Paper Topic:

Abolishing the Death Penalty

The death penalty and its use in the motivation to deter violent crime is one of the most controversial issues facing our society today Despite it only being used on the rarest of occasion , the death penalty gives the United States of the American supposedly the most advanced and civilized country in the world , a barbaric reputation as being a country that seeks to kill by way of the government . This is not only the wrong thing to do it is also ineffective as well . Crime is at an all time high in

America and there is no sign that the major trends will continue to fall . Despite the horrific crimes that are in the news seemingly every day , a far worse punishment is life in prison where the criminal is forced to confront what he did and to be riddled with shame and guilt for the rest of his life . This is a far worse punishment and a much better deterrent to violent crime

One reason why the death penalty is wrong is because its sentencing is often times , imposed upon innocent people . How horrific it must have been when the death penalty was given to people who were put to death by the government when they were indeed innocent . This does not speak only to the cases when the victim was put to death by lethal injection but when in the past , the death penalty was carried out by firing squad , the electric chair and hanging . The records are not exact as to how many innocent people have been put to death . That number will never be known but in reality , since the formation of this country , it must be in the hundreds . We do know that in the last fourteen years in Illinois , there have been more than eleven people who have been cleared of the crimes that they were charged with and were eventually set free . All of these victims were on death row and sentenced to death . The most famous case is that of Rolando Cruz who was set free in 1996 with the help of DNA evidence which showed that he was not the individual who raped and killed a little girl in Suburban Chicago ( Page , 2002 pg . A16 ) He did receive a large settlement but at last check , was still finding it very difficult to make the transition into free society after more than ten years on death row . However , how much more difficult it would be for his family and for the legal system , had they known that Cruz was indeed innocent . Had be been put to death , the DNA evidence would never have been presented and the world would never had known what Cruz had known his entire life that he was an innocent man

Another reason why the death penalty is wrong is that it is immoral America has a larger percentage of its population considering themselves Christians that in any country in the world , yet the more secular countries...

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