Death Penalty instructions

For this assignment, you should be familiar with the death penalty debate given our discussions in class and your assigned readings (the textbook and the Sarat and Culbert chapter excerpts).

This DEBATE requires you to post one discussion post (by providing relevant research that provides background information to your position) and then respond to a minimum of two of your peers’ questions.

Debate:

• You are required to participate in the Death Penalty Debate (via the Discussion Board on CANVAS
  • You should prepare to defend the side (for or against the death penalty) ALLOCATED to you before the debate. So any posts (YOUR INITIAL POST AND THE TWO POSTS TO YOUR PEERS) must be on this position (eg not the side you actually agree with BUT the opposing side).
  • Make sure to include more than just the “moral debate”:
    • This will mean that you will need to do some outside research
    • You can use statistics, philosophical debates, the “Sarat and Culbert” readings, newspaper articles, and you must speak to Supreme Court cases to support your argument
      • Remember this is a law and politics class which asks you to consider a variety of factors including but not limited to (US) court cases, polling data, states rights, interest groups etc

To kill someone is only morally justifiable by the state. For a government to be in charge, it must have complete autonomy over the use of force, and with this comes the idea that the government is justified in its use of force for the death penalty. At the beginning of the United States, it was not just the government who carried out the death penalty; citizens were allowed to duel and sentence someone to death essentially without a set standard or practice. This inability to have a set standard on what is grounds to have a man sentenced to death is and was a problem for society. A study out of Penn State showed that the death penalty works as a deterrent to violent crimes showing that the punishment works to help keep others from committing the crimes that lead to the death penalty. The idea that the government has the ability to kill someone through the death penalty hurts the value of human life, but this is not the only case in which the government judges the value of life. In our water system, arsenic and other deadly chemicals are present and hurt almost no one because of the extremely low levels present in our tap water. Still, some people die each year because of this, and the US could fix this problem but deemed it too expensive and not worth the cost to save a couple of lives.

NOTE to tutor: I choose to be for the death penalty, so you should write about my side which is the death penalty and you are required to comment to two students after which is the opposite side.

NOTE: I provided the reading in PDF for you. Also, Please use basic English language and your own words. No advanced English.

I will extend the time for 1 day and 15 hours after you accept the assignment.