Death Penalty Essay -- essays research papers

Death Penalty The death penalty, outlawed in most of Europe, Canada, Australia and most other countries in the world, is still practiced in almost 40 states in the U.S. Today, there are more than 3,000 people on death row waiting the day of their execution. They are put to death by methods such as hanging, electrocution, lethal injection and by firing squad. Since the death penalty was reinstated bye the supreme court in 1976, by the Gregg v. Georgia decision, more than 525 people have been put to death. Today there are many people for the death penalty and see nothing wrong with it but there are many people who feel hat it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The 8th amendment of the U.S. protects its citizens from cruel and unusual punishment but the death penalty hasn’t fell under the amendment yet. Nobody on either side of the death penalty debate wants to see an innocent person put to death, and yet studies have found that one in seven people sent to death row are later proven innocent. Still more innocent people are being sent to death row each year. In one case a prisoner was two days away from being executed when he was proven innocent. That means that many people reach death before they are proven innocent. In the last twenty-four years eighty-five innocent people have been released from death row, and will never get back the years of their lives they missed but just escaped a murder of themselves. In Illinois the governor has blocked executions to find out why more death row inmates have been found innocent and released than executed. The governor of Illinois is not the only one examing the death penalty but many others are looking further into the capital punishment. New technologies, like DNA testing, have made it possible to definitely prove or disapprove innocence in hundreds of cases where genetic evidence has been preserved. In many cases DNA evidence has been a troublesome effort, requiring lots of resources and sometimes taking years of effort to work. Many people, regardless of their viewpoint about the constitutionality of the death penalty, would agree that if a person was going to trial and could be executed, he would be represented fairly. However there are factors unrelated to the crime that have been committed that determines who gets executed and who doesn’t. Those factors are poverty, race, and geography. It has been pr... ...egulations concerning the death penalty. Something so important as a person living or put to death should be a nation wide regulated act not for each state to have its own standards and rules. The death penalty should be banned because of many reasons, which make it unfair. In order to live if you are innocent and convicted of a crime and receive the death penalty you have to be white, very wealthy to provide a good representation and have to live in a state, which doesn’t strongly use the capital punishment for sentencing. Many studies show that a majority of people favor alternatives to the death penalty such as life in prison without parole plus restitution to the victim’s family. Out of three hundred and fifty convictions in which a person was given the death penalty and proven that they didn’t commit the crime, twenty-three were executed before they could be released. This means all of the years they sat in jail knowing their innocence they didn’t get to find out that they were proven not guilty by the system. I don’t think anyone would want to be in their position so the death penalty should be abolished for many reasons until it is fair and 100 % right in its convictions.