The United States is one of very few western nations that still has a death penalty. In life people are taught that violence is not the answer and that murder is a sin. The death penalty goes against everything that people are taught in life. The wrong way to approach a situation is to inflict what someone is accused of upon them. Also the risk of executing an innocent person cannot be completely eliminated. While many people think the death penalty is fair, it is wrong because taking a life for a life is poor judgment, it is a racist punishment, and thinking it is cost effective is not true.
First of all, no one, including a judge, is perfect. What if an innocent person gets capital punishment? Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan law school who is the lead author of the research on the death penalty showed that about 4.1 percent of criminal defendants who are sentenced to death are falsely convicted. If the so called criminal was put in jail there would still be a chance to let him out, but an executed death penalty cannot be repaired. According to J.R.R. Tolkien 1954, author of The Fellowship of the Ring: “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.” This suggests that we should abolish the death penalty.
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Studies have shown that race plays a big role in who receives the death penalty. According to a study by David C. Baldus, black defendants were 1.7 times more likely to receive the Death penalty than the white defendants. "We cannot say we live in a country that offers equal justice to all Americans when racial disparities plague the system by which our society imposes the ultimate punishment." (Feingold, 2003) Explain the