Capital Punishment is Not Right
To this date, Seven hundred and seventy two criminals in the U.S. alone have been subject to Capital Punishment. (Executions USA 2002). Using specific examples such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Timothy McVeigh execution, capital punishment is seen as inhumane, wrong and an unusual punishment. The death penalty is greatly rejected and discouraged by many countries and states. There are more than one hundred countries who have abolished the death penalty in law or practice, while the United States has increased the rate of executions and the number of crimes that are punishable by death (The Death Penalty...2000). Many politicians claim that they are tough on crimes, but they should spend ninety four percent of criminal justice money on preventing crimes instead of after the crime was committed (Get the Facts...2000). Protocol No.6 to the European Convention on Human Rights to Abolish is an agreement to abolish the death penalty in peacetime. The other two protocols, the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty, provide for the total abolition of the death penalty but allows stat
In the eyes of those who are for the death penalty, they believe that the criminal should lose all rights once they commit a heinous crime and they also believe that the cost of imprisoning someone for life without parole is extremely higher than just putting them to death. One human right is the right to life and by taking a life away by execution is cruel, inhumane and degrading. The case of Timothy McVeigh sets an example showing that if the state executes him, it is involved in state-sanctioned "murder. criminal justice system offers no legal mechanism to review posthumous claims and uncover lethal error (The Death Penalty, 2000). Even at that, the miscarriages of executing the innocent and the high cost for the execution to be carried out are extreme. The United Nations Economic and Social Council adopted the "Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty" in 1984 (Death Penalty Facts, 2000 ). Though, the study proves that there were twenty three cases, there are probably more because authors of the report claim that this number does not represent the total of all innocent victims. Asphyxiation during gassing, tearing of the spinal cord or asphyxiation during hanging, respiratory paralysis during poisoning, and destruction of vital organs or the central nervous system during shooting, which one may have to face when sentenced to death (Death Penalty Facts, 2000). Welch and Bill McVeigh have been talking twice a week since the government announced the May 16th date set for the execution. A report from the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the US Congress which examined fourty eight cases who were released from death row because of innocence, concluded: "Americans are justifiably concerned about the possibility that an innocent person may be executed. " This appears to make a secondary purpose of punishment override the primary. Under no ircumstances in the Declaration of Human Rights does it say that the government has the right to take the "right of life" away from anyone, but yet they are making that decision quit often. There are several reasons why an innocent person may be executed for a crime they did not commit, such as their ethnic background, legal errors, poor defense or investigation which can all contribute to false imprisonment and death. They even track down death penalty cases and write letters to clemency boards and governors asking the executions to be halted for the cases in which the person was a minor at the time of the crime, mentally impaired or foreign nations because they oppose the death penalty under law whenever and wherever carried out, irrespective of the crime and the legal process leading to their implementation (The Death Penalty, 2000).
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