The Death penalty should be abolished. It is inhumane, barbaric, and wrong. Abolitionists bring up three main arguments when discussing the death penalty. The first is that we don't condemn killing by killing. The second, by sentencing someone to capital punishment we remove the possibility of that person ever being rehabilitated. And third, there is no reason to put the family of the convict through undo pain and suffering.
             Capital Punishment is a problem that plagues the entire world. Not including the U.S. the two most common ways to carry out the Death Penalty are execution by firing squad and hanging. However, the U.S. practices lethal injection for the most part. While this is better than a firing squad or hanging, it is still disgusting that we do this.
             Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977 there have been 600 inmates executed. However, since 1977 there has also been 86 inmates that have been found wrongly convicted and were exonerated from their punishment. That's a ratio of approximately 7 to 1. For every seven people executed, one has been found wrongly convicted. Currently 38 states have the death penalty, 30 states have life without parole, and 22 have both.
             The average stay of an inmate on death row is 10 years, but in California it is 14.4 years. Some may argue that it is more expensive to keep an inmate in prison for life than to sentence him to death, but in reality it is much more expensive to keep a man on death row and to pay for the appeal process.
             In 1998 there were 1600 executions throughout the world. 80% of these executions were carried out in only four countries, and the U.S. is one of them.
             Capital Punishment is an ongoing problem in our society and must be abolished. So I encourage you to pass this bill.
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