The Death Penalty: An American Tradition
Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, 802 people have been executed nationwide (DPIC). Among those executed have been minors, the mentally retarded, and the innocent. Capital punishment is fallible, irrevocable, expensive, and filled with racial and class bias. The death penalty violates our most basic human rights, and I strongly believe it should be abolished. "An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."- Albert Camus (1957)It is written in the United States Bill of Rights that punishmen
I believe that the death penalty should be abolished because it is outrageously expensive. Nationwide, 80% of the people executed where convicted of murdering White people, but Black people make up over half of the homicide victims in the United States (NCADP). This shows that Mason did not know what was going on, or that he was about to die. The court wouldn't see his evidence because of Virginia's 21-Day Rule. He was executed at age 32 in Virginia in 1985. I believe it is unjust that rich people have a better chance at life imprisonment than poor people. In a 1995 survey of United States police chiefs by Peter D. There are also several examples of painful deaths by execution. Concerning wealth, many people on trial can't afford to hire their own attorneys, and they are appointed one by the state. Court appointed attorneys are often inexperienced and poorly trained. This money could go to improve our nation's schools, health care, and public safety. Not a Deterrent of Crime Another reason the death penalty should be abolished is that it is not an effective deterrent of crime.
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