The Death Penalty Is an Outdated Form of Punishment

The Death Penalty is an Outdated Form of Punishment The protective authority is becoming cleverer to stopping crimes and is still increasing for the past years. With the punishment of the death penalty crimes have not been decreasing. In fact the crime in the United States are 5 times more than Australia and Britain. The death penalty is an outdated form of punishment and should be abolished because it is cruel and unusual. With the death penalty enacted criminals have been killed for their crimes but cost 4 times more than have them as life in prison without parole.

Some cases have happened where the “criminal” has been executed and soon with DNA was declared innocent. Life in prison also guarantees no future crimes, some religions go against the death penalty. Some people state that killing is wrong, and it breaks the international human rights which is the right to life. In society it is not practiced as much, the trail is not a fair manner. Some criminals that are convicted with murder don’t have good lawyers to protect them from the penalty. The death penalty promotes a normal solution to penalties. http://www. antideathpenalty. org/) The death penalty cost much more than life in prison without parole because in the Constitution it requires a long judicial processes to make sure that the criminal is not being charged with execution when they never committed the crime. Even with the precautions like these they can still execute an innocent person without the right evidence. With the cost of the death penalty if life in prison without parole would take the place of it, the cost would lower millions of dollars less.

With those millions we could use to fix communities, hire about 500 more protective authorities to take care of the prisoners, provide medicine to the mentally ill criminals, and could also prevent crimes and save lives. (O’Malley) In California if they didn’t have the death penalty they would save about $1 billion dollars over 5 years. In California taxpayers pay 90,000 more per death row than a prisoner in life. The ACLU has found there is a hidden death penalty tax in California additional to the one that is already been paid. (www. deathpenalty. rg) With people being convicted with crimes they have not committed in some cases the judge has sentence them to the death row. With the many trails and appeals they have to face they are still shown guilty even though they didn’t commit it. With in the United States since 1973, 140 have been executed and later was proven innocent. In 1981, a man named Earl Charles was convicted for murder, he spent the past three years trying to prove his innocence when he was in line for execution, after he was executed and later he was found innocent.

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Now they talk about him being the huge error. This shows that the court made a mistake and now could never redo or bring him back to life. That’s why we should replace the death penalty with life in prison because you can take them out for the crime if declared innocent. (Meehan) "We simply cannot say we live in a country that offers equal justice to all Americans when racial disparities plague the system by which our society imposes the ultimate punishment. "      - Senator Russ Feingold, 2003 (www. deathpenalty. org).

This means that in United States the constitution says we will not have any discrimination but there is always discrimination in certain ways that they don’t notice. This complaint that people state is true because they have executed some whites to cover up the discrimination against blacks. Also the most prisoners executed almost 99 percent of them are men. Part of another discrimination is that some victims that they killed their lives are more important than other victims so they sentence the “more important” victims killers to the death row.

Studies have discovered that in crimes that if a black person kills a white are about 40 times more likely to be sentenced to death than if he killed a black. (Meehan) Some cases the death row sentence are applied in wrong ways such that when the criminal is sentence to the death penalty when they committed a less horrendous crime than one who did a much worst crime. An example is two men were charged with killing and one of them was sentence to death and the second man was freed, and stated that he didn’t mean for the other man to take the blame is just came out that way.

Later after the man was executed the freed man was given 7 years and 8 months in prison for kill the San Francisco mayor and another city official. This show that the court is unjust because they both committed the same crime but one was killed and another one was given about 8 years in prison for the same crime. (Meehan) In some religions scripts it say that execution is ok to do but now those same religions are opposed to the death penalty in the United States and view it as immoral.

Some religions that are opposed to the death penalty are Christian, Buddhist, Catholic, Jewish, and Interfaith. (deathpenalty. org) In the second week of September in 2012 an Ohio inmate was freed because of a Catholic organization who found evidence to set him free. (Keyes) In the Christian Religion some enforce the thought that Cain was the first murderer in the world and was not executed because he had something special, which was populate the earth.

A pastor wrote a book and stated that Christ would oppose the killing of a human as a punishment for a crime. He also stated that it breaks against one of the Ten Commandments. This shows a strong command that the death penalty is wrong and should not be used. (Meehan) Internationally many countries have abolished the death penalty just during the 21st century about 30 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, why, because they viewed as the death penalty as going against the international human rights which is the right to life. deathpenalty. org) In South Sudan human rights have backed up the campaign against the death penalty in the country saying that this punishment is “ outrageous and inhumane” that goes against the right to life. The South Sudan society of the South Sudan Human Rights Society for Advocacy (SSHURA) are stating that “the death penalty should be scrapped off the books of South Sudan” – Executive Director of the SSHURA and that they are in full support of societies that are against it.

Currently about 150 countries of the United Nations have abolished the death penalty and are in the processes of helping other countries who haven’t abolished it. (Uma) The death penalty can bring suffering to the victims family, they support other punishments instead of the death penalty for various reasons. The death penalty brings traumatizing long term effects that make the families suffer and reopen the event over again unlike life without parole it brings punishment to the criminal but it doesn’t affect the family as much and will forget.

Some families argue that millions are spent to the death penalty each year that if it is replaced with life without parole the money could be spent to violence preventions and solve unsolved cases. They also state that the death penalty focuses on legal consequences and not on human consequences and focuses on the crime and the accused instead of the feelings of the victims family, the accused families and very importantly the community. Life without parole punishes the criminal instead of putting them out in public or the news.

With death penalty still enacted in the United States for victims families there are many organizations that help them become situated with the decision and also help reform the death penalty. Such as Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights which is an international non-governmental organizations of victims family members of criminal murder, terrorist attacks, state executions, assassinations and disappearances helping to abolish the death penalty with a human rights perspective. (deathpenalty. org) One of the most important things a person convicted of any crime is a lawyer.

When a person who has had a mass murder determining that if they should get the death penalty is based on how good and clever is his or her representation. Some criminals can’t afford a lawyer so they are given one but those attorneys ether don’t have experience, are under paid, or sometimes overworked which can bring them to losing their lives because of the attorney. Some appointed attorneys come to court without any evidence to get them out or don’t pay attention and lose the case. (deathpenalty. org) People for the death penalty have stated that with the death penalty crimes have been decreasing.

The crime has been decreasing because our protective authority are coming up with more technology to stop crimes but not because of the death penalty crimes have decreased. It is proven that the United States crime is 6 times more than England and 5 times more than Australia. Some states have larger crime rates than others. In the year 2003 state murder increased and went higher than the national murder rate. (antideathpenalty. org) The murder wouldn’t think that committing the murder they would get caught and if they do they would think about the consequences they would get if they do. Sarokin) There have been various debates on the controversial topic of the death penalty. Such as execution cost more than life in prison, innocent people may be wrongly executed and can not reverse what has been done, crimes have not decreased since the death penalty was legal, life in prison also guarantees no future crimes, it goes against many religions, killing is wrong, some convicted can’t afford an attorney so they are appointed the worst ones, it violated the international human rights laws known as the right to life, and race comes into play while they are tired.

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