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Timothy Evans Arguments Against Capital Punishment

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One of the most cogent arguments against Capital Punishment is the fact that innocent people have been killed due to flaws in the justice system. Witnesses, prosecutors and jurors can all make mistakes, which could cost an innocent persons life, and these mistakes cannot be put right. In 1979, a total of 69 people have been released from death row in the US after evidence of their innocence had emerged. A historic example of this would be the Timothy Evans case in 1950 which was one of the most dreadful miscarriages of justice ever in the British legal system. Timothy Evans was wrongly convicted with the murder of his wife and daughter, and was therefore executed for a crime he had not committed and was further given a royal pardon in 1966.
An argument against this view would be that Capital Punishment saves more lives than it takes. Recent studies show that for every inmate put to death, 3 to 18 murders are prevented. However if the justice system did not have the death penalty, there would be far higher death rates of innocent people than there are currently.
Personally I think the argument that more lives are saved …show more content…

I don 't think it should be abolished simply because innocent people have been executed. There are many more innocent people that would be killed due to there being no capital punishment. As well as this capital punishment works as a deterrent and makes people think twice about comitting as they are aware of the consequences. A crucial reason why I think capital punishment shouldn 't be abolished is the fact that it leaves the majority of society happy. Some critics of my viewpoint might point out that capital punishment goes against our human rights. However this is a weak argument because if someone takes away someones rights, they should therefore also have their rights removed, as they have violated their victim 's rights and the rights of the family of the

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