...Fewer than 1 in every 3 black person killed by a police officer are allegedly violent and armed, the rest are innocent civilians at the wrong at the wrong time. Black people are 3 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than white people, this just shows the stereotypes that police officers have on african americans. Racism is still alive. Police brutality is a serious crime and should be treated like one yet people are dying due to police officers mistreating their authority. First of all police are the people who are hired to protect people from crime and arrest those who commit crimes but recently there have been many cases where police are killing or severely injuring innocent bystanders. This action is called police brutality. When police officers kill innocent people, it causes stereotypes. A stereotype is when you expect someone to do something or be something...
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...extremists from both sides start yelling out their arguments. One side says deterrence, the other side says there's a potential of executing an innocent person; one says justice, retribution, and punishment; the other side says execution is murder. Regardless of people’s philosophic points of view, it is important to be aware of the facts. This is exactly what I would like to talk about in this essay: the facts regarding this controversial issue. I do not have the answer to this question; I believe both viewpoints have good arguments. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion in this or any other matter, but no one is entitled to his own facts. What is the death penalty? Congress or any state legislature may prescribe the death penalty, also known as capital punishment, for murder and other capital crimes. (Death Penalty: An Overview, 2010) As far back as the Ancient Laws of China, the death penalty has been established as a punishment for crimes. In the 18th Century BC, the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon established the death penalty for twenty five different crimes, although murder was not one of them. The first death sentence historically recorded occurred in 16th Century BC Egypt where the wrongdoer, a member of nobility, was accused of magic, and ordered to take his own life. During this period non-nobility was usually killed with an ax. (Reggio, M. 2005) The first recorded execution in the English American colonies was in 1608 when officials executed George Kendall...
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...The different Thomson and Otsuka is that Judith Jarvis Thomson(1991) thinks it is sometimes permissible to kill innocent persons while Michael Otsuka(1994) thinks it is impermissible to kill innocent persons because it is only permissible to kill people morally responsible of infringing your right to live, and innocent persons are not morally responsible. I find Otsuka’s argument which is as follow less rationally compelling because I think P2 is not ture: P1:It is impermissible to kill innocent bystander based on thomson’s theory P2:There is no moral difference between innoncent bystander and innocent aggressor or innocent threat C:It is also impermissible to kill innocent aggressor or innocent threat For Otsuka, P2 is ture because...
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...the sake of the kids. When will it stop and when will you be safe? Domestic violence ruins lives. For every high-profile case, more innocent victims die surrounded in silence and many others face the daily torture of not knowing when the act will happen again. Far too often we as neighbor’s, family, friends and fellow Australians fail to see it. Even worse, we turn away to a blind eye. It is time to Shine a Light on domestic violence and stand up for innocent victims. the number of Victims of domestic violence are getting larger and larger. Imagine yourself beaten to death by your ex...
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...Police surveillance, from the time they put on their suits to the time they get out of their suits does not show enough evidence for brutal killings.While placing cameras onto squad outfits and dashboards does help provide answers to mysteries, ultimately, cops killing innocent people has not been tamed. Thus, cops should have more surveillance on them and always have their cameras charged before leaving the police station because they may calm police down from police brutality, show more proof and evidence to cases, and look at the video to see if anything came up missing. Through the recent couple of years, many cases of brutal killings have been coming up. Although some of these cases are reasonable and seem necessary, most of the cases...
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...lethal fury by insisting that the benefits that these executions would bring to the rest of societies safety. People would argue that a person accused of taking another person’s life should suffer the same pain that they caused not only the deceased but also their family. I would say that it would be reasonable for a person to feel that way but not only does the deceased’s individual’s family have to suffer for the loss but, the accused’s family members must watch their loved one be executed. Just because we sentence someone to death it does not mean that it will bring back the deceased individual. By killing the accused it sends a message of “you killed one of us, so we are now going to kill you” while I was growing up I was always told that two wrongs don’t make a right. By the state using a punishment of death for someone who killed another it sends the wrong message. The financial cost of executing an individual is far greater than it would be to...
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...issues in the criminal justice system. Hundreds of criminals are being killed legally at the hands of the government every day. Why you may ask, because they were convicted of killing one or more people. But the government can do it and get away with it. The death penalty is wrong and should be outlawed in all 50 states. The reasons why it should be outlawed are: the person could be innocent, it is not a good crime deterrent, and it does not cause closure for a victim’s families. The most obvious reason it should be banned is that it is against the law. It says so in our constitution. The Eighth Amendment clearly states that the federal government is prohibited from using cruel and unusual punishment. Most people would have to say that sitting down in a chair and getting electrocuted until your dead or getting poison shoved in your veins is pretty cruel and unusual. Also when you put someone to death for committing murder you are committing an act of it as well, which is an eye for an eye. Evidently the government seems to not think so. Another good reason to ban capital punishment is the person who was charged with the murder could actually be innocent and wrongfully accused. This means that an innocent person was put to death when instead they could have been in prison and found innocent later down the line. This makes a huge mess because it makes ordinary people afraid that they could be charged and killed for something they didn’t do. It also makes the prosecutors and the...
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...is precious and shouldn’t be taken lightly. David Bruck, an attorney who has represented many death row cases, argued against the use of the death penalty. In his claims he states that “...the death penalty system asks us to accept that the purpose of killing each of them is to affirm the sanctity of human life.” He implies that killing off all these murderer won’t secure the community for a safer environment. He also claims that not all criminals sent to the death chair are criminals at all and are actually innocent. Yes, it is true that the system can be flawed and that a few innocent people may get filtered into the deaths sentence. I will still stand by my argument that life is precious, especially for the innocence, Bruck even states several cases of innocent people who faced the possibility of execution. One was Lennel Jeter, a black engineer who was almost sent to execution for a robbery he had not commit and Roosevelt Green who took the fall for murdering a young woman (even if he was an accomplice). Jeter was saved from the death sentence, but Green not so much. These type of cases do come up, where the innocent could be wrongly accused of a crime and sent for their deaths, but according to Koch's claims, through a research by Mr.Bedau, that “of the 7,000 executions in this country from 1893 through 1971, and concludes that the record fails to show that such cases...
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...to be found. Her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed is then eventually arrested by the state of Maryland in February of 2000 for her murder. Her body was found in a park in a shallow grave on February 1999. It was senior prom at Woodlawn High School where both Hae and Adnan went to school. Adnan was a junior and Hae was a senior when they dated. The murder case of Hae is full of many holes and facts that don’t match up. The main eye witness in Adnan trial was Jay Wilds, who testifies against Adnan telling the police that Adnan had told him he was going to kill Hae. Jay claims that he allowed Adnan to have access to...
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...we should let violent criminals on the streets but means that we needn't sink to there level and kill them just like they killed the victims. Argument three: Violence begets more violence One of the best arguments for the death penalty is that if we really want to promote a nonviolent society our legal system needs to set the example. If we want people to be less violent than we need our judicial system to be nonviolent. If we as a society are saying killing people is an acceptable method of dealing with a problem than other people will interpret that as a green light to use killing to fix their problems. The only real way to stop violence is to promote the sanctity of life and send a clear message to society that killing isn't okay under any circumstances and it's impossible to do that while the state itself is killing people. Argument four: The death penalty carries with it the risk of executing innocent men Over the years several people have been killed by the state for crimes they did not commit. Every few years in another case is discovered where a man was executed for a crime of which they are later found innocent. This is one of the better arguments against the death penalty because it appeals to peoples sense of natural justice. It seems that we should prioritize the rights of the innocent ahead of the need to execute criminals. While an innocent person can be released...
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...20 July 2014 The Morality of Warfare: Case Study; Drone Warfare Advancements in warfare technology and weaponry have been the defining factors in battle since the dawn of civilization. The one with the bigger gun usually wins. This is a fact that hasn’t changed much since the beginnings of warfare and holds true today and in today’s world Drones have become the next warfare advantage. Along with any advancement in warfare weaponry comes a very heated and controversial discussion about its actual real-world utilization. Many argue that the use of Drones in war is unmoral and unethical. This paper aims to take a closer look at both sides of this argument. First, I will establish and explain the moral arguments against the use of drone warfare, then the second half of the article will be in response to such claims and give the moral reasons behind the pro-drone argument. First and foremost of the anti-drone discussion is the fact that Drones are seen to be fundamentally in contradiction of international law: Amnesty International stated that that “deliberate killings by drones […] very likely violate the prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of life and may constitute extrajudicial executions.” The UN suggested focused effort to maintain and preserve the security of international laws in its entirety, in response to the use of drones. This incorporates, obviously, international human rights and humanitarian standards that seem to be thrown out the window when dealing with...
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...The Drone Strikes Again Take a moment and imagine this: for every terrorist killed by a U.S. drone strike, 50 Pakistani civilians fall victims to these ruthless attacks. According to an article written by David Kilcullen and Andrew McDonald from the NY Times, “press reports suggest that over the last three years drone strikes have killed about 14 terrorist leaders. But, according to Pakistani sources, they have also killed some 700 civilians. This is 50 civilians for every militant killed, a hit rate of 2 percent — hardly “precision”” (Killcullen, McDonald 9). Regardless if the number of casualties of innocent people caused by drone strikes has increased or decreased, the policy itself should be eliminated if there is even the slightest chance that innocent lives will be at stake. Kant was not a consequentialist theorist; in other words, he believed that despite the outcome of an action being good or bad, what was important was the premeditated idea behind the action, was it right or wrong, unrelated to the consequences. Therefore, if actions are not based on consequences, Kant’s theory would support the argument that using drone tactics to eliminate terrorists is morally unacceptable, for the following reasons: the U.S. military is using drone tactics against terrorist without their consent, and innocent lives are being taken at the push of a button. As humans, our moral duty is to treat people in such a way that shows them respect, as though they are autonomous beings with...
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...A Case for the Death Penalty The death penalty was employed for centuries but within the past 50 years it has come under attack by the ACLU and other right to life organizations. Although it can be a difficult way to die, a person on death row doesn’t arrive there without extreme evidence or circumstances, including prior convictions and a trial by a jury of their peers. The purpose of this paper is to rebut the Article “The case against the Death Penalty” written by Hugo Bedau. Hugo Bedau is a Philosophy Professor at Tufts University and author of two books on the subject of the death penalty. With his ties to many Anti-Death Penalty groups his views on the subject would be skewed. In Bedau’s (1992) article he writes, “If, however, severe punishment can deter crime, then long term imprisonment is severe enough to cause any rational person not to commit violent crimes.” This argument is absurd because how can people who commit homicides be thought of as rational after murdering innocent people instead of fist fighting, talking over the situation, or other nonlethal tack. There are no studies that state how many murders the death penalty prevents by having it available to the prosecution, however; as seen in the graph below, murders committed and the amount of those executed are inversely affected. A case in point would be found in December 1991 when Collen Reed was kidnapped, raped, tortured, and killed by Kenneth McDuff. Sentenced to death in 1966, he beat...
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...On the day March 5, 1770, five Boston colonists were shot and killed by British soldiers. This event is known as the Boston Massacre. The colonists killed were Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr. This all started when a group of angry colonists started pestering and irritating a British Soldier. The colonist was throwing things such as sticks, snowballs, and rocks and other soldiers came for support. The soldiers that came for backup was Captain Preston and seven of his men, when they arrived they saw the crowd getting bigger and bigger and getting gradually more violent and loud. In all the commotion someone yelled fire, ordering the soldiers to shoot which lead to five colonists getting killed....
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...Since the beginning of time, people have been committing murders and vicious acts against one another. In the earlier times, the acts that were committed; were counter reacted with the same crime done to that person. For instance, if one killed someone they in return would be killed. The death penalty today is used for only severe crimes against humanity. An example of a severe crime against humanity is the Oklahoma City bombings. The death penalty is viewed as strange and unknown land that people would like to explore. “Thanks to the decision of a California district judge last week, the American public has been spared the spectacle of criminals being executed on television”, said Jacob Weisberg in the article This is Your death( Weisberg 9). As regards to the death penalty today it is viewed as cruel punishment, why is the United States the only democracy to have it, kills innocent, and cheapens the value of human life. In my opinion the death penalty is exactly what you make of it. If someone kills someone in my opinion them, themselves should have the same fate. The death penalty is viewed by millions of people as cruel and unusual punishment. As stated by Edward I. Koch in Death and Justice, the death penalty is “barbaric” (Koch 905). Capital punishment is the intentional taking of one’s life because they have committed a heinous crime against society. The death penalty today is not viewed as “barbaric” because of the way that capital punishment is carried out. Today...
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