Introduction
The death penalty is the ultimate punishment with no harsher inferior damnation than death itself. For centuries, the government has wanted the death penalty to be portrayed as a help in deterring murder and also as an ultimate way of “giving murders a dose of their own medicine” but it isn't the given image, the death penalty has caused people excruciating pain that was unpromised and is not effective in preventing murder which is why it should be completely abolished. In this paper, I will be arguing that the death penalty does not discourage criminals and that the United States should outlaw the practice.
Before I thoroughly explain my stance on this issue, I would like to provide some background information regarding the death penalty. As many may know, the death penalty is an age-old punishment where crime is punished by death. Death penalty laws existed from the times of the ancient Babylonian period, and the mention of this practice has been recorded in many books and inscriptions. The idea of capital punishment was brought over by Britain when the founding fathers declared independence. Ancestors loved the idea of the death penalty since it was a common part of life. Europeans gave the death penalty for various crimes. The first recorded execution in America occurred in Jamestown, in 1608, A man named George Kendall was executed for treason. In the earlier colonial days, laws regarding capital punishment varied from area to area.
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This practice continues today in some countries like the US, despite the advancements that we have made as a society. We have become more sophisticated than ever before, thanks to many factors such as technological advancements, globalization, education, and democracy.
However, the practice still continues. In fact, the U.S. is the only advanced democracy where capital punishment by death is not abolished. By retaining this form of punishment, are we exhibiting barbaric traits as a society? The death penalty is a barbaric act simply because the law should be about protecting humans and not killing them in a cruel and unusual way.
Significance of My Topic and Death Errors
According to the Criminal Justice Project of the NAACP, there are 2,673 people on death row in the United States as of April 1, 2019, and half of those people have been diagnosed with mental health issues. A staggering number of innocent people have been wrongfully sentenced to death. Our people, our government, and our justice system have made the rate of error for capital punishment in the United States abysmally, knowing that 1 out of 9 of the population who have been executed was innocent. A recent study determined by the National Registry’s Annual Report On Wrongful Convictions, made a record finding 151 new exonerations across the United States in 2018, including 68 exonerations resulting from wrongful homicide convictions. Two of those exonerations freed death-row prisoners Vicente Benavides and Clemente Aguirre. This is 68 lives that would have otherwise been living continuously and 68 fewer families that wouldn't have to mourn because of the state that's supposed to protect us from these crimes. For a practice that is presumed to increase public safety, there is a horrifying error margin. The blood of innocent people is in the hands of the American public for these wrongful convictions and executions.
We Pay Many Millions For The Death Penalty System.
In order to carry out the death penalty, a state must have a substantial amount of money on hand. The overall estimated cost of carrying out execution is about 70% more than the cost of a case without the death penalty. A case with Brian Nichols, a man from Fulton County right here in Atlanta Georgia who was found guilty of 4 murders in 2005. The state insisted on Nichols to get the death penalty and it was later revealed that his case alone cost the state more than $3 million, with the state paying $2.3 million, and Fulton County paying about $625,000. California alone has spent 4 billion on execution, money that could've been spent on a better cause such as education, hospitals, road damages, and police corrections.
Due to the lack of financial funding, police officers all across the United States are unfortunately being laid off because there isn't enough money to pay them. This lack of funding is also impacting the criminal system in abounding ways causing court systems to be bombarded with cases, inmates to become set free, and the overall crime rate in our nation is constantly rising higher and higher withstanding our attempts to lower it. From the time of the financial economic crisis in 2008 which resulted in our country descending into a recession, the justice system has become obligated to make drastic cuts all the way to this very substructure. Many states throughout The New World (America) were forced to release a substantial number of their prisoners before their release date all due to lack of funding. If the state of California alone were to simply get rid of the death penalty, the state would be able to pocket more than 4.5 billion dollars over the next 15-20 years depending on the exact amount of cases the state is presented with.
There Is A Better Alternative: Life Without Parole.
An author in North Carolina News published an article stating the death penalty cost more, delivers less, and puts innocent lives at risk. But on the other hand, life without parole provides severe labor and allows justice to be served along with harsh punishments. There is a show on Netflix that talks about how inmates serving life sentences; commit crimes inside the prison to get moved to the Death Penalty ward, where the living conditions are better. This goes to show how the death penalty still doesn’t have any proven facts to decrease killing but increase it. The death penalty is in fact causing the increase in homicides since the living conditions are more comfortable than in any other ward.
Serving life in prison is a better alternative than getting the death penalty. Being that people who were sentenced to execution we later found innocent. While reading 8 People Who Were Executed and Later Found Innocent, I found that Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of arson murder in Texas in 1992. It was said that Willingham intentionally committed incendiarism and owns his own 3 kids resulting in his being put to death in 2004. It was later found that “the evidence was misinterpreted, and that none of the evidence used against Willingham was valid’ concluded by the Texas Forensic Science Commission. As it turns out, the fire really was accidental. Putting everyone on life without parole will decrease the number of future allies of wrongful convictions being that there are 150 convicted people said to be innocent that were sentenced to death as of today. By setting people on a life sentence rather than execution, the government will be exhibiting a positive example for the union. There are enough lives getting taken on the streets of our nation the government isn't helping by taking another.
Race and Place Determine Who Lives and Who Dies.
The race of victims and defendants' skin plays a critical and unfair role in deciding who receives the death penalty in America. This issue rose after McCleskey v. Kemp where McCleskey argued that there was racial discrimination in the application of Georgia's death penalty. People of color including minorities have been reckoned for an incommensurate 43% of total capital punishments since 1976 and 55% of those currently awaiting execution are also minorities. Banning the death penalty is necessary situation to address the flagrant racist act in the sentencing of the death penalty. For centuries, broadcastings from around the world have come to the conclusion that there is widespread racial discrimination in the petition for the death penalty. According to the Death Penalty Information Center Since 1976, 21 white defendants were murderers of black victims while 291 black defendants were murders of white defendants.
It's sad to know that your state can be the determination of your execution, there are about 22 states that have abolished the death penalty ranging from elimination all the way back to 1853. While reading Against the Death Penalty written by author Stephen Breyer and edited by John Bessler, I found that Texas is the main face of execution. Texas has a skyrocketing number of 5657 state killings that were “justice punishments” which are legal killings done by the government we trust to keep our world safe from such actions. Why can someone living adjacent to their birth home but still in the supposed “United” States determine the harshness of such a life-impacting punishment but not the severity of their crime? This is America where soldiers come from all over the country but fight as an army for everyone's peace and security.
Execution Does Not Discourage Murder
It has come to sense that this form of punishment is not effective as a crime prevention measure showing there's no deterrent impact. Claims that each execution deters a certain number of murders have been thoroughly discredited by social science research. John J. Donohue III, JD, Ph.D., Professor of Law at Stanford University, states that “People commit murders largely in the heat of passion, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or because they are mentally ill, giving little or no thought to the possible consequences of their acts”. The few serial killers and murderers who plan their crimes beforehand such as professional executioners intend and expect to avoid punishment altogether by not getting caught while some self-destructive individuals may even hope they will be caught and executed. The laws of the death penalty maliciously convince and deceive our public that the government has taken effective procedures to fight crime and homicide. The reality of this is that these laws do nothing to protect us or our communities from dangerous criminal acts that are close by. The South has America’s highest murder rate, despite overseeing 81 percent of total executions. In contrast, the Northeast has the lowest murder rate in the nation, and they carry out less than 1 percent of all executions. Canada has taken a big step and ended capital punishment and since measures have been taken their murder rate has dropped by 44 percent.
Mentally Ill Are Sentenced To Death
Many of those sentenced to death are suffering from mental illness. It has been estimated that about 20% of those on death row have severe mental illness. The Death Penalty Information Center also known as the DPIC states that “People with serious mental illnesses are at a substantial disadvantage in defending themselves when they face criminal charges, and those difficulties are compounded when the charges are so serious that the death penalty is sought”. In addition to the criminal justice system failing to serve the justice that is often necessary, fear and taint have been huge factors in jury rulings for such cases. In virtue of this, people with mental health issues are at high risk of losing their lives to arbitrary and unreasonable sentencing to the death penalty. Individuals with serious mental illness have difficulty understanding their rights, are intimidated and threatened into distorted confessions, and have less access because of their mental illness to safeguards designed to protect fundamental rights such as the right to effective assistance of legal counsel. About half of the total prison population in general have recorded mental health issues of varying levels of severity and are subject to medications to help them do simple tasks as even sleep. Most people who are sentenced to death are serial killers and have been said to have mental illnesses (not speaking for all but most) and for the sick, we shouldn't kill them no matter what they've done to us who are we as America to take another life and considered it as our justice for one already lost?
Against Almost Every Religion and May Cause Unbearable Pain
The death penalty is supposed to be a painless and simple procedure now that we have more access to modern-age medicines, this is one of the reasons the government decided to even allow the death penalty to continue because it was promised to not go against the 8th amendment but it does. There have been reports of inmates complaining about a “burning sensation’ from lethal injection. Many are constantly reinjected with the needle if no working vein is found in the person. “My impression is that lethal injection as practiced in the US now is no more humane than the gas chamber or electrocution, which have both been deemed inhumane,” says Leonidas Koniaris, a surgeon in Miami. Sodium Thiopental will confirm the loss of sensation at a given amount of approximately 2 to 3 grams, especially if the executioner giving the product is unskilled which then the execution could last up to 10 minutes. People on death row also are known to have the same trait of being extremely anxious and constantly having their bodies filled with a tremendous amount of adrenaline so it's only expected that they would need more of the Thiopental to exhibit the unconscious stage.
Killing someone is putting them out of their misery and what type of relief is it for a family to know that another life was taken after their loved ones? I believe all states let people live as long as they can even though we might have a passionate hate towards society’s murderers only let God punish them for their wrongdoings. A famous verse in the Koran lays down that 'if anyone kills a person unless it is as a punishment for murder or spreading mischief in the land, it will be as if he kills all people.' this implies that, no matter the reason behind a killing it is all considered to be manslaughter unless found as a justifiable homicide of self-defense.
Taking Action and Conclusion
These wrongful convictions are proof that the death penalty is constitutionally limited. It has limits, which must not be overstepped. And yet, some police officers, judges, or prosecutors sometimes bypass the laws and go beyond those limits, as the growing number of exonerated death row inmates indicates. Some states have begun to learn lessons from their mistakes, while others are anchored in their beliefs that capital punishment is fair, treats defendants equally, and does not kill innocent people. If the United States wants to keep on using capital punishment in its justice system, it had better make sure that they do not convict and execute innocent defendants anymore. Convicting an innocent to death is basically unconstitutional... What about executing an innocent defendant? The death penalty only shows that killing is okay and should be thrown out.
Conclusively, with or without the death penalty, people are still going to commit crimes. As much as there have been some studies explaining that the death penalty is an effective form of deterrence, there lacks conclusive evidence to prove that people are deterred. As previously stated the government wants the death penalty to be portrayed as a help in deterring murder and also as an ultimate way of “giving murders a dose of their own medicine” but it isn't the given image, the death penalty has caused people excruciating pain that was unpromised and is not effective in preventing murder which is why it should be completely abolished. A few ways I have made a communal change in getting closer to the execution of execution is by educating people in my parish and community on the topic, Seeking new knowledge on U.S. criminal justice policies and the policies in my state, and signing petitions that are in honor of abolishing the death penalty. Killing purposely is killing and just because it's done by people in power doesn't make it right.
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