Some people argue that the death penalty can be proven to be inaccurate and some people are blamed for a crime that they actually never committed while the real criminal is free. It is possible to adjust certain procedures and laws that would determine that the correct person gets sentenced to the death penalty and is executed. Even though there can be mistakes made, once it comes down to such heinous crimes, there obviously needs to be enough evidence to convict the person. So once the procedures and certain laws are made more accurate and precise, the death penalty wouldn’t be pushed upon someone based on little authentic and factual evidence, resulting in false conviction. Furthermore, the number of innocent people that have actually been executed is an extremely small number, and in every state in the United States of America that “allows capital punishment, murderers found guilty get a series of appeals that result in an average 12-year delay between sentence and execution”. This also includes certain DNA testing that is able to establish with precision whether or not the convicted person is in fact the killer. However, comparing this to the hundreds of innocent lives that have been taken away since loads of convicted murders have been set free, is drastic.
https://sites.google.com/site/
I do agree that the death penalty should only be used for the most extreme crimes and mainly directed towards the people who do not improve or add any positivity to our society. However, such punishment is not inhumane if a person has committed murder because by doing so they have forfeited their right to live since they took the life of someone else. Certain crimes that are committed are too violent or offensive, so for those people the threat of imprisonment, even if it is for an extremely long time, isn’t a sufficient enough restraint. Therefore, once the criminals are let out there won’t be anything that would prevent or discourage them from committing crimes or assault since the restraint of just being imprisoned for a certain length of time doesn't bother them. Criminals, especially those who are murderers, should be executed in the same way that they killed an innocent citizen. Some might argue that instead of executing someone they should be imprisoned for life, but the cost of that is much higher. Additionally, if someone is imprisoned for life instead of put to death for gruesome crimes, there is still the risk of them attacking or being involved in violent behaviour towards guards or other prison inmates which adds to creating a more dangerous environment.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/
http://www.debate.org/opinions/
Anyone who is sentenced to a long period of time in jail can escape. Some ways might be illegal and other ways would be through good behaviour and then put on parole. However, murderers, rapists, and other criminals that have not been sentenced to the death penalty still have the option of committing new crimes once their jail time ends; therefore, society is not protected from this threat and the environment becomes less safe. There have been multiple researches completed that provide evidence that the risk of becoming a victim in such immoral crimes is reduced in the presence of the death penalty. Joshua Marquis, a direct attorney, states that “for each actual execution, about 17 murders are prevented” which in the long run can help decrease crime rates if the death penalty is still present. Isaac Ehrlich, a Buffalo Distinguished Professor of Economics, researched the correlation of capital punishment and crime rates in the 1970's. Ehrlich concluded that the presence of the death penalty had a strong deterrent effect on crime rates. Later on, more research on this topic was completed by Professor Stephen K. Layson of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The results of both of these researched exhibited a strong correlation of how the existence of the death penalty does in fact lower crime rates.
https://sites.google.com/site/
http://sites.pccu.edu.tw/i-say-you-say/
I believe the death penalty should not be abolished considering it does not lower crime rates once abolished, it is not a cruel punishment in relation to the crime the accused person has committed, and last but not least many people believe that it is inhumane; however, taking away an innocent person's life is inhumane. Therefore the death penalty simply reciprocates the already taken actions and is just a form of retribution.
