The Death Penalty

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the case of John Dowler, charged with first-degree murder for the murder of his baby son through constant abuse and argues whether he should face the death penalty if convicted. It provides a brief history of the use of capital punishment over the years in America and it has been used on mainly mass murderers. It questions whether John Dowler's crime was severe enough to warrant the death penalty by detailing the suffering of the baby before he died and asks whether if some murderers have done such awful crimes that we cannot ever risk the slightest chance of their return to society, John Dowler may be such a person. He didn't kill multiple people like Gacy or Bundy, but he repeatedly tortured a newborn baby until he died.

From the Paper:

"The strongest argument against the death penalty could be made if citizens could be guaranteed that those committed of terrible crimes would never be paroled, but experience tells us otherwise: Polly Klass's murderer, the man who snuck into her home and kidnapped her out of her bedroom had been paroled. While it seems unlikely that either Gacy or Bundy would have been paroled, cases are sometimes overturned on appeal for what seem like trivial reasons to those who want to be protected from convicted killers. If there is any chance that these murderers might ever be released, some feel that this makes a strong case for the death penalty."

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