The Death Penalty Should Be Abolished

    The death penalty or the capital punishment is a term used to describe the act of putting a person to death, in other words, it is the execution of a person after judgment by a legal system, either as an act of retribution, or to ensure that they cannot commit future crimes. According to the Northwestern University School of Law's Center of Wrongful Convictions (CWC), there have been a total of 15,645 executions due to the death penalty in the U.S.; 14,489 of these occurred before the U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional in 1972 and 1,156 occurred after capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Also, CWC documented over 38 executions since the mid-1970s where there was compelling evidence of innocence or serious doubt about guilt. Another 130 death row inmates were exonerated, instead of executed, between 1973 and 2008 due to emerging evidence, including DNA analysis. A smaller number of people have been exonerated posthumously. Thus, the death penalty is expensive, it can be used in a biased fashion, and innocent people are put to death.

    Most areas with the death penalty laws also allow for many more appeals in capital punishment cases. Usually, criminals convicted in death penalty trials will gradually use up those appeals over years and years, and it can be very expensive for the state to continually go through the prosecutions. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the amount of money spent on these trials will usually exceed the cost required to keep a person in prison for life.

    The death penalty is biased. Even though most agree that modern laws are usually written without an intentional racial or financial bias, people with more money and social status are often able to get a better defense because they can afford more accomplished lawyers and pay for more impressive expert witnesses. Experts also believe that the racial composition of a jury can often give minorities a huge disadvantage. There are statistics regarding death penalty convictions which are more racially lopsided than some would think.

*(1973-present) Statistical numbers taken from the DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center).

*A comprehensive study in the death penalty in North Caronila found that the odds of receiving a death sentence rose by 3.5 times among those defendantes whose victims were white. (Profº. Jack Borger and Dr. Isaac Unah, University of North Carolina, 2001).

    There is a big possibility of a false conviction leading to the punishment of an innocent person. There have been cases over the years where evidence was disproved after an execution and many cases where conclusive evidence saved someone from execution at the last moment. The chance for a mistake is too great, regardless of the relative effectiveness of the death penalty.     

*Statistical numbers taken from DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center)

*Since 1973-present, over 130 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence.  (Staff Report, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil & Constitutional Rights, Oct. 1993, with updates from DPIC). 

*From 1973-1999, there was an average of 3.1 exonarations per years. From 2000-2007, there has been an average of 5 exonerations per year. 

    Although those in favor of the death penalty believe that it can discourage future crimes, there is not credible evidence that it deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than states without such laws. And states that have abolished capital punishment do not show significant changes in either crime or murder rates. The death penalty has not a deterrent effect. Claims that each execution deters a certain number of murders have been thoroughly discredited by social science research.

 

*According to a survey of the former and present presidents of the country's top academic criminological societies, 88% of these experts rejected the notion that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murderer. (Radelet & Lacock, 2009)

    In conclusion, the death penalty is surely more expensive than life sentence, it is unfair with the poor ones and with black people, and it may even lead to the execution of innocent people.