Wednesday, September 18, 2013
The Death Penalty Then and Now
During the period when "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is set, the death penalty was largely by hanging, as it is used in the story, with some by firing squad. Now, only a few states allow hanging as a death penalty, Idaho being one, while more states prefer to use lethal injection, firing squads, or the electric chair. Why do you think that death by hanging has declined in popularity over the years? Do you think that governments prefer to keep death penalties more secretive instead of stringing someone up out in the open? The media already has coverage of it and will cover it anyway, so why keep it secretive anyway? What do you feel is an appropriate way to carry out the death sentence? Or do you agree with it?
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I think that death by hanging has declined because the families have decided that they don't want their loved ones on display. There are restrictions on what the media can cover. The government, I'm sure, wants to have little or no deaths on TV. The media can cover stories on the death penalty, but they're not allowed to show a real human death. I think that the person sentenced to death should be able to choose the way they want to die, as long as it is legal in their state.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the death penalty. I honestly think that it should be used more. I believe that murders, rapists, and especially child molesters should be executed. These humans have all ruined someone else's life. Since they were willing to wreck someone's life; they should be willing to give up their life in exchange.
I agree that families do not want to have their name disgraced any more than it already is. A public execution would do just that. I also think that public executions were used a method of control in the past. The government does not wan to be seen as controlling, even if they are. Also a public execution would allow the public empathize with the accused, making him or her a martyr.
DeleteI think that if the populace saw all of the deaths that are the results of crimes that the government would be seen in a bad light. It also creates an empathy with the condemned. It martyrs the accused because of the "no one should have to die" mentality. When some one awaiting their death, and they are scared, we relate to them because everyone fears death. This mentality would cause a lot of problems with the correctness of the death penalty, as well as the right of the deciding what warrants a death sentence. I believe that there are some crimes that would warrant the death of the accused. I also believe that they should have a choice of the method that kills them.
ReplyDeleteOn the other side of your argument, there is the part where a public execution instills fear into other criminals. It can ward off others from committing the same crime because they know that there will be consequences. I do think that in the present day, we are more aware of what is humane and inhumane and that is what stops the public executions from occurring. But, this is also creating the idea that committing a crime is alright. We are beginning to see more and more violent crimes occur.
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DeleteErin, I agree with you: to show to the public the death of a criminal would raise a lot of controversy. There will be a great deal of "death is wrong" statements being made. I think that if someone is sentenced to death, then it's probably because they deserve it; the world does not need to bare the negativity that this person has brought into it. To take someone's life is the most severe punishment that there is. However, I feel that to take one's life from them as they are living is worse than death for the criminal. By this I mean that to be confined for the rest of their life, away from the life that they used to know and love is a punishment that is worse than death.
DeleteI think that the death penalty is used less and less due to the United States' justice system becoming increasingly lenient. It seems to me that the punishments for crimes have become much less severe then in the past. Hanging has been a very effective execution method in the past. It not only put the criminal to death but also showed other people what would happen to them if they broke the law. This sometimes scared people into doing the right thing. I would not be surprised if the government was killing a lot more people than we think it is. Most of these executions do not make the news though. I believe that more people should be executed. It also saves taxpayer money. No longer would we have to pay for their food and medical expenses. I believe that the lethal injection is the most "humane" way of killing someone and should be used much more often.
ReplyDeleteYou make very good points about how hangings were used to "scare" other citizens. I think that this was a very effective way of doing just that. In today's world, however, I do not believe that it would work as well. There is a much bigger population and a much bigger expansion of settlement. Not many people would happily travel to the nearest hanging. It just is not appealing. We may watch it on the news, hear about it in gossip, read about it in the paper, but that would never impact the people the way that it would if they witnessed it in person. Death is not widely accepted by our culture and people often brush it off because they don't wish to think about it. I also agree that there are many deaths the government does not release to the public, but even if they were, we still don't gain all the pathos from it. We do not see it with our own eyes first hand and we do not personally know the one being killed. Passion is often what makes humans make up their minds.
DeleteI think that by hanging a person, the punishment for a crime was more well known by the public. Now, lethal injections and electric chairs are not heard of as much in the news because they are not publicized. I do think that the judicial system is letting more and more cases that do deserve the death penalty slip through the system. This is because as a whole, the public is becoming used to these violent crimes and in no way is this a good thing for our society. It may be a good thing for public executions to still occur to show criminals that there still are consequences for actions. In some cases, I think that the victim or their family should weigh in on the type of execution that the criminal should have, in relation with what the judge thinks.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that lethal injections and electric chairs are not being publicized. I have never even heard of someone getting a lethal injection or the electric chair on the news. I believe that people need to know what would happen to them if they did something that bad. I also agree with you that our society is getting used to violent crimes probably due to our entertainment on television. What I find odd is that when the public is getting used to these violent crimes on TV, hanging is becoming less and less common including public hangings. I do not think that the victim or his/her family should be able to pick the execution method that they think is best. I think that the family's negative image should be a package deal with an execution. Maybe potential criminals might think of their family and how a crime would effect them before carrying out a crime.
DeleteI believe that the death sentence is letting someone off easy. Many crimes are done by nasty people who will never make the effort to change. If they were to spend most or all of their life in prison, that is punishment. The torture of living with oneself for that long in confinement, that creates justice. Death is quick. Death is sudden. They won't even remember feeling miserable. Death by hanging was always known as public. Back during the age of mining towns and new settlements, it was even entertainment, if you will. Now, humans do not take as kindly to watching the demise of another. It is simply not the sort of thing most are comfortable with. When hangings were a popular way to put a criminal to death, they did not have the technology that we have today. With the advances in society, we now have more possibilities on our hands. It is much easier to lethally inject the criminal and be done with it. There is little hassle. Looking back to what I stated earlier about the little misery in death penalty, it is logical in some cases. I believe that very dangerous criminals should simply be put to death so that there is no possible way they could ever hurt another human being again. I understand that it will always be hard to decipher the best punishment in each case, but there are options and the death sentence is one of them.
ReplyDeleteGoing off of your statements of how death is quick and imprisonment allows the criminal to brood on what they have done, do you think that the justice system should make the very dangerous criminals carry out most or part of their sentence, then, without telling them, or telling them they would be paroled, serve them the death sentence? I feel that with this, the criminal would have to focus on what they did, and think about it, and instead of getting a second chance to do it again, they are removed from civil society. We'd have less sex offenders and murderers that have served a sentence on our streets, and wouldn't have to keep a close eye on as many people.
DeleteDefinitely death by hanging is more of a public pursuit than to be injected lethally or to be executed in an electric chair. I think that possibly Idaho uses hanging instead of other methods of death by punishment for a number of reasons. Idaho is much less populated than many other states in the U.S., so there are less criminals in Idaho than there would be in a highly populated state such as New York. In New York City alone, there are numbers of criminals reported daily. Because criminals are so common in NYC, death penalty's are also more common in NYC than they are in the much more rural state of Idaho. Perhaps because the death penalty is more common in highly populated states, publicity for them is unnecessary because it happens often. In Idaho, the death penalty is more uncommon due to the lack of populace. I think that because of this, advanced methods, such as lethal injections or the electric chair, are less necessary. Hanging is an old method, but because Idaho is fairly rural, there is no need to change it.
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