Capital Punishment

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derers were sentenced to life without parole and required to make some form of financial restitution. In a 1993 nationwide survey 77 percent of the public approved of the death penalty, but the poll dropped to 41 percent if the alternative is no parole plus restitution (Smart). Only a minority of the American public would favor the death penalty if offered alternatives. By law it required that the trial and sentencing of the accused must be conducted with the utmost fairness, especially when incorporating the irreversible sanction of the death penalty. 88 percent of all execution since 1930 have been for murder (Warner). It is evident that courts have sentenced some criminals to prison while putting others to death, which clearly demonstrates uncertainty, racial prejudices, and simply unfairness. In his classic American Dilemma (1944) Gunnar Myrdal reported that "South makes the widest application of the death penalty", and sadly "Negro criminals are in for much more than their share of the executions" (Warner) Recently a study of capital punis...