For decades the American government has been sentencing its citizens to death, for whatever reasons our society deems necessary, through the use of capital punishment. But just how much does the continued implementation of the death penalty affect our government as well as the rest of our country? This argument contains two strong, opposing sides which makes it evident why some may want to keep this form of punishment while others would love to see it abolished. This topic peaks my interest because it is extremely controversial and deals with lives of hundreds of people, some of which could be innocent victims. Personally I have no experience consulting with someone on death row and have no moral conflict with the thought of sentencing someone to death for such horrendous crimes. Although the idea of sentencing a possibly innocent person to death does bring up moral and ethical issues. I believe it is of much importance that I keep an open mind when constructing my argument and focus on facts rather than the emotional side.  Before this is done I must first scrutinize several articles discussing my topic in order to gather the information needed to build on my argument.

I began by analyzing, "The Death of The Death Penalty," an article from TIME which focuses on the premise that the death penalty is already coming to an end. This article presented useful statistics and backed its theory with three major pieces of evidence. The first being how capital punishment is currently flawed in many of the ways and is often incorrectly performed. Next it discusses how crime rates have plummeted therefore there will be less people to sentence to death. Lastly the articles most important piece of evidence states that the American government is on a very tight budget making it difficult for many states to fund this practice. The interests of this article rely on the fact that capital punishment is a broken system and should no longer be applicable. In such modern times we should not result to such ineffective and ill constructed forms of punishment just because it is one of multiple solutions to a problem. This article is written by David Von Drehle is an editor for TIME magazine, a very well-known and reliable source. He has published multiple books which vary in topics from the death penalty in Florida to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln   David carries much credibility through his education at Oxford along with his thirty plus years of experience in the field. 

Next I chose to look at the opposing point of view, the continuation of the death penalty. This text is based around a single central idea being that capital punishment deters crime therefore, saves lives and should continue to be implemented in our society. This article relies on a small amount of evidence to back its claims that the death penalty does in fact prove to be a deterrent. The primary interests of the article seem to be focused on the lives this law potentially saves which somewhat contradicts itself given the death penalty revolves around killing and in the past has killed innocent people. The author of this article, David B. Muhlhausen, is a very credible source given he has a doctorate in public policy and is a leading expert on criminal justice. Even though the article may be credible I believe the text to be somewhat biased given the vagueness of his language, his very specific choices of evidence, and he lack of presenting the opposition. This being said, accompanied with the fact that this article does not provide but a small amount of factual evidence to support its claim, the article has little effectiveness as a counter argument.

Lastly I analyzed an article which presented more modern evidence to the argument. The central idea of this text is based on the notion that the argument surrounding capital punishment is slowly dying. This is said to be due to fewer support from people along with the fact that it's no longer needed. This claim is supported with the use of the Boston Marathon as a major piece of evidence, accompanied with other factual evidence. Some of the other interests presented in the article include the drug companies roll in lethal injection, the irreversibility of killing, sentencing an innocent to death, and the lack of deterrent the penalty provides for such heinous crimes. Each of these interest provide solid points needed to back the author's argument. The author of this piece is George F. Will, whom of which received a PhD from Princeton and began writing for the Washington Post in 1974. This provides credibility to the author making this source much more reliable. The author is also fairly unbiased, providing a viewpoint from both sides of the argument in his article. 

The debate over capital punishment has gone on for far too long but we have still yet to come to a conclusion. One side may defend that the law saves lives while the other says that it kills innocents, both of which are worlds apart. The sources I have researched that support my viewpoint have many similarities. Those anti-capital punishment rely on more effective evidence such as cost, while those pro-capital punishment only seem to have an argument based on the effect the death penalty has as a crime deterrent. When beginning my research I was somewhat undecided but now I am able to determine where my views lie. I may revise my research question in the future by attempting to find more effective objections to my side of the argument.

Reflection

Coming into my research I was still unsure of my position on my topic. As I conducted my research I decided to switch from my previous support of capital punishment to supporting the abolishment of this punishment. This was changed for two primary reasons. The first being that I don't believe it is worth anyone's time, effort, or money to pursue these individuals, seeing that they get put to death. Secondly the risk for conducting the death penalty is not worth the reward. In many cases there are very good chances that we could be killing an innocent person. I do now feel qualified to argue about this issue as I have been on both sides of the topic and have argued for and against each. 
