Women on Death Row :: Capital Punishment Essays

Women on Death RowThe eighth amendment protects Americans from the annoying of cruel and unusual punishment. Many death penalty opponents use this as the backbone to their argument against gravid punishment. Other than being cruel, I do not think that the death penalty can be apply judiciously in the United States or any other ingredient of the world. Personally, I do not think that human beings are consummate(a) and as such they cannot set up a perfect arbiter system. In any justice system that is flawed and allows bias in certain cases, the death penalty should not be used as a means of punishment because of its irrevocable nature. When I came across Sarah Hawkins hold regarding the case of Karla Faye stupefy, I was surprised to see the manifestation of my fears of the biases involved in the use of the death penalty in the case of this woman. Hawkins described how the representations of Tucker as a white, heterosexual Christian woman worked in her choose in the criminal ju stice system, and how media representations perpetuated the argument for her release from death dustup. Hawkins make very valid and convincing arguments that representations of womanhood that are expected in American culture can make a large deviance in how we perceive criminals, and in certain cases these representations can be a matter of life or death. Of course, we all know from common adept that women are far less likely to be sentenced to death row than men. This should tip us off to the differences that the judicial system discriminates even in matters as important as murder or other capital offences. But within the subgroup of women prisoners there can be a line made between the representations of women more likely to be sentenced to death row, or in this case shown benignity while on death row. Hawkins describes this compassion as typically extended only to female inmates who fit a certain predetermined societal profile of women. This definition of women or womanhood i s very interesting and deserves to be explored. In my past, I have a conception of women as being sweet and frail basically unequal to(p) of doing wrong because they are too nice or too feeble to do so. Women who are too intelligent or too blind drunk are cast off as being masculine or lesbians. When female basketball players are seen on television, they are perceived as trying to be masculine.