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Persuasive Essay On Banning The Death Penalty

1198 Words5 Pages

Death penalty should be banned because it goes against the amendment, innocent people can get convicted, and it gives people an easy way out. While others think that we should not ban the death penalty because a lot of american still support it, innocent people can get exonerated from it, and we should show how we feel about the crime.
The death penalty should be banned because it is unconstitutional. William Baude is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Law Stephen G. Breyer, a US Supreme Court justice, has argued that “ it is ‘highly likely’ that the death penalty as a whole violates the Eighth Amendment, because it is unreliable, arbitrary, slow and rare.”(Breyer) The eighth amendment says that we don’t allow cruel and unusual punishments. …show more content…

Philip Holloway, a CNN legal analyst said that “a study last year found that, at a conservative estimate, "more than 4 percent of inmates sentenced to death in the United States are probably innocent."” This means that the system for putting people on death row is not good or secure enough to be put into action because America can’t have something that is widely known to kill off the murderers of the country kill an innocent person. That innocent person had to cost the government money to be put on there and killed so the government wasted money on a person who did not do anything wrong. Holloway has said that “I have plenty of heartbreaking stories of clients who, in my opinion, were convicted of crimes they did not commit. And I am far from alone -- there have been 154 verified cases of death row exonerations since 1973.” Holloway had to witness multiple clients he dealt with who didn’t commit the crime they were accused of …show more content…

Ed Koch, from the Huffington post says “Yes, innocent people have been convicted at trial, but as a result of appeals, they have been exonerated before the sentence was carried out.” Which means that it is true that innocent people do end up on the death penalty. It can also mean that they can get exonerated but that doesn’t mean that everyone has enough evidence to get exonerated. Also Philip Holloway, from CNN stated “there have been 330 exonerations based on DNA alone, with 20 of those defendants having served time on death row since the advent of DNA technology.” This shows that alot of people may have been exonerated but it also shows how many innocent people can get dragged into the death penalty. This point is weak because not all people have the resources or enough proof to be

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This is one example why there should be great cause for concern with the ethics of the death penalty. For instance, “For every 9 who have been executed in the U.S. one person on death row has been proven innocent and released, a shocking rate of error.” (Just Mercy, 2019), The fact that there are several points at which there can be errors or biases within our criminal justice system, the death penalty as a punishment needs to be re-evaluated. I personally believe that even one innocent person executed is too many and therefore makes the death penalty a failure to the criminal justice

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Every one in twenty-five people on death row are actually innocent. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 143 people have been exonerated. Sadly this is less than half the number of the people who may have actually been innocent. The death row inmate stated earlier, Jesse Tafero, who had a botched execution was later found to have been innocent (Time). An innocent man experienced an extremely painful death orchestrated by the government.

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“The Court has consistently ruled that capital punishment itself is not a violation of the Eighth Amendment, but that some applications of the death penalty are "cruel and unusual." (Cruel & Unusual Punishment) The execution of the death sentence is subject to mistakes and flaws that may lead to the punishment being applied unfairly and in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The death penalty is an extreme and irreversible punishment placed on criminals in the United States legal system. The error and bias found within sentencing capital punishment cause it to be an unjustifiable and unethical practice that should be abolished and replaced with more life sentences without the possibility of

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The 8th Amendment of the Constitution states that no one should receive any "cruel and unusual punishments" for the crimes they have commited. The death penalty is a violation of the 8th amendment, and should be banished from the USA as it is an unreasonable and extreme punishment that is unnecessary and avoidable. The death penalty is inhumane, irreversible, and much more expensive compared to a non-death penalty case. Currently, 27 states are still using the death penalty and many of these states are either Midwest or South. Methods such as lethal injection, electric chair, hanging, gas chambers, and firing squad are used to execute these inmates.

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and I really do not know what my stance is. Both sides have good points, and on one hand I believe it is immoral and does not serve any justice especially if someone is falsely convicted, but for some crimes I believe if guilty it isn’t that horrible of a punishment. On the topic of false conviction and how many people on death row tend to be innocent, the the article “Justice Is Not Served with the Death Penalty” by Raymond Lesniak explains it well, stating that “Since 1973, 130 human beings on death rows throughout the United States have been released from jail for being wrongfully convicted. During that time, over 1,100 prisoners were executed. How many of them were innocent?

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