Death Penalty

There are many stages in a death penalty case and there are some of which protect the rights of the people accused. In the pre-trial stage, the court makes sure that there is a suitable jury for the case. This protects the rights of the accused because the court makes sure that there aren't people are clearly biased to the death penalty on the jury because then those jurors would automatically choose the death penalty for the accused. In the Penalty stage you have mitigating factors that protect the rights of the accused. The mitigating factors are things that affect the person in a way that could potentially lessen the punishment of the crime. Mental illness is a mitigating factor because the accused cannot help the fact that they have a mental illness that can interfere with decision making. Clemency stage also protects the rights of the accused because if the person is innocent they can see a pardon board to reduce punishment. The methods of the death penalty are hanging, firing squad, lethal injection, gas chamber and electrocution. As I believe that none of these are humane, if I had to choose i would choose the lethal injection. It seems to be the least painful considering the only pain that you really feel is when they put the IV in and everyone has had at least one shot in their lifetime. The two that I believe should most definitely be considered cruel and unusual punishment are electrocution and gas chamber. With all of the methods they do end up dying but these two seem the most torturous because the process can take longer and the prisoner could struggle during the process. In the gas chamber it is recommended to breathe deeply to speed up the process and some disregard that making their death drawn out and having to deal with dying at a slow pace. There are a lot of states that don't have the death penalty. The state of Illinois and some surrounding states don't have the death penalty but other than those states it is spread out through the country which states have the it and which states don't. I thought that is there sort of is a regional trend because as in the Midwest area, the area by New Jersey also doesn't have the death penalty.  California has the highest amount of inmates on death row with 724 and California also has the most women on death row with 19 inmates. There aren't any statistics for juveniles on death row because in the court case Roper v. Simmons is was ruled unconstitutional according to the 8th amendment to use the death penalty on anyone under the age of 18. This data tells us that even though there are a lot of places that still have the death penalty, there are states that are getting rid of the death penalty at the same time. The state by state data tells us how the death penalty was used mostly before 1976. I think that some of the parts of Illinois Death Penalty Statute are fair and make sense but some crimes don't deserve death as a punishment. The parts that are fair is that if someone was to kill someone who is disabled, elderly or torture was intended. People that kill like that have something seriously wrong with their brain if they feel okay killing someone that is elderly or disabled. The state by state data doesn't tell us why Illinois got rid of the death penalty but I can conclude that Illinois took away the death penalty for the reasons that it wasn't as effective as it is in other states. The death penalty is frequently used in states like Texas, California or Oklahoma but in a state like Illinois there were only so many executions since 1976 compared to the states. In the article it says that in Texas it costs 2.3 million dollars for a death penalty case which is three times the amount it costs to keep someone in a single cell high security prison for 40 years. The economics of the death penalty is that it generally costs more using the death penalty than it does to keep someone in jail for life. The racial factor for the death penalty is that there are more whites executed and more whites in death penalty cases The public opinion is pretty split up between the decisions of the death penalty, life with parole, life without parole, life with parole plus restitution and no opinion. The majority of the people through would rather have the prisoner in prison for life with or without parole rather than have the prisoner go through the death penalty. I thought that the views of the Death Penalty Information Center were that they are against the death penalty. It is convincing because a lot of the statistics that I saw were talking about how expensive it was to use the death penalty over putting the person in prison. They also used statistics talking about how race isn't really a factor in deciding whether or not the person should be getting the death penalty, if they should be getting the penalty at all.