Cody+Research+Abstract

Thesis: Although 25 states have abolished the death penalty in the United States, there are still 30 states that still practice it and there is still much debate about whether or not it should be abolished. It did not take me very long to decide what I wanted to do for my research persuasive essay. I knew right away I wanted to write it on the death penalty. First of all, I take the criminal justice class at the Forrest Career and Technology so I know a lot of information about the death penalty because we have studied it in that class. I am also very interested in fulfilling a career in the criminal justice field, so I knew that studying this topic would help me in the long run. I started off my paper with the history of the death penalty. It was created in Britian and was brought to the United States by the European when they came to Jamestown. I went on to describe the different kinds of executions, such as the firing squad, hanging, burning at the stake, and the electric chair. Today the most common use of execution is lethal injection which uses three different types of poisonous liquids that slowly kill the condemned. The next things I wrote about were the reasons to be agianst the death penalty. I stated that the death penalty was considered cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. It also takes away the persons rights. I brought into my paper a woman who was a National Chair Person of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Sister Prejean made many comments that helped to support my paper. One of my favorite quotes she said was “We target the evil person, dehumanize them, and say they’re not human in the way we are, they are totally evil and so we are justified in killing them”. By making this statement, she was saying that we make the people on death row seem non human, when we are the ones who are non human. We kill them without any doubt or remourse. The death penalty is cruel and unjust. By executing people, we are not stopping violence, we are repeating them.