Anti-Death Penalty - Essay Example

In 1975, two African American men in Florida named Freddie Pitts and Wilber Lee were granted commutation after twelve long years of awaiting the death penalty for the murder of two white men. Their conviction was a result of constrained confessions, spurious testament, and an adduced bystander. After a long time of nine years of battle in the courts, a white confessed his guilt, and Pitts and Wilber were granted absolution by the governor. Had their death penalty not been delayed due to the court battles, they would have been naively executed (Bedau, November 10, 1999).
            The history of the death penalty can be traced back to the eighteenth century (B.C.) when the laws for it were established. As years passed these penalties were used all over the world to kill the guilty people. After World War II, the United States protected pregnant women, elders, and children from these death penalties but did not abolish them completely. Over the years many countries have abolished it but the United States still follows it to a certain extent (Death Penalty Information Center 2011).
            The proponents of the death penalty justify it by biblical quotations to use the death penalty as the ultimate punishment for murders and equivalent crimes. The Bible says that the murders must be vindicated: life for life is what the bible says about murders. But the justifications presented cannot be applied in the modern world because of the ethics that apply these days. The bible’s quotation about life for life was for that time when the unjust and violent people were killing innocent and exemplary people. According to most people, the death penalty should be abolished in the U.S., and criminals must be given a chance to change themselves. Death row inmates can spend their time in the law library and interact with each other and somehow get the wind of the crime of what they have done and accept to change from the bottom of their hearts.
            The process of death qualification was constitutionally challenged in Lockhart v. McCrea on the basis that it produces unrepresentative and doctrine-procumbent juries. The United States Supreme Court rejected such challenges by questioning the truthiness of the relevant social science research. But according to me, the challenges made were completely justified and the government should have taken suitable steps to eradicate this barbaric act from society (Guernsey 2010)
            Moral disengagement is also an aspect worth discussing in this regard. According to a study by Osofsky, Bandura, and Zimbardo in 2005, they took direct words from the executioner. The executioner said that the ECG monitors are in front of him when he carries out the process. He must push the syringe into the veins of the guilty and lower the heartbeat of the guilty until it becomes flattened. The harder he pushes, the more flattened the graph and once he empties the last injection, the pulse rate reaches zero indicating that the guilty is now dead. He adds further that it is distraught to see someone die in front of him and leaves a great impact on him even after some days. This research helps to conclude that the executioner has vivid thoughts about the incident too as it is a harsh process to be carried out (Osofsky et al 2005).
            The opponents believe that the death penalty should be abolished because it is a barbaric act of murder that involves the death of an individual in a similar fashion that he might have committed a wrong act.  Moreover, the death penalty is totally against the benchmarks of Human Rights as proposed by them. In addition, the judges and the decision-making authorities do make mistakes in judging people which can lead to unnecessary capital punishments to take place. Research around the globe has shown that the error rates are extraordinarily high. Moreover, the death penalty is also not effective in securing a society as it leads to more deaths. Imprisonment for life can rather be a very effective punishment as it helps the criminal to change from the person that he previously was (Guernsey 2010)
            The United Nations Human Rights Commission passed a resolution in 1999, supporting worldwide abeyance on executions. The resolution called on the countries which had not abolished the law of the death penalty from their constitution. In the United States, the number of executions is gradually decreasing from 300 in 1998 to 106 in 2009. At present, more than half of the countries in the International community have completely eradicated the death penalty for murders or other ordinary crimes. But it is still seen that 58 countries support the death penalty including the United States, China, Iran, and Vietnam. (Amnesty International, 2010)

In conclusion, I believe that the death penalty should be abolished because killing a human being is morally wrong. In addition, the death penalty for a criminal who has not committed a murder but has rather been involved in other crimes, like the smuggling of drugs then capital punishment should never be enforced upon these prisoners.