Why death penalty should be abolished - Essay Example

Being humane is a question we put on the limelight in discussing the death penalty. Those who are in favor of the punishment for heinous crimes cry for the safety of the majority, arguing that it is far better for men to extinguish a criminal’s life than put innocent lives in danger as they are exposed to possible criminal acts by the individual. It could be true that lives are endangered as we let criminals live however, the prison cells are created for them to recuperate lost trust and integrity.

Death penalty kills not just the human body but the chance to become better as well. We do not just stand as judges before the convicted felon but as the killer of his hopes and dreams. Even criminals have the right for such. Pataki (52), as mentioned believes that the death penalty is not a source of crime deterrence so what is there to argue about? Are we not imposing the death penalty in the hope that people with inclinations to heinous crimes would think twice if not a hundred times and decide to do otherwise?

Ending a criminal’s life is not the solution to ending heinous crimes because if that were the case, then we should have a crime-free world these days for the many lives the death penalty has claimed. Nor will it assure the safety of the innocent, otherwise we can now all go out in peace, free of the worries that nothing and no one can harm us and yet circumstances show us the naked truth that the system has never been successful in achieving its objectives. The argument that life begets life with the death penalty being an act of self-defense is totally erroneous not only because of the aforementioned point of view but that because history shows that not just a handful of convicted felons have been put to death so unjustly.

I state my stand on the death penalty on the basis of my agreement with Lang’s (2011) philosophy that there is a chance, and may I add a humungous chance that a person may die because of being wrongly convicted. Let us not close our eyes to the fact that there are piles of evidences to such injustice. Michael Lang (2011) in his article mentioned the injustice suffered by Michael Blair and Charles Hood. Evidences presented in court showed that he did not commit the crime accused against him but that was after fourteen years of being in death row.

Imagine the psychological and emotional torture the thought of dying for a crime he did not commit has caused him, not to mention the wasted fourteen years of his life, the records that could be used against him and the after-effects of the mental torture he survived in the jail. That part of his battle may to us seem over, but to Blair, his battle continues as he tries to live a normal life after more than a decade in prison which I reckon can never actually be normal again. The hope then for us is that, the system did not create a criminal out of him now that he is freely moving among us.

Hood on the other hand is still on his journey that Blair trod and our cry for him is that he will be given the justice he deserves in the hands of the judge and prosecutor who admitted to having an illicit sexual affair (Lang). Things can never be said to have been better for the aforementioned examples but looking at the cases of mentally retarded people convicted of crimes they did not commit is far heart-breaking than any other case like that of Tony Chambers and Jerry Penry representing their fellow victims (Robinson).

Chambers has at his age was expected to have an intelligence quotient of 100 but was found to be between 50-63, the IQ of a six-year old. Penry on the other hand was proven to have been mentally disadvantaged since he was a child triggered by the abuses of his mother; he was accused of murdering a twenty year old woman in 1979. Could such people still threaten us of an escape plan so that we claim to be protecting ourselves from the possible damage they can still cause? What about their right to live?

Would it not be too much for us to kill not just innocent but