8th grade Amendment debates

Conclusion

As you can see after this debate, people are only sentenced to death if they truly deserve it. The death penalty is constitutional as the punishment should be equal to the crime, the death penalty is not “cruel” nor “unusual” and lastly the Supreme Court has determined it constitutional. Our first main point was that the lethal injection was humane and painless as it has a three step process. Our second main point was that the accused criminal was checked/investigated extremely carefully before sentenced to death. Our third point stated that it is not “cruel and unusual”. Lastly the death penalty helps reduce future crime.

The death penalty has been used since the beginning of history, it should not be thought of as inhumane after all these years.

How does the death penalty go against the 8th Amendment? When they created the Amendment the death penalty was not considered "cruel" or "unusual". The ability to determine a criminal's life has been acceptable for thousands of years, it should not stop now. The death penalty law first started in 18th century BC in the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon. Again, the death penalty was in the fourteenth Century B.C.'s in Hittite Code and the death penalty continued into Seventh Century B.C. in Draconian Code of Athens. Facts from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/part-i-history-death-penalty.

In Furman v. Georgia (1972) the death penalty was determined to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Only 4 years later in Gregg v. Georgia (1976) the death penalty was allowed again as the Supreme Court realized they made an incorrect decision. http://www.annenbergclassroom.org/speakout/is-the-death-penalty-constitutional

As I said before, at the bottom of the website it has a long list of reliable sources, and the quote from President George Walker Bush is from http://prodpquotes.info/prodp/default/view/1627/Presidents-of-the-USA

The ability to determine a criminal's life has been acceptable for thousands of years, it should not stop now. The death penalty law first started in 18th century BC in the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon. Again, the death penalty was in the fourteenth Century B.C.'s in Hittite Code and the death penalty continued into Seventh Century B.C. in Draconian Code of Athens. Facts from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/part-i-history-death-penalty.

According to http://prodpquotes.info/prodp/default/view/1627/Presidents-of-the-USA Theodore Roosevelt believed that the death penalty is needed, to take lives away of those who have done terrible crimes. He said, “As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run be harmed by what they ask. Moreover, almost any criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. If the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that the case in which she is so concerned is peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be granted. It was really heartrending to have to see the kinfolk and friends of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the very rare occasions when anything governmental or official caused me to lose sleep were times when I had to listen to some poor mother making a plea for a criminal so wicked, so utterly brutal and depraved, that it would have been a crime on my part to remit his punishment.”

The death penalty is also limited to certain people. In Coker v. Georgia (1977) the Supreme Court decided that the death penalty cannot be given to someone for raping and adult women. In 2005 it was decided that minors could not be sentenced to death as well as mentally ill people. According to https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/death_penalty

Where did you get this information from? Please list the source, is it reliable?

How do you know who the murderers are? Are they white, black, or hispanic?

The quote from President George Walker Bush is definitely reliable, it is from http://prodpquotes.info/prodp/default/view/1627/Presidents-of-the-USA

They have a list of sources below and they look reliable.