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Pros And Cons Of The Death Penalty

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As of August 2017,the death penalty is legal in 31 states. Twenty people were executed in the United States in 2016. Although this number may seem high the death penalty rate has actually been on a decline since the early 2000’s. Since 1973 there have only been 159 death row exonerations. There have only been 54 women on death row and only 22 juveniles have been killed but the American judicial system. Many people commit crimes every day some crimes are so horrific that they can often be sentenced to the death penalty. The death penalty is one of the cruelest acts known to man and it needs to be abolished entirely. Some reasons as to why the death penalty should be abolished are as follows: the death penalty is systematically racist, innocent people can be put to death, it stops any chance of rehabilitation, and it’s simply savage. The death penalty is systematically racist because those who kill black people are less likely to get the death people rather than those whose victims are white. The imbalances in who makes up the jury are also a huge contribution to why certain people get treated certain ways. Jurys that are made up of more white than black people are usually more susceptible to giving people the death penalty, whereas juries made up of black people are more prone to giving shorter punishments. Until America is free of racial stereotypes and disadvantages the giving of the death penalty will never be a fair vote. In addition to the death penalty being systematically unjust it is also proven to be wrong on several occasions. According to the Huffington post article “Shocking Number of Innocent People Sentenced to Death” more than four percent of inmates who have been sentenced to death in the United states are probably innocent. This means that about 1 in every 25 inmates is wrongly convicted. The occurrence of people being wrongfully convicted and put to death is not something new in American culture. At the young age of fourteen George Stinney Jr. was convicted of beating two little white girls to death. Stinney Jr. was coerced into confessing to the murders of Betty June Bininker,11, and Mary Emma Thames, 8. When he was on trial he admitted to wanting to have sex with Betty. Since the cases

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