Friday, December 2, 2011

Death Penalty and Human Rights Standards

The Amnesty International gives a timeline about the UN and the death penalty. One important year was in 2007, when the UN General Assembly apporved Resolution 62/149 which called for all states that still maintain the death penalty to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/international-death-penalty/death-penalty-and-human-rights-standards

O'Connor worries about fairness of executions

In The Seattle Times, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has said that there are "serious questions" about whether capital punishment is being fairly administered in the United States. "If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed," O'Connor said in a speech to the Minnesota Women Lawyers group.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20010702&slug=ndig02

Restoring Fairness to the Death Penalty

On the St. Petersburg Times website, the author Daniel Ruth tells about the fairness to the death penalty in Florida. He talks about what has happened since capital punishment was restored in 1976, and retired Justice John Paul Stevens once supported the death penalty, but has sicne then reversed himself.
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/restoring-fairness-to-the-death-penalty/1137062

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Top 10 Arguments for the Death Penalty

This link gives the top ten arguments for the death penalty. One example of an argument for capital punishment is: life imprisonment changes. With that argument, the authors gives events on when the sentence of life imprisonment changes (with pardons and reductions of the sentence). I agree with this because most of the violent felons in our country are repeat offenders.
http://akorra.com/2010/03/04/top-10-arguments-for-the-death-penalty/

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Former "Lifer" Prisoners Discuss Life Inside, Prison Reform

Three former prison inmates who served life terms gave a peek into California's prisons in a discussion at Oakes College in UC Santa Cruz. Over 100 students attended the event, which was organized by Barridos Unidos. It touched on the challenges that prisoners face during incarceration and some potential reforms inside the prison system. The former inmates describe the prison life in prisons such as San Quentin State Prison and Tracy California State Prison. 
http://prisonmovement.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/former-lifer-prisoners-discuss-life-inside-prison-reform/

Death Row Inmates Prefer Death to Life

The ABC News article focuses on death row inmates preferring life over death. There are reasons on why this is the case. One is that prison conditions have not given death row inmates much reason to live longer on death row. Many inmates are allowed out of their cells for only an hour a day, they spend twenty-three hours isolated in a cell. Some experts have argue that as human conditions on death row have decreased, so have the prisoners' sense of humanity and willing to live.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90935&page=1

Death Penalty: Cruel, inhuman and degrading with lethal consequences

This article describes how inhuman the death penalty can be, as Tanzania recognizes October 10 as Anti-Death Penalty Day. The author, Rose Mwalongo, also says why the death penalty is inhumane in Tanzania and there are several people on death row who are innocent and living a psychological torture.
http://www.ippmedia.com/frontend/index.php?l=34248