Death Penalty
... Secondly, when the death penalty is used, we risk the chance of taking the lives of innocent people. Capital punishment is an irrevocable sentence, and if we realize we have made a mistake, there’s nothing we can do about it. Studies by Columbia Law Students show that 2/3 of all capital punishment trials contain serious errors. After being retried, 80% of the defendants were not sentenced to death, and 7% were totally acquitted. I don’t understand how we can continue to use the death penalty, after we know our trials contain serious errors, and there IS a possibility that we can kill an innocent person. Even if we do realize our mistake before it is made, do you actually think it’s fair for an innocent person to have to be tortured for approximately nine years before they are released. Thirdly, our society does not enforce the idea of “an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth”, so why should we extend the violence which inflicts upon us only more pain. You do not see the United States raping the rapist or torturing the torturer, so how do you justify the idea of killing a killer? Though, initially, we want to seek revenge to murders, our society must rise to high standards, with higher respect for human life. Even victim’s family members agree that the death penalty does not really “right the wrong”, it instead, causes more pain. Though revenge is a strong and natural emotion, it should not be part of our justice system. Fourthly, the death penalty does not punish the worst offenders. It simply selects by race, place of crime, and how much money the defendant has. Almost all the defendants who face the death penalty cannot afford their own attorney. They must rely on the one that the state supplies for them, which are often underpaid, so they have no motivation to fully investigate the case. The race of the defendant also plays a role in whether they will face the death penalty or not. The death penalty is much more likely to be enforced when a white person is killed, rather than a black. This is because the death penalty views the life of a white person more valuable than the life of anyone else. Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated, 158 black people were executed for taki...