The death penalty must be abolished worldwide. Here are some words to describe the death penalty: inhumane, ineffective, immoral, uncivilized, cruel, torture, brutal, barbaric, unjust, and degrading. We must strive towards complete abolition of the death penalty globally. The death penalty is a blatant violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which apply to all human beings. Nobody is discriminated against. Everyone has the human right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment/treatment. How does that fit with beheading, stoning, hanging, lethally injecting, or shooting somebody?

The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights: It violates the universal rights to life and the right not to be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment which are contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and which everyone is entitled to. It is the pre-meditated and cold blooded killing of a human being done by the state. This cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment is done in the name of "justice."

In a world where every judicial system is subject to human error and flaws, it's inevitable that innocent individuals will and have been executed. No matter how good our justice system is, it is based on human reason and judgment and is subject to error. This is a huge risk that no society should be willing to take. The death penalty legitimizes an irreversible act of violence by the state and will inevitably claim innocent victims. As long as human justice remains fallible, the risk of executing the innocent can never be eliminated. Since 1973, about 138 individuals in the US have been exonerated on the grounds of proven innocence. Those are only the exonerations which have been proveable. The most common factors contributing to wrongful convictions are; mistaken eyewitness evidence/identification, unreliable eyewitness evidence, misinterpretation of evidence, police/prosecutorial misconduct or error, inadequate legal representation, unreliable expert testimony, jailhouse informants, community prejudices/pressure and false confessions. These factors all too often impact the verdict and sentencing. New evidence can be found, new witnesses can emerge, and forensics and DNA technology can improve. Innocent people wrongly found guilty and sentenced to life in prison can later be freed- the executed cannot. How many have already been executed without having the opportunity to prove their innocence? How many more are currently waiting in prison to be executed for a crime they did not commit? Remember, in each case where an innocent person is executed or convicted, the guilty person is free. The current system, does not protect the innocent. With over 1200 in the USA since 1976, we will never know how many were innocent. 

The death penalty also denies any possibility or opportunity for rehabilitation, reconciliation, reform, restoration or self-improvement. People can and do change and we need to rehabilitate, and reform criminals. The death penalty is a form of revenge, not justice. Justice is not advanced in the taking of a human life.

The death penalty is discriminatory, racially/economically/socially biased. It is unfair, broken and arbitrary and it is not applied equally or fairly. It disproportionately affects the poor, the mentally ill/retarded, those with inadequate legal representation, those who have been abused in childhood, the educationally deprived, those from racial/ethnic/sexual/religious minorities, the disadvantaged, the unemployed, the homeless and those whose murder victims were Caucasian. In 82% of the studies, race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty. Those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks. When the race of the victim is white, the perpetrator of the crime is 4-11 times more likely to recieve a death sentence. While African Americans comprise less than 13% of the US population, they account for at least 43% of those on death row. They also account for 34% of prisoners executed since 1977. That is disproportionate. It is discriminatory against the socially disadvantaged and the marginalized individuals in our societies. Whether a person is sentenced to death depends more on his race, wealth and location than the facts of the crime. One study found that 2 out of 3 sentences were overturned on appeal, mostly because of serious errors by incompetant defence lawyers or overzealous police officers and prosecutors who withheld evidence. Death is more likely to be imposed against black defendants than white defendants and death was more likely to be imposed on behalf of white victims than black victims. The identity of the murder victim provides the clearest indication that race remains an ingredient in capital sentencing. Since 1976, blacks have been 6-7 times more likely to be murdered than whites, with the result that blacks and whites are the victims of murder in about equal numbers. 80% of the over 1100 people put to death in the USA since 1976, were convicted of crimes involving white victims compared to the 14% who were convicted of killing blacks. 95% of defendants charged with capital crimes are indignent and cannot afford their own attorney to represent them. They are forced to use inexperienced and underpaid and overworked lawyers. US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said she has "never seen a death penalty case on appeal before this court in which the defendant was well represented at trial." "The death penalty remains frought with arbitrariness, discrimination, caprice and mistake..Experience has taught us that the constitutional goal of eliminating arbitrarinss and discrimination from the administration of death.. can never be achieved without comprimising an equally essential component of fundamental fairness - individualized sentencing." Jurors in many US death penalty cases must be "death eligible." This means the prospective juror must be willing to convict the accused knowing that a sentence of death is a possibility. This results in a jury biased in favour of the death penalty, since noone who opposes the death penalty is likely to be accepted as a juror. The legal system often does not provide poor and socially disadvantaged individuals with proper legal representation, which is often a factor in them being more likely to receive a death sentence. 

It is a myth that the death penalty deters crime. The DP is ineffective. Research shows that the death penalty fails to deter, prevent or reduce murders. There is no conclusive evidence that the death penalty reduces the murder rate. The majority of criminals are impulsive in their actions, not rational. Therefore, they do not consider the consequences of their actions or the possibility of punishment or death. Many crimes are also situationally influenced by factors including, but not limited to, drugs, alcohol, emotions of fear, rage, provocation, etc. Most murders are unplanned, spur of the moment passion crimes. Those who do plan their crimes believe they will avoid detection and therefore, are not deterred by the thought o the death penalty. Those with mental disorders are also not deterred. Most research on the death penalty demonstrates that the possibility of being sentenced to death does not deter criminals from committing either calculated or spontaneous crimes. States that maintain the death penalty have much higher murder rates than states which have abolished it, demonstrating that the death penalty has failed at reducing and preventing future homicides. There is no convincing evidence that the DP deters crime more effectively than other punishments. The southern states have the highest murder rates and they account for 80% of the country's executions. There is no evidence that the death penalty deters. In fact, some of the states that most avidly execute prisoners such as Texas and Oklahoma, have higher crime rates than states that offer only life in prison without parole. Studies have shown that the murder rate increases slightly after a highly publicized execution. States without the death penalty consistently have lower murder rates as do countries throughout the world that have abolished the death penalty.  The death penalty does not deter individuals from committing serious violent crimes. They are more likely to be deterred by the thought of detection. The deterrent effect of the death penalty is unproven. Research has failed to provide scientific proof that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment. The evidence gives no positive support to the deterrent hypothesis. The key to real and true deterrence is to increase the likelihood of detection, arrest and conviction. The death penalty is a harsh punishment but it is not tough on crime. Deterrence is also a morally flawed concept. Even if capital punishment DID act as a deterrent, is it acceptable for someone to pay for the predicted future crimes of others?

The death penalty is detrimental to the search for real solutions to violent crime because it offers a false sense of safety. More time and money must be spent on crime prevention efforts and programs, and community based sanctions which address the root causes and contributing factors to crime. Our justice system must be reformed to focus more on rehabilitation, restoration, reconciliation and successful reintegration. The death penalty does not increase public safety in the long term. If it did, murder rates would be decreasing in states that retain the DP, not increasing. The state does have an obligation to protect society from dangerous and violent individuals. However, the courts should always consider the LEAST restrictive sentencing option in doing so. Prison accomplishes the same thing as the death penalty, and often times more, and is therefore the better alternative to the DP. With prison sentences, we can protect society without resorting to the cruel and inhumane state sanctioned killing of another person and prison also provides an offender with the opportunity to improve, reform and rehabilitate themselves. 13 states do not have the death penalty and their murder rates have been decreasing. Clearly, the death penalty is not needed to keep order in society. Texas has executed more than 4 times the number of people as any other state and yet murders and violent crimes continue to increase. If the DP restores order, given the # of executions that have been carried out in Texas, why do we still have to use it? Wouldn't we have come to a point where we don't need it anymore?   

State sanctioned executions are a form of pre-meditated and cold blooded murder by the government. All killing is wrong, whether it is done by an individual or performed by the government in the form of an execution. Neither are acceptable and we cannot fight violence with violence. We cannot fight death with more death. Two wrongs don't make a right. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. More killing does not resolve or heal victims' families and does not restore them to peace.

The death penalty creates more victims- the family members of the person who has been executed. They are victims of a vengeful, racially biased/discriminatory, immoral, cruel, unjust and uncivilized criminal justice system. The DP can also have a traumatic effect on the prison officials charged with carrying out executions. We fail as a society if all we can offer to those hurt by violent acts, is more violence and death rather than mercy and healing. The DP does not restore victims' families to healing or peace.

DP supporters will often point to the most heinous crimes they can think of in hopes of appealing to people's desire for revenge and sense of retribution for unthinkable crimes. Despite the claim that the DP is reserved for the "worst of the worst" history demonstrates that this is simply not true. When people claim that the DP is just and that some people deserve punishment by death, they make assumptions about the fairness of the DP. Although we might assume that gravity of the crime and culpability are the main factors that determine who is executed, the facts indicate otherwise. Quality of legal representation, location of the crime, plea bargaining, mental condition, and pure chance affect the process by which people are sentenced to death. Offenders who commit similar crimes under similar circumstances often receive vastly different sentences. The race of both the offender and victim as well as social and economic status/class, play a large part in deciding who lives and who dies. 

The DP is expensive. The costs associated with the death penalty are substantially higher than those associated with life imprisonment. Therefore, executing criminals does not save taxpayers' money. The greatest costs of the DP are incurred prior to and during trial, not in post conviction proceedings (appeals), because these cases are more complicated and more time consuming. Death penalty trials are actually two full trials: one for determining guilt or innocence and one for sentencing. The overwhelming majority of death penalty defendants cannot afford a private attorney and the state is obligated to provide two defense attorneys per defendant for both of these trial phases. The jury selection process takes about 5 times longer in a death penalty case and the jury is more likely to be sequestered. Even if all appeals were abolished, the DP would still be more expensive than alternative sentences. A study in Texas revealed that it costs three times as much to execute a person than to imprison them for life: $2M vs $700K. One study found that death penalty costs can average $10 million more per year, per state than life sentences in prison. Studies show that administering the death penalty is even more expensive than keeping someone in prison for life. The intensive jury selection, trials and appeals required in capital cases can take over a decade and run up a huge tab for the state. Death row, where prisoners facing execution are kept in separate cells under intense observation, is also immensely costly. Texas has executed more than 400 people. Think of the millions of dollars per year if they abolished the death penalty, which could be spent on education, crime prevention, rehabilitation of criminals, reintegration programs, healthcare, mental health services, addictions treatments, etc. These would be more effective ways to spend the money. Perhaps if we spend less of our time and limited resources on the DP and more on other crime prevention measures and social programming, such as added police protection, or more effective anti-drug programs, we could actually make an impact and reduce the rate of murder and violent crime. 

The Old Testament of the The Bible does indeed contain the phrase "an eye for an eye." However, if you look in the New Testament, you will find the following: "You have heard it said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you.." The speaker is Jesus. There is a story about a woman caught in adultery for which she was sentenced to be stoned to death. When questioned about this, Jesus' response was, "let he among you who is without sin, cast the first stone." The laws of the Old Testament should be disregarded as they are inhumane, vengeful, uncivilized and immoral in today's modern and civilized society. We need to integrate modern day research and knowledge. Jesus was a loving, forgiving, caring person who was not vengeful. He dedicated his life to helping the poor. We should think of the statements, Do unto others as you would have others do unto you; Two wrongs don't make a right; An eye for an eye makes the world blind; Do not do unto others as you would not have others do unto you. Perhaps our society would be better if we instead took an approach of compassion, forgiveness, helpfulness and lovingingness.  Only God should create and destroy life. God commanded "Thou shalt not kill" and that is a clear instruction with no exceptions. Modern and civilized society has alternative punishments available, which were not used in Biblical times and these make the death penalty unnecessary. Christianity is based on forgiveness and compassion and capital punishment is incompatible with a teaching that emphasize these qualities. Christian teachings encourage us to support the poor and the marginalized and capital punishment is economically biased, therefore, Christians should not support the death penalty. Capital punishment is inconsistent with the general Christian stand that life should always be supported.

The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. The Declaration of Human Rights states that no human shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, degrading or inhumane punishment or treatment. The DP is the ultimate violation of this human right. DP is cruel because a sentence of imprisonment accomplished the same objective of community safety, non-violently. It is unusual for our government to continue executing its citizens while all other democracies and civilized societies have abolished the death penalty. Public safety can be achieved through a prison sentence. This approaches the same promise without the need for a government to spend millions of extra dollars just to perform a "revenge" act on an offender. To execute criminals on the hypothesis that they "might" kill again is preposterous. It is like saying, don't drive your car ever again in the "slight" chance that you might cause a fatality. To suggest we kill offenders on the "slight chance" that they may escape from prison is immoral as it is outrageous.

The death penalty fails to bring "closure" to victims' families. Victims' families deserve more care and compassion- the death penalty can extend and intensify their suffering, through the lengthy appeals process. The death penalty does not restore victims' families to healing or peace. Why fight killing with more killing? How does that demonstrate to society that killing is wrong? Supporters of the DP often say that state sanctioned killing can bring closure to a victims' family. No psychological study has ever concluded that the death penalty brings closure to anyone except the person who dies and there is evidence that it can prolong the suffering of grieving families. How can two wrongs make a right? How can one killing then justify another? This is not true justice- it is quite simply an act of pure revenge. The loss of a loved one is permanent and their sorrow and pain will always be with them. Killing the offender does nothing to relieve their pain. What it does accomplish is grief to the innocent family members and loved ones of the executed- it creates yet another set of victims in society. Many victims' families oppose the killing of anyone and don't want to see the family members of murderers have to experience the ordeal of having a loved one killed. With a death sentence, victims' families are focusing on anger, rage and hatred rather than focusing on healing. Seeing the offender executed is not going to help their healing process. This only leads families to more despair over their loss. There are many victims of crime and victims organizations who seek true justice and not purely revenge via the death penalty. When the state kills, it kills in all of our names. When the state kills, it's everyone's business. Many victims' families say that no amount of killing will equal the value of their loved ones and they don't want to be responsible for someone else's mother being put through the same pain they had from losing their child to unnecessary violence. The death penalty does not bring a loved one back to life and only creates more loss and suffering for family members of the defendant. In the end, only a handful of arbitrarily selected murderers are sentenced to death. Is it worth the price? The DP ignores the real needs of surviving family members. The DP drags victims' loved ones through an agonizing and lengthy process. The DP's lengthy and expensive process diverts millions of dollars and attention from the critical services and resources that homicide victims need to help them heal, including specialized grief counseling, financial assistance and ongoing support. In most states, these services are lacking. A sentence of imprisonment would keep society safe, hold killers responsible for their brutal acts and would begin as soon as they left the courtroom. It would also save a lot of money which could then be used for victims' services, crime prevention, restorative justice, addictions treatments, mental health services and rehabilitation/reintegration programs which have all been proven to deter, prevent and reduce crime in the future.

Capital punishment brutalizes and degrades society. Statistics show that the death penalty leads to a brutalization of society and an increase in murder rates. In the US, more murders take place in states where capital punishment is allowed. The gap between death penalty states and non-death penalty states rose considerably from 4% difference in 1990 to 44% in 2003. Capital punishment may brutalize society in a different and even more fundamental way, one that has implications for the state's relationship with all citizens. "the state's power deliberately to destroy innucuous (though guilty) life is a manifestation of the hidden wish that the state be allowed to do anything it pleases with life." Capital punishment is said to produce an unacceptable link between the law and violence. The law is inevitably linked with violence- it punishes violent crimes, and it uses punishments that violently restrict human freedoms. Capital punishment "lowers the tone" of society. Civilized societies do not tolerate torture, even if it can be shown that torture can deter, or produce other good effects. The death penalty is an inappropriate, immoral and unjust punishment for a civilized modern society to respond to even the most dreadful crimes. "The murder that is depicted as a horrible crime is repeated in cold blood, remorselessly."

The death penalty is vengeful and only appeals to the revenge-seeking crowd. We must reject the argument that if you take the life of another, you should lose your life, that you lose your right to life and an eye for eye mentality. All of these arguments signify revenge. If we were to implement and enact "an eye for an eye" on all murderers, we would be executing millions of people without discrimination. What we would see is a bloodbath of human slaughter on the face of this planet. But governments do discriminate, because governments do not kill all killers. They "select" the individuals they wish to kill, and most often times, these are individuals from the lower classes in society, marginalized in some way and socially disadvantaged. When opponents of the DP say that criminals should not be allowed to breathe, and that those "animals" should be exterminated, they are only showing undiluted hatred! The death penalty is a legalized hate crime. Governments allow the public to hate certain individuals in society, making the DP an "acceptable" form of state sanctioned violence. It is homicidal retribution- homicidal revenge which breeds and feeds more hatred and more violence in society. Supporters of the death penalty love killing- it gives them a temporary thrill. A civilized society should never tolerate such hatred for certain human beings that we lower ourselves to such an inhumane act of hate killing. A civilized society cannot accept the proposition that any government, has the ultimate power over its citizens- the "right" to kill a human being in a well organized, pre-meditated, cold blooded ritual and still call ourselves "civilized." Capital punishment teaches us that it is all right to kill chosen offenders that society hates. It does not demonstrate to society that killing is wrong and immoral. It breeds violence, hatred and revenge. 

Lethal injection is just as cruel and inhumane as other forms of the death penalty, such as stoning, beheading, electrocution, shooting, etc. The fact is, there is no humane method for exterminating a healthy human life. There is no humane method for executing a human being. There have been many reported incidents of botched lethal injections. Whatever method is used to achieve a state-sanctioned killing, it is brutal as it cruel as it is inhumane. It is degrading to society as it further brutalizes society. Lethal injection is not less cruel for the offender or less brutalizing for the executioner. This method has serious moral flaws and should be abandoned. The first flaw is that it requires medical personnel being directly involved in killing (rather than just checking that the execution has terminated life). This is a fundamental contravention of medical ethics. The second flaw is that research has shown that lethal injection is not nearly as "humane" as had previously been thought. Post mortem findings have indicated that levels of anesthetic found in offenders were consistent with wakefulness and the ability to experience pain.

What does religion say about the death penalty? Most major religious groups support the abolition of the death penalty.

The value of the human life: The human life is valuable and even the worst murderers should not be deprived of the value of their lives. Everyone is entitled to the right to life and liberty under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All life should be preserved.

The right to life: Everyone has an inalienable universal human right to life, even those who commit murder. Sentencing a person to death and executing them, violates that right. That constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Retribution is wrong: Retribution is morally flawed and problematic in concept and in practice. We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing. That does not demonstrate to society that killing is wrong, but in fact, condones the violent act. To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, it is not justice. Justice is not advanced in the taking of a human life. Retribution is immoral because it is a form of vengeance. If there is a serious risk of executing the innocent then one of the key principles of retribution- that people should get what they deserve- is violated by the current implementation of capital punishment in the US and any other country where errors have taken place. Crimes other than murder do not receive a punishment that mimics the crime - for example, rapists are not punished by sexual assault and people guilty of assault are not ceremonially beaten up. Retribution in the case of the death penalty is unfair because the anticipatory suffering of the criminal before execution outweighs the anticipatory suffering of the victim of their crime. The death penalty delivers a "double punishment": that of execution and the preceding wait and this is a mismatch to the crime. Many offenders are kept waiting on death row for a very long time-- the average wait in the US is 10 years! That is cruel and unusual punishment/treatment. Only a small amount of murderers are actually executed in the USA and the imposition of capital punishment on a "capriciously selected random handful" of offenders does not amount to a consistent program of retribution. Since capital punishment is not operated retributively, it is inappropriate to use retribution to justify capital punishment.

The death penalty is cruel, inhumane and degrading. Every method of execution causes suffering to the condemned person and are subject to flaws and error, that they amount to torture and that is wrong and unacceptable. Many methods are likely to cause enormous suffering, such as electrocution, stoning, beheading and shooting.

The death penalty is unnecessary: Imprisonment could accomplish the same goal as capital punishment (public safety) without resorting to violence, death and state sanctioned murder. That is revenge, not justice. The least invasive, harmful and restrictive sentence should always be considered first, and imprisonment is the least restrictive option. Murderers must still be sentenced to preserve an orderly and contended society, but they should be sentenced in the least harmful way possible. Capital punishment is the most harmful punishment available and should never even be considered. Alternative sentences will always enable the state to fulfil it's objectives and goals of rehabilitation, reform, reintegration, punishment, etc. appropriately. Therefore, the state should never use capital punishment. Capital punishment is overly harmful and should be abolished because it constitutes cruel and unusual and unnecessary punishment.

 

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/abolish_the_death_penalty