grew as the number of executions shrank. Spence said: ?While some [death penalty] abolitionists try to face down the results of their disastrous experiment and still argue to the contrary, the...[data] concludes that a substantial deterrent effect has been observed...In six months, more Americans are murdered than have been killed by execution in this entire century...Until we begin to fight crime in earnest [by using the death penalty], every person who dies at a criminal's hands is a victim of our inaction.? And in Texas, the highest murder rate in Houston (Harris County) occurred in 1981 with 701 murders. Since Texas reinstated the death penalty in 1982, Harris County has executed more murderers than any other city or state in the union and has seen the greatest reduction in murder from 701 in 1981 down to 261 in 1996 - a 63% reduction, representing a 270% differential. Also, in the 1920s and 30s, death penalty advocates were known to refer to England as a means of proving capital punishment's deterrent effect. Back then, at least 120 murderers were executed every year in the United States and sometimes the number reached 200. Even then, England used the death penalty far more consistently than we did and their overall murder rate was smaller than any one of our major cities at the time. Now, since England abolished capital punishment about thirty years ago, the murder rate has subsequently doubled there and 75 English citizens have been murdered by released killers. Abolitionists will claim that most studies show that the death penalty has no effect on the murder rate at all. But that's only because those studies have been focused on inconsistent executions. Capital punishment, like all other applications, must be used consistently in the United States for decades, so abolitionists have been able to establish the delusion that it does not deter at all to rationalize their fallacious arguments. But the evidence shows that whenever capital punishment is applied consistently or against a small murder rate it has always been followed by a decrease in murder. There is not an example on how the death penalty has failed to reduce the murder rate under those conditions. So capital punishment is very capable

Munchausen Syndrome essays

Munchausen Syndrome essays A middle aged woman complaining of an abnormally high fever; a thirty-something blue collar worker having multiple seizures a day; a college student mysteriously contracting infection after infection. Is this a medical mystery, or are the patients intentionally harming themselves for the attention that their illness gives them? Strangely enough, many patients either feign their condition or infect themselves with disease in order to attract medical attention. How is this psychological illness different than hypochondria? With the condition known as hypochondria, people experience physical symptoms of illnesses, and find themselves frequenting doctors offices, believing that they are truly sick. However, in Munchausen syndrome, the sufferer knows that he or she is not ill at all, but seeks medical attention in order to gain attention he/she feels cannot be gained in any other manner. In some cases of Munchausen syndrome, the sufferer will even inflict harm upon him/herself in order to make become sick or hurt in such a way that medical attention is required. Widely misunderstood even by health professionals, factitious disorders must be considered in a modern perspective instead of the historical view, which erroneously groups all factitial patients under one extreme category. The term Munchausen Syndrome was introduced by Dr. Richard Asher in 1951 in a paper he wrote for the British medical journal, Lancet. Dr. Asher described this illness as a common syndrome which most doctors have seen, but about which little has been written. Like the famous Baron von Munchausen, the persons affected have always traveled widely; and their stories, like those attributed to him, are both dramatic and untruthful. Accordingly, the syndrome is respectfully dedicated to the baron, and named after him. Munchausen Syndrome is actually a misnomer. Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Munchausen (1720-1791) was actually an ...

Terrorism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Terrorism - Essay Example Others linked it with civil disobedience while others label it as acts of violence. However, experts claimed that these three are very different terms from each other but in as much as one wished to gain adequate understanding of the word â€Å"terrorism†, it is crucial also to obtain insight about the other two terms often connected with it. Civil disobedience is deemed acceptable by many deliberative democrats as long as it remains relevantly tied to the objective of communicative action (Allen 15). However, Allen also emphasized that certain kinds of terrorism cannot be ruled out either (15). On the other hand, an individual must acknowledge that the deliberative democrat will not really be able to justify taking life as a maneuver for the reason that dead people cannot deliberate (Allen 15). Allen highlighted that this does not rule out terrorism per se, the object of which is not death so much as to bringing about fear, anxiety and trauma (Allen 15). Moreover, while a per sistent circumstance of fear would set the boundaries on forethought, restricted and transitory physical harm to individuals need not (Allen 15). For this instance, it entails that deliberative democrats must elucidate why purposely causing some physical harm to property or person is constantly an illicit and unlawful means of communication and demonstration (Allen 15). This paper endeavors to explore the concepts associated with terrorism and to tackle the impacts brought about by such circumstance. Definition, Association and the Concepts surrounding Terrorism Terrorism had always been synonymous to threat, intimidation, trauma and destruction. Individuals express anxiety whenever such term is brought up. Defining exactly what terrorism is proves to be a rather daunting task. One must also learn and understand to grasp the essence of the other terms connected with it to be able to fully obtain a clear insight about what this is as guided by certain propositions of expert and the l aw. Civil Disobedience is one of the terms confused with terrorism for the reason that some governments might label such acts as form of terrorism even though for the ones doing it, their main objective was only to find a means for their voices to be heard and for their standpoints to be given attention. Civil Disobedience is a tactic that is hard to reconcile neatly with persuasion and communication as stressed by Allen (15). Indeed, many deliberative democrats are willing to concede that civil disobedience contains some irreducible elements of threat and intimidation (Allen 15-16). Nevertheless, the deliberative democrats still supposed that it can still be accommodated within the conceptual orbit of deliberative democracy, and the priority that it gives to legitimate actions through public communication (Allen 16).