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In the essay Camus takes an uncompromising position for the abolition of the death penalty. Camus's view is similar to that of Cesare Beccaria and the Marquis de Sade , the latter having also argued that murder premeditated and carried out by the state was the worst kind.
Anti-death penalty groups specifically argue that the death penalty is unfairly applied to African Americans. African Americans have constituted 34.5 percent of those persons executed since the death penalty's reinstatement in 1976 and 41 percent of death row inmates as of April 2018, [ 84 ] despite representing only 13 percent of the general ...
In it, Beccaria put forth some of the first modern arguments against the death penalty. It was also the first full work of penology , advocating reform of the criminal law system. The book was the first full-scale work to tackle criminal reform and to suggest that criminal justice should conform to rational principles.
“The crux of the defendant’s argument is that there has been a major shift in public opinion regarding the morality, decency, and humanity of the death penalty,” read one filing signed by ...
The Death Penalty: Opposing Viewpoints is a book in the Opposing Viewpoints series. It presents selections of contrasting viewpoints on the death penalty : first surveying centuries of debate on it; then questioning whether it is just; whether it is an effective deterrent; and whether it is applied fairly.
Death penalty opponents regard the death penalty as inhumane [206] and criticize it for its irreversibility. [207] They argue also that capital punishment lacks deterrent effect, [208] [209] [210] or has a brutalization effect, [211] [212] discriminates against minorities and the poor, and that it encourages a "culture of violence". [213]
The Court also found that the death penalty "comports with the basic concept of human dignity at the core of the [Eighth] Amendment". The death penalty serves two principal social purposes—retribution and deterrence. "In part, capital punishment is an expression of society's moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct".
30. Our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence has narrowed the class of offenders eligible for the death penalty to include only those who have committed outrageous crimes defined by specific aggravating factors. It is the cruel treatment of victims that provides the most persuasive arguments for prosecutors seeking the death penalty.