Everyone makes mistakes, it is a part of growing up and just life in general, right? But to what extent do mistakes begin to get considered crimes. Society as a whole has basically set boundaries as to what is socially acceptable and what isn’t and are quick to judge without knowing any reasoning. But should death really even be an option for extreme cases? Especially now that it is the twenty first century and the United States has overcome several different hardships throughout history, it would only make sense that the death penalty would get abolished forever. Maybe it is more understandable that it occurs in developing countries but not in one of the most developed countries in the world. From 1977 until now, there have been 1452 executions …show more content…
The death penalty clearly puts innocent lives at risk, since 1976, “138 innocent men and women have been released from death row, including some who came within minutes of execution” (OADP). Recent studies argue that more than 4% of death row inmates are innocent meaning that the rate of wrongful death sentences is higher than what some experts had estimated. According to the Death Penalty Info Center, the main reasons that someone innocent could get wrongly convicted are: eyewitness error: confusion or faulty memory, government misconduct: police and prosecution, false confessions: mental illness, “junk science”: mishandled evidence, or snitch testimony: given in exchange for a reduction in sentence. Kirk Bloodsworth was the first person to get exonerated, have your conviction reversed, in the United States in 1993, which honestly it wasn’t that long ago. He was a twenty- three year old who had just served four years in the Marines and had no previous criminal record, so how was it possible that he got convicted and sentenced to death for a crime that he didn’t commit? Because of faulty eyewitness identification. The sketch the police came up with was a 6 feet and 5 inches tall man with dirty blond hair, and a slim fit. Bloodsworth was not that tall or thin and had red hair, obviously not fitting the description. Therefore, he spent nine years total in prison, two of those in death row, for a crime he didn’t commit. DNA evidence gained Bloodsworth his freedom back (United
Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but what happens when an innocent man is killed in regards to a crime he never committed? It’s a mistake that can never be corrected. Wilbert Coffin was sent to jail and then killed for being wrongfully convicted of murdering a man in 1953. The death penalty will not only kill the guilty, but the innocent as well. The death penalty is wrong.
In the last several years, too many people in the United States have been wrongfully sentenced with the death penalty. Several accused have their sentence overturned or they have been totally exonerated. There are at least 8 people who were executed by United States and later proven innocent (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org). Over a 20 year period, 68% of all death sentences were reversed (http://karisable.com). A noteworthy example is of Jerry Banks who was convicted and sentenced with the death penalty for two counts of murder in 1975. Five years later, in 1980, Banks' conviction was overturned on the basis of newly discovered evidence which was allegedly known to the state at the time of trial. Another example was the case of Lawyer Johnson who was sentenced to death in 1971 by an all white jury for the murder of a white victim. Later in 1982, Johnson’s conviction was overturned and Johnson exonerated when a previously silent eyewitness identified the state’s chief witness as the real murderer. (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org) Human error is inevitable, particularly
Kirk Bloodsworth was 22 when he spent eight years in prison, two of those on death row. He was wrongfully convicted. A 9-year old girl was raped and killed on July 25, 1984. Two boys had seen her walking with a man before she suddenly disappeared. The boys described the man to the police and the police came to the conclusion that the murderer was Bloodsworth. He repeatedly claimed he was innocent but he was found guilty and sentenced to death on March, 1985. After 8 years he finally proved he was innocent through DNA testing. He was released from prison on June 1993. He was paid 300,000 dollars (“Correcting”). The US should not institute the death penalty everywhere in the country because it would put us at risk of executing innocent people, costs us millions of dollars in administering the penalty and there is a better way to help the families of murder victims.
First in foremost, the use of capital punishment harms the innocent. Ignoring the obvious for a second on this topic, executing the innocent, the death penalty affects everyone involved. Take for example the case Semon Thompson,
In fact, in 2014 the percentage rate of people falsely being convicted of a crime was nearly 4.1%. This may not sound like a lot, but let’s put it into perspective. 4.1% of 100,000 convicts equals 4,100 innocent people that have been falsely accused of a crime. With the death penalty available, we as a whole are allowing innocent people to be executed. Some might argue and say, “not everyone that is killed is innocent,” and while technically this is correct, innocent lives are being treated as collateral damage in the process.
The risk of innocent people being sentenced is high. About 14% of executions were of the innocent, and they weren’t found out until long after their execution. This supports my claim because too many innocent people are being executed against their will, and most of them aren’t even involved with the murder, just innocent bystanders who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In conclusion, there is just too much risk of innocent bystanders being executed for doing nothing wrong, and we should get the facts and evidence straight before we go kill an innocent
Great post! I just wanted to add to how long it actually takes for someone to be executed. Typically, an individual on death row spends over a decade waiting to be executed. Because of the of appeals process it extends the amount of time the inmate must await executions. Due to the extensive wait time a number of inmates never actually make it to execution they die of natural causes, suicide, or are killed by other inmates. However, without thorough appeals mistakes can be made and innocent people could be executed.
Every single death row inmates face executions there have been cases that many innocent individuals is waiting to be executed or has been executed. Research lead by Samul Gross, a professor at the University of Michigan Law school stated that “At least 4.1% of all defendants sentenced to death in the US in the modern era are innocent” (Capital Punishment). But not all men and woman run the same faith; there have been many cases where inmates on death row get a second opportunity in life and get exonerated from death row. For example “As of today, 150 individuals have been exonerated from death row” (National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty). Another significant factor that there is a lot of innocent people on death row it has to do with a false eyewitness and authorities pressuring victims. For example, Kirk Bloodsworth from Maryland who was convicted of a crime he didn't commit in 1984, he was sent to death row by a “false eyewitness identification.” (National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty). How about the case of Ruben Cantu a 17-year-old who has never convicted of crimes. On till he was framed with a capital murder case that took place on November 8, 1984, and sentenced of the murderer. One of the victims and only survivor of the crime gave his statement that Cantu was the killer, he was pressured by the authorities to place Cantu in the scene of the crime. “He
Each year, approximately about 10,000 innocent people in the United States get convicted of serious crimes that they did not commit. And at least four percent of them receive the death penalty being completely innocent. Scenarios like this happen all the time because there are more and more false persecutions each day which can be easily avoided. Many people are occupying prisons all over the world, for felonies they did not execute. More than 200 people have been exonerated through DNA testing nationwide. But why do these wrongful convictions keep happening?
The punishment reserved for the worst offenders can be either the death penalty or life in prison without parole. Today, there are thirty-two states that choose to execute criminals for their horrendous crimes and eighteen states that use life without parole to punish those who committed the worst crimes. Life without parole often called “Civil Death” is a punishment that specifies that offenders will spend the remainder of their life in Jail, while death penalty is a punishment allowing to put offenders on the death row for crimes they committed. At first sight death penalty and life without parole seem different but they have more in common than what meets the eyes. First, death penalty and life without parole are both the highest form of
"Since 1973, over eighty people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence" (Innocence and the Death Penalty 1). Statistics say that of the three-thousand six hundred people on death row right now, at least one hundred of them are innocent (Capital Punishment 1). When an innocent person is executed, the real killer is still on the streets ready to victimize someone else (Pragmatic Arguments 1). The most important problem is that when an innocent person is executed, they represent another human being who did not deserve to die.
The death penalty can lead to the death of innocent people. For example, “…According to a new study, serious errors occur in almost 70% of all trials leading to the death penalty…”(Leibman). This shows that if 100 people were put on death row, 70 would have serious mistakes in their
The taking of a person's life is unreliable and once a mistake is made, nothing can be done to make up for it, because you have taken the person's life. Current statistics show that for every 7 people executed one has been released from death row. One in seven does not sound like never good consistency to me, and how many of the 6 still executed could still be innocent? I feel that the death of innocents cannot be justified by the death penalty. A recent study at Columbia University found that two thirds of capital cases had serious errors in them, two thirds does not sound like a very consistent number that I would
It has been proven that 1 out of every 10 people sentenced to death are actually innocent. Since 1976, 1300 people have been put to death and the statistic indicates that about 130 of them were innocent (Source 4). One hundred thirty lives ended unfairly, one hundred thirty families were affected without any justification, one hundred thirty people lost their one and only chance to live just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the right to life was violated 1300 times. When a person is killed, there is no way of bringing him or her back to life, while a person that is sentenced to life imprisonment without parole can be released of prison once his or her innocence is proven. As Freddie Lee Pitts, an exonerated prisoner said: “You can release an innocent man from prison, but you can’t release him from the grave” (Source 4) The United States of America cannot carry with the responsibility of killing an innocent person because there is nothing that can fix that mistake.
Although one might think that capital punishment leads to innocent deaths, this is completely false. People against capital punishment constantly claim that there have been numerous cases in which we have executed an innocent man. But the truth is that we do not have any records of ever executing an innocent man. The idea that innocent people can get executed on accident is highly false and inaccurate. Also, it is perceived that capital punishment takes away freedom