Death Penalty #3

The stages in a case about this starts with a crime that qualifies for capital punishment. These crimes usually are never walked up upon by police and always relies on evidence and pictures to solve the case. the next step in the case is to make an arrest. This is the part of the process that can mess the whole life up for an innocent person. The police are usually pressured to arrest someone as fast as they can to settle the neighborhood and everyone around the case. After this the person is brought in front of a court to gets the plea and the charges that are being brought against them. They than have to be proven guilty or "Death Qualified". After they are proven guilty they get the burden of trying to show how bad a mistake they made to sentence them to death. They also get the chance to get a clemency hearing. However if they fail to prove their innocence they have to wait until they get served their warrant for death.

The most humane way is through lethal injection which is when certain chemicals are injected into their body. It first puts them to sleep, than they get a chemical that stops all muscle movement. Eventually they get a shot that stops their heart and that is the end of the process. I think that hanging and firing squad are the two most inhumane ways to kill someone. These can both be considered "cruel and unusual" because there are way to many things that can go wrong, which could make the situation turn into torture. These both can cause very slow painful deaths also.

All of the statistics about other states and the death penalty really surprised me. I think it was the amount of people on death row in some of the states. For example in California there has been 669 death row inmates and only 13 executions, in Texas there has been 370 inmates and 405 total executions. The stats could keep going on and on. These numbers are really surprising because that is so many people to have waiting on when they are going to die or even if they will ever get off death row. All this info shows me is more reasons why the death penalty should not be put in because there is way to many flaws in the system to where it is not fair enough for everyone that comes through the process.

This info just supported my reason to abolish the death penalty because there are simply way to many people on death row. For example there are 3261 death row inmates throughout the whole country. The system is also very racist. With most of the inmates being black with white victims. I think that everyone should take a look at these statistics and realize that this is doing more bad than good and is costing the people as taxpayers so much extra money that is not needed to be spent.

Boggess

While watching the Front line video about Clifford Boggess I knew what decision I would have made. On one side he was clearly a cold blooded killer who had no remorse for what he did until after he committed the crimes. On the other side he said he was a changed man and that his stay on death row changed him for the better. In my opinion only certain people change for the good while they go to jail, prison, death row, whatever it may be. Only the certain people who really want forgiveness for what they have done and actually want to change their life for the better. I believed this about Boggess until the interview with his Girlfriend when she said that she knew he was a threat to society and that she wanted him dead because he had been threatening her to. I think that the death penalty is pointless. We are trying to show how killing people for crimes is supposed to deter it, but in reality it is not even doing that. Criminals will keep killing and committing capital crimes no matter what their sentence is and a life sentence would be way worse than dieing. It gives them so much time to think about what they have done and to be bothered by it for the rest of their life.

Drug Testing in schools

I think that student drug testing should not be allowed unless the student themselves were caught in the act or with a drug. It is not fair to make kids test when some of them join extra curricular activities to simply get away from all of the drugs and bad things on the streets. "There is growing recognition that extracurricular involvement plays a role in protecting students from substance abuse and other dangerous health behaviors." (National Education Association) If someone wants to spend enough money to test every kid that goes through an activity, why don't they just spend the money on things to improve the activities so more kids join and maybe get out of the bad activity. No matter how successful drug testing is, kids are still going to be doing drugs all through out high school and there are plenty of ways to pass drug tests even if you shouldn't. The success of the drug test will not out weigh the psychological affect it will have on all of the kids if they can't even get the trust of their coaches/sponsors to not test them. Students should be building trust with the adults in the school and with the administrators not building a mistrust. The test also do not discover the drugs that most people are worried about in high school teens. "The risk that testing students for illicit drugs "will be understood to signal that alcohol and tobacco are of lesser danger is not an idle concern." (National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence) On student privacy I think that students should have the right to have all of their privacy protected outside of school. For example if someone gets arrested the police department should not be able to tell the high school that the specific person was arrested for whatever reason. However if the student is on school property there is every right for them to be searched if it is reasonable. They should have to prove the reason and give evidence for the search and the students parents,lawyer and a police officer should all be present during the time of the search.

Religion

In the article that I read it talked about 6th grade classes in Texas to remove the words Christmas and Rosh Hashanah from their curriculum and put in Hindu religious words. I think that they should keep all the old names and add the new ones so all of the young kids get more knowledge about the world around them. The more educated we are about other religions and things the more we can be compatible with all of those other people in the world. But if we limit what we teach to our kids and learn about religion our ideas might get skewed to the wrong place. Many people do not even know that there are other religions other than the one that they are. There are so many things that separate us in the world that I think the more we learn about other religions the less that will separate us and the more we can realize how close we are to each other. I think that it would be a terrible idea for the state of Texas to do this because it will just cause unwanted violence and arguments that could have been prevented before hand.

Reactions to 9/11 movie

This video that we watched the past two class periods in my opinion sent a very strong message to me. I never really realized how much people came together in that time of horror or even just fear. I kind of remember what I was doing that day and what I was thinking but I can say it was not even close to what those two kids that were saying at the end of the video. When the people were saying things back and forth to each other I was really paying attention to if their arugements made sense and I was trying to figure out why they were arguing rather than embracing each other. It was almost like all of the pent up rage and saddness that came down on New York came out in those arugements and then at the end everyone was hugging. No one really knew where to funnel the emotions they were feeling. Many of the people who were there at ground zero cleaning up saw things that they have never seen before. That one guy said he has never seen  body parts seperate from the body like that. He said that there were heads, arms, legs, feet, etc... getting pulled out of the debris. This video really changed my mind about how I thought about 9/11 and how I think about what people should have or could have been saying that day. Although it was hard on the whole country many people came together and got through it with the hope and compassion of the men and women that fought to clean everything up.

Speech codes.

Speech codes are usually set into place by an admistration becasue they want to try and protect certain speech that is not protected by the first amendment. By doing this it limits the free speech they give us in their school. I think that speech can be very hurtful a lot of the times and if it is not going to cause any physical harm they should not be able to limit it. If someone says like "I hate anyone who is not white because white people rule the world and are smarter than everyone else." than that is that persons opinion and they should be able to express it. If we do not get the chance to express our opinions how are we as students suposed to expand our thinking beyond the values and beliefs we have from birth. Everyone has different beliefs and opinions on things and everyone should be able to say these aloud. I think that speech codes are a good thing to have to an extent but once it crosses that line they should be taken out and revised.