Pros And Cons Of The Death Penalty

American society has become enamored with a very dangerous institution which is beyond our rights as people to enforce. The death penalty puts power into the hands of our judicial system that we don’t fully appreciate; the ability to decide who lives and dies. Our desire to keep this power in place blinds us to its misuse. We don’t care about its flaws or innocent casualties because we believe it’s all in the name of the greater good. But we must open our eyes to the reality of capital punishment. If even once we have gotten it wrong--which we have--we must reconsider our method of punishment as being unsafe for society to practice. Furthermore we must consider our justification for doing it. We don’t want safety, we want punishment for those

As Toobin observes in his article “Cruel and Unusual” if you simply look at the evolution of our method of execution it would seem that this in untrue. While it seems evident that we have developed more humane ways to perform executions over the years the reality is that shifts in our methods are often the result of looking for a way that’s more fashionable to the public. Beyond that he goes on to say “The oxymoronic quest for humane executions only accentuates the absurdity of allowing the death penalty in a civilized society” (Toobin). The reality of our situation is that we have never given much thought to whether or not our actions are humane. Convincing ourselves that our methods are not cruel has made it easy to think the same of the death penalty itself. As long as it isn’t torturous by our standard then we can get away with it. But in the words of

Those who are people of color or poor are at a strong disadvantage when facing the death penalty. Most death row inmates couldn’t afford their own attorney and had to have one that was court appointed (U.S. Death Penalty Facts). These attorneys often lack enough experience to be handling these cases and are overworked and underpaid. Such attorneys can’t be expected to handle such a serious matter as whether someone lives or dies. Just because someone is poor doesn’t mean we have the right to essentially sentence them without any chance at life. A fair trial should be the expectation when dealing with such a serious situation as