Death Penalty Discussion

The use of the death penalty is a violation of human rights. “Abolitionists argue that there is no evidence the death penalty deters future crimes; that it violates the sanctity of life, to say nothing of international human rights standards; that innocents can be killed; and the punishment is applied capriciously and tainted with racism (Schulz,170)
The use of the death penalty doesn’t actually have a deterrent effect. The notion that -by executing a murderer, we are preventing them from committing another murder of an innocent person-has the potential to be a true statement. If someone can prove that the criminal was going to murder again than yes, we have stopped him from murdering again. However, just because a person committed once doesn’t necessarily mean they will commit another one. There is honestly no real way of knowing that. The idea of the death penalty having a deterrent effect is debatable. There is no solid evidence showing a correlation between using the death penalty and a decrease in crimes punishable by death penalty. There is, however, evidence that disproves this idea. “Eighteen of the twenty states with the highest murder rates are death penalty states and death penalty states have averaged 9.1 murders per 100,000 and abolitionist states4.9 (Schulz, 170).” In addition, “Texas, which has executed more prisoners than any other state since 1977, has a murder rate more than 25 percent higher than the national average (Schulz).” So with this information in mind, the deterrent effect is not a good reason for supporting the death penalty.
The possibility of innocent murders being executed should be enough to stop anyone from supporting the death penalty. If an innocent person is executed than everyone associated with the case, from the jurors, to the judge and all the way to the person who administered the lethal injection is truly a murderer. There is one piece of evidence that shows how truly flawed the U.S. judicial system really is; As of April, 2009, 138 people exonerated in 26 different states (Death Penalty Information Center). This is an unbelievable amount of people. That could have been 138 innocent people dead but because of some reason, whether it was a new trial or DNA testing or something else, a real tragedy has been diverted. DNA testing, which is responsible for a lot of innocent people being exonerated, is a fairly new technology and wasn’t available twenty years ago. So, just imagine how many innocent people have either been executed in the U.S. or are currently sitting on death row right now.
Another major defect in the use of the death penalty in the United States is, it is used capriciously and is tainted with racism. “…race of the victim of a capital crime is a profound determinant of whether the perpetrator of that crime will be sentenced to death or to a lesser penalty (Schulz, 171). According to statistics provided by amnestyusa.org, “since 1977, the overwhelming majority of death row defendants have been executed for killing white victims, although African-Americans make up about half of all homicide victims (amnestyusa.org).”Since 1976, seventy-nine percent of death sentences handed out, the victim has been white. Indisputably the death penalty is penalty is being given in a racially biased way and severely undermines the judicial system as a whole.
The whole idea of the death penalty and punishing murders by killing them is morally challenged. The U.S. is sending the wrong message to society by using the death penalty. It telling society that violence is signifies retribution. It is telling people that violence can solve problems. This is the wrong message to be sending to youth who are taking in these messages. Jeffrey Reiman, Professor of Philosophy at American University, believes, “that the vast majority of murders in America are a predictable response to the frustrations and disabilities of impoverished social circumstances, and since I believe that that impoverishment is a remediable injustice from which other in America benefit, I believe that we have no right to exact the full cost of murders from our murders until we have done everything possible to rectify the conditions that produce their crimes (Reiman, 132).