preview

Death Penalty Is Wrong

Good Essays
Open Document

Furthermore, the death penalty should be dismantled because research has shown that criminals have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to the death penalty when later evidence comes up that proves their innocence. To illustrate,
“Since 1973, at least 121 people have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence emerged. During the same period of time, over 982 people have been executed. Thus, for every eight people executed, we have found one person on death row who never should have been convicted. These statistics represent an intolerable risk of executing the innocent” (“Innocence”).

To have even one person sentenced to death, let alone convicted of a crime and locked away for life is unacceptable. There should be additional …show more content…

Specifically, “The current emphasis on faster executions, less resources for the defense, and an expansion in the number of death cases mean that the execution of innocent people is inevitable. The increasing number of innocent defendants being found on death row is a clear sign that our process for sentencing people to death is fraught with fundamental errors--errors which cannot be remedied once an execution occurs” (Dieter). The court system is justified in wanting to move cases along and clear the endless backlog on their dockets but not at the possible expense of an innocent person being wrongly convicted. Death penalty cases are long, drawn out and expensive trials. The defendant usually does not have the necessary financial means to afford a high priced law firm and a lengthy case. This is not fair to the defendant who can not afford decent representation. If that is the case, they would ultimately get assigned a court appointed attorney who may be overworked and underpaid will only perform the necessary amount of work to represent his client. The defendant will suffer if their attorney does not sufficiently argue about the evidence presented. In brief, “False convictions … are extremely difficult to detect after the …show more content…

For instance, “Examining the death penalty from a human rights perspective not only highlights the impact of denying the most basic right on all other rights but also demonstrates why the only “solution” to the death penalty is to permanently end its use. If the injustices and practicalities associated with capital punishment could somehow be erased—the costs cut, the racial and class biases removed, and all possibilities for “error” eliminated–the government still cannot do it because it violates fundamental human rights. A human rights based approach does not take issue with the accuracy, technique, or timeliness of an execution. It provides a strict standard with which to say simply and unequivocally—the death penalty is wrong” (“The Death Penalty Is a Human Rights Violation”). Even with eliminating the major sticking points that most opponents use, as stated above, to justify why the death penalty should be abolished, there still leaves the moral and ethical stance that the death penalty is plain and simply against the basic human right to life. Equally important, “The judge found, however, that evidence from execution logs showed that six of the last eight prisoners executed in California had not stopped breathing before technicians gave the paralytic agent, raising a serious possibility that prisoners experienced suffocation from the paralytic, a feeling much like being

Get Access
Related
Get Access