The Death Penalty

 

    Timothy McVeigh's execution sparks renewed debate on the ethics of the death penalty.

    Austin Sarat, a professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst University is an opponent of the death penalty. He states:

    "The issues that we really need to focus on are whether or not the system of state killing, whether the McVeigh case or in any other case in the United States, makes us a safer society, a saner society or a society that's any closer to realizing its ideals."

    Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, is a proponent of the death penalty.  He states:

    "I have trouble equating the life of Timothy McVeigh with his innocent victims.  I think that allowing him to survive and continue to preach what he believes in and live out his days would have been to devalue every innocent life in this country and particularly those of the victims."

    The following websites offer various views on the death penalty:

Focus On the Death Penalty Death Penalty Information Center
The Justice Project Human Rights Watch
Pro-Death Penalty Campaign to End the Death Penalty

    The following  pamphlets are available for check out in the library . They offer opposing viewpoints on the death penalty:

Is The Death Penalty Applied Unfairly? Three Centuries of Debate on the Death Penalty?
Is The Death Penalty Just? Is the Death Penalty an Effective Punishment?

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Comments to Sybil Stokols
Last updated June 13, 2001