Argumentative essay example
Capital Penalty
- Subject
- Law
- Type
- Argumentative essay
- Citation style
- MLA
- Length
- 9 pages
About this sample
The paper argues that the death penalty is socially accepted and grounded in the U.S. Constitution, while acknowledging that its administration is prone to error, arbitrariness, and prejudice. It moves from a historical overview of capital crimes and state jurisdiction, through constitutional and legislative support for capital punishment, to a critique of procedural fairness and appellate review.
- Death penalty in the United States
- State versus federal criminal justice systems
- Eighth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments
- Legislative support for capital statutes
- Error, arbitrariness, and fairness in sentencing
- Retribution and societal morality
How it opens
Throughout the history of the U.S., the death penalty has encompassed crimes other than murder such as rape, arson, firearm possession in relation to violent offenses, kidnapping, armed robbery, and burglary. The timeline of capital punishment in the United States is based almost wholly on state criminal justice frameworks rather than the federal system (Marcus). This could be explained by the fact that almost every significant violent crime that would result in a death sentence happens within the states and not the federal system. Although the death penalty is an acceptable way of providing justice or closure for the person(s) the offense was committed to, different inaccuracies in administering the sentence jeopardize its exactitude.
Legal
For quite some time, society has accepted the death penalty as a form of punishment for specific offenses. Although there might be opposition from the moral domain, there is increasing acceptance of capital punishment among U.S. citizens. It is evident from the American constitution that capital punishment was acknowledged by the founding fathers. When the Eighth Amendment was approved, capital punishment was prevalent in every State. Certainly, the First Congress passed laws allowing the use of death as a penalty for particular offenses ("GREGG v. GEORGIA" 4). However, the Fifth Amendment, which was approved in the same period as the Eighth, considered the preservation of the capital sanction by enforcing specific restrictions on the prosecution of capital cases.
The opening section, transcribed from the PDF. The full paper continues below.
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Using an example well
Read it for how the paper is built, not for wording to reuse: how the introduction frames the question, how each paragraph moves from a claim to evidence, and how sources are cited in MLA. Submitting any part of it as your own work would be plagiarism, and it is written for a different brief than yours.
Writing one yourself? Read the guide How to write an argumentative essay and the MLA format guide.