Capital Punishment Capital Punishment: An Eye For An Eye? In the United States, the use of the death penalty continues to be a controversial issue. Every election year, politicians, wishing to appeal to the moral sentiments of voters, routinely compete with each other as to who will be toughest in extending the death penalty to those persons who have been convicted of first-degree murder. Both proponents and opponents of capital punishment present compelling arguments to …showed first 75 words of 1576 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1576 total…the death penalty is racially biased and reserved for the poor. In a New York Times Op-Ed piece (July 14, 1995), writer, E.L. Doctorow, speaking in behalf of an inmate on death row wrote, "If the death penalty must exist in this country, it is the burden of the public servants charged with applying it to do so only from the most unanswerable and awesome judicial imperatives--or state-administered death becomes morally indistinguishable from any other murder."