Essay on the color purple, essay on the death penalty

essay on teens living with hiv

The search for a vaccine/treatment of AIDS is proving to be a very difficult, costly and time-consuming scientific venture. Although the progress made thus far in understanding the virus has been without precedent in the annals of medicine, the HTLVIII/LAV/HIV virus will not give up its secrets easily, and development of an effective vaccine would be a scientific first for the human retroviruses. Probably a truly effective cure for AIDS will not be forthcoming for perhaps decades. Any cure may require use of retroviral in-vivo genetic engineering--a technology not yet possessed by the medical research community.

essay on the color purple

As the fictive autobiography of an oppressed black woman's journey from sexual slavery to freedom, The Color Purple parodies those primary texts of autobiographical writing which have shaped and influenced the direction of African-American fiction—the "slave narrative." With the publication of slave autobiographies, oppressed African-American slaves moved from object to subject, from silence into speech, creating a revolutionary literature—one that changed the nature and direction of African-American history; that laid the groundwork for the development of a distinct African-American literary tradition. Slave autobiographies worked to convey as accurately as possible the true story of slavery as experienced and interpreted by slaves, without apology or exaggeration.

essay on the death penalty

What about persons executed in error? The objection here is not that some of the guilty get away but that some of the innocent do not—a matter far more serious than discrimination among the guilty. Yet when urged by abolitionists, this too is a sham argument, as are all distributional arguments. For abolitionists are opposed to the death penalty for the guilty as much as for the innocent. Hence, the question of guilt, if at all relevant to their position, cannot be decisive for them. Guilt is decisive only to those who urge the death penalty for the guilty. They must worry about distribution—part of the justice they seek.

essay topic death penalty

From a moral viewpoint, the whole discrimination argument is irrelevant. If the death penalty were distributed quite equally and uncapriciously and with superhuman perfection to all the guilty, but were morally unjust, it would remain unjust in each case. Contrariwise, if the death penalty is morally just, however discriminatorily applied to only some of the guilty, it remains just in each case in which it is applied to a guilty person. Thus, if it were applied exclusively to guilty males and never to guilty females, the death penalty, though unequally applied, would remain just.

research paper on the death penalty

… For justice consists in punishing the guilty and sparing the innocent, and its equal extension, though desirable, is not part of it. It is part of equality, not of justice (or injustice), which is what equality equalizes. The same consideration would apply if some benefit were distributed only to males but not equally to deserving females. The inequality would not argue against the benefit, or against distribution to deserving males, but rather for distribution to equally deserving females. Analogously, the nondistribution of the death penalty to guilty females would argue for applying it to them as well, and not against applying it to guilty males.

against death penalty essay

The utilitarian (political) effects of unequal justice may well be detrimental to the social fabric because they outrage our passion for equality, particularly for equality before the law. Unequal justice is also morally repellent. Nonetheless, unequal justice is justice still. What is repellent is the incompleteness, the inequality, not the justice. The guilty do not become innocent or less deserving of punishment because others escaped it. Nor does any innocent deserve punishment because others suffer it. Justice remains just, however unequal, while injustice remains unjust, however equal. However much each is desired, justice and equality are not identical. Equality before the law should be extended and enforced then—but not at the expense of justice.

against death penalty essays

Rather too briskly, Dr. van den Haag disposes of the argument that the death penalty is irreversible not only for the guilty but also for the innocent. That's none of the abolitionist's business, he says; after all, we oppose the death penalty for both the guilty and the innocent. Let the retentionists worry about whether an occasional innocent man is hanged. After all, accidents do happen. Innocent people are killed in traffic, in sports, and in dangerous but necessary occupations, so why should we be disturbed about an occasional innocent falling into the executioner's hands? If the poor fellow had a fair trial and was convicted by a jury of his peers, and the record has been reviewed by an appellate court, the gallows may cheat him of his life, but sooner or later we will all be cheated.

anti death penalty essay

Finally, it is argued that some murderers commit their crime for the sake of the punishment they expect and that, in this way, the punishment becomes an incentive to the crime. Such cases, if they exist at all (and the evidence is quite tenuous), are altogether exceptional, so much so that it would be silly to tailor the law to fit them. Incidentally, since this reasoning may apply to imprisonment as much as to the death penalty (more, since it is hard to imprison oneself and comparatively easy to kill oneself), how could the law fit these exceptional cases?

essays about death penalty

Even this will be politically very difficult, although desirable. Drunken drivers have many politically influential friends. In fact, they themselves often are influential persons. Murderers, fortunately, have few friends. Which is why the death penalty for murder is politically feasible and why it is not for drunken driving. One reason murderers have few friends is that unlike drunken drivers, at least those murderers for whom capital punishment is meant—those who murder with premeditation or during commission of another crime, those who murder for money, rape murderers—are a rightly despised lot, who morally would deserve execution even if it did not deter anyone.

essays against death penalty

Combined with vastly increased police effectiveness, such a law would no doubt deter all but the most reckless muggers. Until the achievement of such effectiveness, the deterrent effect of penal severity is a cheap illusion—easy to write into a statute, easy to run through a legislature to show that the hard line on crime is indeed hard. Its meaning on the street is slight. The inclusion of the death penalty in such a code is an irrelevance, satisfying a legislator and his anxious constituents that the lawmakers are tough, doing all they can to prevent violence.