Death Penalty Bill
When a comparison is made among all other states, a difference occurs between how states handle the death penalty bill. In Texas, 530 people have been executed since the year 1982. However, more than half of this number was administered during the governance of Rick Perry. The number of executions topped in the year 2000 in which approximately 40 people were sentenced to death. Since the year 2000, the number has been reducing. The recent publications state that the lowest number of executions happened in the year 2014, where approximately 10 people were sentenced to death. The state of Texas accounted for almost 30% of the executions in the US (Phillips & Simon, 2014). Publications deploy that death sentences have reduced by 80% since the year 1999. However, the recent executions have been imposed on black Americans (Radelet, 2012). The question still remains the same, is it fair and constitutional to impose death sentence to an individual? This varies from state to state.
The state of Texas still holds on the possibilities of death penalty. On the other hand, other states have done away with such penalties (Phillips & Simon, 2014). For example, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Nebraska, New Mexico, Maryland, and Illinois have abolished the death penalty due to varied reasons. Recent polls show that most Americans embrace the idea of alternate methods towards death penalties. This is contrary to the poll released earlier that most people in the US embrace death penalties. Some states highlight that imposing death penalty individual seems to be harsh and inhuman. One conservative commentator of the Washington, George F. Will highlighted that the finality of death sentence leaves no space for rectifying mistakes. When an individual is imprisoned, he or she is subjected to the possibilities of rectifying their mistakes. The prison acts as a rehabilitation centre towards criminals (Dilts, 2014). However, when it comes to death penalties, individuals are executed and have no choice of reforming towards good deeds in the society. In this sense, most states such as New Mexico, Maryland, and Illinois have reformed to life imprisonment as an alternative to death penalties (Dieter, 2015).
The state of Maryland subjected death penalty towards opportunity because of certain reasons. First, the state highlighted that the risk for convicting an innocent individual was too high (Kirchgässner, 2011). For example, in 1991, Anthony Gray was a victim of mistaken execution when he was threatened to be subjected to execution over allegations of rape and murder. To redeem himself, he pleaded guilty to the allegations to avoid death penalties. However, evidence later happened which reinstated him to be innocent. Additionally, the state highlights that the bill did not work in handy with the values and views of residents. This is so because polls reflect that the Marylanders prefer Life without Parole to death sentence (Dilts, 2014). However, their plea took time to be implemented.To add on, victims’ families were being failed by the bill. For …
