People are very split on the topic of whether a convicted criminal, of serious offense,
should be put in jail for life or put on death row. This controversy has been ongoing for years,
and people never seem to come to a consensus. But regardless of one’s stance, there are
undeniable facts on why the death penalty should be put to an end once and for all. The effects
would be beneficial not only to the United States criminal justice system, but to the financial
stability of the nation.
The death penalty has been present in society since 1800 B.C. From Jamestown Colony
to present day life execution has been a popular practice in our nation. Although commonly
practiced, the death penalty is wrong and should be banned in the United States for many
reasons.
Killing innocent people is terrible. No individual in their right mind could constitute an
ethically sound reason to kill an innocent person. Well, this is a major problem with the death
penalty. As long as the death penalty is around innocent people will die. Some may be led to
believe that this is a “one in a million chance”, but they are wrong. Hiccups in our nation’s
justice system happen often and risking an innocent human’s life is unacceptable. Since 1976,
178 convicted inmates have been released from death row. Some of these falsely convicted
people were released minutes before their execution. One specific story would be the one of
Anthony Ray Hinton, an African-American male who was exonerated after over 30 years on
death row. This man was sentenced to death solely off the fact that bullets found in 2 bodies were
questionably linked to his weapon. There were no witnesses, no fingerprints, and no other
physical evidence. Hinton has spent more than half of his life behind bars, with the state of
Alabama continuously trying to kill him, for a crime he did not commit. These facts prove that
innocent people being sentenced to death is more prevalent today than people make it out to be.
The counter to this argument is simply that nothing is perfect. No process can be one
hundred percent correct all the time, every time. It is impossible. Whether it be a private practice,
public practice or government process, something, sometime will go wrong. For example, the
practice of driving automobiles. Almost every American drives a car and it has been known to be
seemingly convenient when trying to get from point A to point B. Well here’s the issue, in 2013
there were nearly 33,000 deaths in the United States due to car accidents. This seems to be a big
problem so it should in turn be addressed with seriousness. We cannot just outlaw automobiles,
what we can do is try to limit the fatalities. The way this will happen is if policies are enforced to
limit the risk. One way is how drunk driving is banned, or texting and driving, speed limits, etc.
These policies are analogous to the death penalty because it limits deaths. In one case deaths
from car accidents and the other, deaths due to murder.
