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Louis Pojman Death Penalty Analysis

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Two Sides of a Story: Death Penalty Debate Let us begin by looking at why the death penalty is morally wrong on many levels according to Stephen B. Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights, and a teacher of criminal law. He wrote an essay on this debate called, “Why the United States Will Join the Rest of the World in Abandoning Capital Punishment.” We will also look at the other side of the debate (story), as to why the death penalty is morally legitimate in the views of Louis P. Pojman, whose essay is called, “ Why the Death Penalty is Morally Permissible,” which is just an excerpt from, Debating the Death Penalty: Should America Have Capital Punishment? First, there are innocent people being executed for crimes they didn’t commit. Whether it be from forced confessions, where people have been interrogated too long, yelled at, and threatened to the point of exhaustion, and because of this, they give a false confession. Eyewitnesses that falsely identify a person, perhaps because they looked a lot like the criminal. Furthermore, there are inmates that get a possible reduced sentence for testifying that the inmate or person charged confessed the crime to him/her. We have racial bias, which is, that in the states that do allow the death penalty, the majority of prosecutors and judges are white and the majority of criminals are non-white. Is that fair? Would the outcome be different if there was a more mixed ethnic diversity? More so, the whole legal process and outcome can be doomed, due to the financial inability of the person …show more content…

What justifies the death penalty and what factors cause us to be against it. In the end, we are still all human beings with different morals and ethical stances. We are a diverse world and no matter what, on both sides of the issue human lives is what the main focus is. Do we justify seeking an eye for an eye or do we let God decide when death will

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