Connecting Sociology and YOU!

The Pandemic and YOU

How do you feel about capital punishment? Do you think the public’s response and sense of justice are different when an inmate on death row dies of COVID-19 than when an inmate is executed as a legal penalty? Why or why not?

Capital Punishment

Since the outbreak began, Joseph S. Cordova, Richard Stitely, and Scott Erskine all died from COVID-19 (ABC7News 2020; Chavez 2020; Moran 2020). Each of the men was on death row for crimes they committed up to 30 years ago. By the end of 2020, 14 of the 50 federal inmates on death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, had tested positive for Covid-19 (Sandlers 2020). The Coronavirus is no respecter of persons or the criminal justice sentence.