The Ultimate Punishment
...mist who found that the death penalty deters crime, told a Senate Committee that he does not regard his study as conclusive” (close up). Furthermore, other aspects of this issue such as religion have become a controversial argument. The Bible says that the punishment needs to be equal to the crime; an eye for an eye, but the Bible was written hundreds of years ago and is obsolete. In Matthew 5:38 he states, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” Capital punishment dates back to the days of Jesus. People practiced such punishments then, and there were not any appeals. The people of those days found the killing of a criminal necessary to keep order in their society. An honorable man once said, “Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years with time off for good behavior?”(religioustolerance) Many find this to be a thought provoking statement, while others find it to be a mocking disgrace and extremely inappropriate. Even though the Bible says one thing, that does not mean it is always true or meant to be taken literally. Any educated Christian knows that many Bible stories are fiction and aim to teach lessons rather than be taken literally. “Scripture scholars teach us to understand the Bible in historical context: when it was written and why” (Overberg). In the same way, the infamous phrase, “an eye for an eye…” has been taken out of context and is often misinterpreted. Also, formed hundreds of years ago, this old Hebrew law makes it obvious how out dated the death penalty really is and shows there is just no justifying the government killing a person. The death penalty is given only to deserving criminals who are found guilty in the court of law, although, it has been determined with new technology that innocent people were killed by the our government. Mistakes concerning capital cases almost never happen; it is rare if a mistake is made. For every 100 executions, there is one innocent person killed. The majority of Americans still support the death penalty even if one innocent person is killed to every 100 people (closeup). “As for prisoners released from death rows because of newly discovered evidence that they were innocent, this shows that appeals process provided prisoners with the opportunity to prove their case was wrongly decided” (closeup). Even though most prisoners found innocent get released, many never got the chances today’s convicted get. For example, in today’s world technology seems to always be improving, therefore a person convicted ten years ago may have been innocent but it was difficult to prove do to our inadequate methods of the time. If sentenced to live with life without parole, a person convicted gets all the time in the world to prove their innocent, unfortunately a person given death has minimal time to gather punitive evidence to prove innocence other than their own word. A mistake made in a capital trial is literally the difference in life or death. The death penalty is permanent and irreversible, a mistake could be deadly. “A total of 69 people have been released from death row since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. Twenty-one condemned inmates have been released since 1993, including seven from the state of Illinois alone. Many of these cases were discovered not because of the normal appeals process, but rather as a result of new scientific techniques, investigations by journalists, and the dedicated work of expert attorn...