Death Penalty’s Injustice

The death penalty, the ultimate punishment that is supposed to serve as the

deterrent against crime. But does it really hold up to its acclaims? No, the death penalty

doesn’t really have any prevention causes and is an extreme measure that shouldn’t be

legal.

The death penalty is a federal punishment issued by the supreme court. When a

judge finds it proper, he orders a death penalty, normally in the cases of multiple

murders or rape. The convicted is then killed most commonly through a lethal injection.

Many states in the US however, allow multiple different methods as well, such as,

hanging, execution with guns as well as the method shown in movies, the electric chair.

The injection, however, remains as the primary and most common method of delivering

or carrying out the sentence.

First of all, and a major reason as to why death penalties are horrible ways of

carrying out punishments is, that many convicts are found innocent after death or

imprisonment. When one is carrying out a death penalty, there is no chance of

redemption for the person falsely convicted. The justice system isn’t perfect. There is

not only a lot of politics involved in the law, but cops are human too, they all make

mistakes. Kelly Walsh, in Estimating the Prevalence of Wrongful Conviction states,

“Estimates of the prevalence of wrongful conviction range from as low as 0.027 percent

to as high as 37.7 percent.” These people deserve an apology and a chance for

redemption, something that if the death penalty exists cannot be given.

Next, to fight your case, you need to hire lawyers, people who are infamous for

their fees. This leads to the logical conclusion where the Judicial System favours the
rich, the poor are given legal aid, however, the quality of lawyers can only truly be found

in the rich. An inordinate amount of people come in the middle class, a place where

lawyers are too expensive and legal aid not available. An example of the courts

partiality can be provided by SUPREME INQUALITY a book by Adam Cohen where he

states, “[The] Court quickly came to the rescue of wealthy campaign contributors.

After Watergate, Congress passed a tough campaign finance law, with strict limits

on both contributions and expenditures. Thus, if the death penalty is given, it

wouldn’t be for all, it would be for those who couldn’t fight for themselves, and,

the ones the rich wanted dead, legally.

Finally, the death penalty doesn’t as most people think, act as a hamper or a

deterrent for people wanting to commit murder. Most murders aren’t as planned as

people like to think they are but are rather knee jerk actions and explosions of anger

and frustration where the ability for logical thinking is impaired in the moment. Having a

death penalty would do little in such a scenario. In fact, the opposite seems to be he

case, “the murder rate in non-death penalty states has remained consistently lower than

the rate in states with the death penalty, and the gap has grown since 1990.” (Death

Penalty Information Center). Thus, having the death penalty, statistically has had the

opposite effect, contrary to popular beliefs.

Therefore, I’d like to end by once again stating, the death penalty doesn’t have

any cause to exist and the power to legally take someone’s life is one people in a

democratic nation shouldn’t have. People change and allowing them to live to do so is

everyone’s right, a right for an action to not cause their life to be forfeit