Should Death Penalty Be Illegal Essay

In the Christian faith, the 6th Commandment states that “Thou shall not kill.” In the United States of America, the government legally killed over a 1,000 of its own citizens since 1976, and there are nearly 3000 inmates on death row waiting for their execution currently. As a nation, America has been unable to stick with one stance on many issues. There have been amendments banning alcohol, and others making alcohol legal. Many states have pushed to make abortion illegal, but still willingly kill their own citizens.

In 1992, a retrial found she was not guilty. In this case Sabrina was able to escape her execution. Another case involving the death penalty took place in 1992; Rodger Keith Coleman was executed in Virginia, even though all evidence pointed to another person as the murderer. The real murderer got away with this crime while an innocent man had to die for a crime he did not commit. In Canada, if we had the death penalty many innocent people here too, would face the death penalty for a crime they did not commit.

Justice delivery must be improved but capital punishment must

He had so much life to live until it was taken away from the cruel punishment of death penalty some people say he deserved it. That is an example of racial bias a 14 year old african american teen killed by death penalty due to a murder he committed of two young caucasianfemales but George was only 14. Supreme court says if your 15 and under you shouldn’t receive a death penalty because you are not seen as an adult unless your 18 or older 15 and under your still seen as a juvenile. Then why did George stinney get executed ? Is it far that kids have been getting killed by death penalty due to their actions.

It’s mind blowing how the justice sentence can convict somebody solely off an eye witness testimony, especially if the eye-witness isn’t accurate. “Eyewitness misidentification is the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing, playing a role in more than 70% of convictions overturned through DNA testing nationwide.’’ (Eyewitness Misindentification,2017) Immediately after reporting the crime, the victim was taken to a hospital where a rape kit was administered, and swabs were taking from her body. Days after the rape the victim was also shown two photo lineups of suspects, however she didn’t identify anyone.

In the case of Commonwealth v. John E. DuPont (1996), the defendant John DuPont was convicted in February 1997 of guilty, but mentally ill, with a verdict of third-degree murder. DuPont and his defense team had tried repeatedly to persuade the jury that he was legally insane. The definition of legally insane includes that the defendant did not know the nature of the act he or she committed or did not know it to be wrong. After weeks of testimony the jury determined that DuPont was mentally ill, but was legally sane.

That is absolutely insane. Christopher Columbus may have killed people for shady reasons, he didn’t rip out the beating heart of innocent people, which may be one of the most painful ways to die. Even outside of sacrifices, apparently “crime and street carnage were commonplace” in the Aztec empire. Some Native Americans weren’t as peaceful as many make them out to be. This is why Columbus shouldn’t be criticized as much as he is for killing

Frank committed a large scale crime, and was sent to a higher security prison. When Frank arrived, he learned the Penitentiary was unforgiving and broke spirits. “His lips were colorless, his fine teeth looked yellowish. He glanced at Alexandra sullenly, blinked as if he had come from a dark place, and one eyebrow twitched continuously” (Cather 103) Frank was portrayed as the antagonist in the entire book, except readers will sympathize for Frank

That’s approximately 25% of all the people who got killed and that’s a lot considering that black people only constitutes 12% of the population. Except from that I think we all remember Alton Sterling who got killed by police officers while selling CDs even though he was totally innocent. An awful incident like that is something that only happens in segregated societies and it’s just once again proving my point. An innocent man would never have been killed in Sweden for example because we don’t have racist police officers like they do in the US. Now you may think about why it’s like that, why are the american cops so racist?

According to The Guardian (2014) “A team of legal experts and statisticians from Michigan and Pennsylvania used the latest statistical techniques to produce a peer-reviewed estimate of the “dark figure” that lies behind the death penalty – how many of the more than 8,000 men and women who have been put on death row since the 1970s were falsely convicted”. If capital punishment for murder was imprisonment and if convicted people were innocent, there is a chance for them to can have their right to

Holmes was convicted on 24 counts of murder and 140 counts of attempted murder for the 2012 Aurora shooting that killed 12 people and injured 70 others. He had no known criminal record prior to the shooting. “We believe that the death penalty is morally wrong, especially when the condemned is mentally ill,” his parents had written in a letter. “He is a human being gripped by severe mental illness. We realize treatment in an institution would be best for our son.

The lack of resources to extract DNA is continuing to effect the justice system. The backlogs of rape kits throughout the United States has become an overwhelming number while the crime labs have been doing very little to compensate for these changes. Not only does the inefficiency of DNA analysis effect rape kits, rapes effect thousands of innocent humans every year. It is an ongoing cycle and very little is being done to stop it. Although hard to help with the rates of crime, specifically rapes, there is something that can be done with bring these sexual offenders to justice.

Very few criminals really get deterred by the death penalty. A Bristol prison chaplain says that, “...out of 167 condemned criminals whom he had interviewed, only three had not witnessed an execution” (Weil 2013). The criminals sentenced to death row were not deterred by the death penalty, even though almost all of them have witnessed a hanging. Capital punishment is not an effective way to deter criminals, since the prospect of spending one’s entire life behind bars sounds even worse. The criminals who think they can get away with their crimes, also think that they will not be executed if convicted.

So far in 2016 white criminals account for 71% of police officer killings. How is it possible that a crime that often demands the death penalty has an overwhelming percentage of White perpetrators, yet these same people are executed much less frequently? The answer is that if the system was not racist, these results would be impossible. Many supporters of the death penalty often cite the “eye for an eye argument,” meaning that if someone kills another individual, the murderer should suffer execution.

The death penalty has always been one of the most highly debated consequence in the United States. Although some people will say you get what you deserve, is it really necessary for the United States to go to this extreme? Or are they taking it too far? The death penalty is as follows per death penalty.procon.org "Also called capital punishment - Execution of an offender sentenced to death after conviction by a court of law of a criminal offense. Capital punishment should be distinguished from extrajudicial executions carried out without due process of law.