Should Death Penalty Be Illegal Essay
The death penalty, Britain influenced American use of the death penalty more than any other country. When the Europeans were immigrating to America, they brought with them the death penalty. The first ever recorded execution in American was captain George Kendall in Jamestown, Virginia in 1608. Ever since then America has had the death penalty by law, but is still legal in 33 states and illegal in 18 states. The death penalty should be illegal in every state because it puts innocent people at risk, does not have any effect on crime rates, and life imprisonment is cheaper than the death penalty. The death penalty has been and is still used for 410 years since it has been introduced by the Europeans that migrated to America in its early stages. …show more content…
“The danger that innocent people will be executed because of errors in the criminal justice system is getting worse. A total of 69 people have been released from death row since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. Twenty-one condemned inmates have been released since 1993, including seven from the state of Illinois alone. Many of these cases were discovered not because of the normal appeals process, but rather as a result of new scientific techniques, investigations by journalists, and the dedicated work of expert attorneys, not available to the typical death row inmate.”(Innocence and the Death Penalty: The Increasing Danger of Executing ). In the article it shows that it was at times that there were innocent people waiting to be executed even though they were innocent and were lucky that evidence of their innocence emerged if it didn't they would have be executed. “Since 1973, 144 people on death row have been exonerated. As a percentage of all death sentences, that's just 1.6 percent. But if the innocence rate is 4.1 percent, more than twice the rate of exoneration... an untold number of innocent people have been executed...”(One in 25 sentenced to death in the U.S. is innocent, study claim). It is a small chance of getting executed even if innocent that is why the death penalty should be illegal in the
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