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The Brutality Of The Death Penalty

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Due to the brutality of capital punishment, two human rights are breached when the death penalty is used on convicted criminals: the right to life and the right to live free from torture. Rights for humans are tremendously important to the human race. They are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“Death Penalty”). Within the Universal Declaration, the right to life and to live free from torture are protected. When a person is executed, the death penalty violates both of them. The right to life is a moral principle based on the belief that a human being has the right to live and, in particular, should not be killed by another human being (“Death Penalty”). The judge sentencing a person to death is breaking the human right …show more content…

Occurrences like these have happened before with different types of execution methods. Frank J. Coppola, a convicted murderer, was executed by an electric chair in Virginia on August 10, 1982. An attorney who was present at the time of the execution stated that it took “two 55-second jolts of electricity to kill Coppola” (Radelet). On the second jolt, an odor of burning flesh and a sound of sizzling flesh was produced according to the attorney. The second jolt also made Coppola's “head and legs catch on fire” (Radelet). With the burning flesh, his body limbs catching fire, and sounds of sizzling flesh, makes Coppola's execution an act of a quick and painless death fail. It is not a painless death if one's body limbs catch on fire and their skin starts to sizzle. Another occurrence of a quick and painless death fail was on September 15, 2009 in the state of Ohio. Romell Broom tried to be executed by lethal injection multiple times, but the injections would never work. The executioners could not find a vein in his arms or legs and while trying Broom’s stomach kept heaving (“Botched Executions”). Romell Broom never died and is still currently on death row, but as his stomach was heaving during his execution, displays an act of a failed painless death. With all of these gruesome failed ways of execution, it still does not act as a deterrent to

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