Why Should Death Penalty be Abolished?

According to the Telegraph, “more than 30% of the world’s countries still practice the death penalty and the United States is an exception in its continued use of the death penalty among its allies that don’t practice it”. Some of the supporter for death penalty may say that it serves as a deterrent to crime, but I think the capital punishment should not be used because it is a misuse of the government’s budget, and there is a risk of executing innocents people, also it is an uncivilized, uneffective form of punishment, serving no good for society as a whole.

Furthermore, research done by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Death Penalty Information Center shows that the death penalty serves as a very awful deterrent to crimes. A replacement of this punishment could be a sentence of life without parole which is the permanent imprisonment of a person.

Not everyone sentenced to a death row gets executed since the effect of the punishment is irreversible, so the U.

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S. judicial system grants the accused many opportunities to defend himself and to avoid capital punishment. According to the United States Department of Justice, “between 1973 and 2013, around 75% of those who were sentenced to death were not executed and around one-third of their sentences were overturned on appeal and others died of natural causes or had their sentences commuted.” Death penalty trials are often complicated, costly, and time consuming since the person has to go through a series of trials. In Kansas, defense costs for death penalty trial averaged around $400,000 each, confirmed by the Death Penalty Information Center.

This high cost multiplies by the amount of trial and adding to all the additional cost sums up to an average of $1.26 million to execute a person compared to an average of $740,000 to incarcerate a prisoner serving a sentence of life without parole to the end. Nevertheless, the death penalty is expensive and sometime, misuse of money since three-fourth of people sentenced to a death row we're never executed after going through series of costly trials, by continuing this practice, we will put more pressure on the government’s budget. The money wasted on death trials can otherwise be used on something else more beneficial to society like improving infrastructure in the country or publicizing the health care system.

Throughout the history of the world, there were many cases of mistakenly convicted individuals, who were put to death but later discovered to be innocent. According to the Atlantic, this tragedy happened on Carlos DeLuna where he was put to death in December 1989 for murder in Corpus Christi, but he was later founded to be not guilty because of the evidence the investigator found after his death. Imagine being that person, having to face death even though you never did anything wrong and were innocent. By getting rid of the death penalty, we could release those who were innocent rather than making the irreversible mistake of putting them to death. Even so, having one innocent person put to death wrongfully is a violation unto ourselves. You may think that states with the death penalty may have a lower crime rate but according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, states that abolished death penalty have 30% lower crime than states with the death penalty. This proves that the death penalty serves as a terrible deterrent to crime. Today, many people commit serious crime knowing the consequence of the capital punishment. In the heat of time, when a person is not thinking logically and clearly, the existence of the punishment doesn’t usually cross their mind. Therefore, death penalty in most cases has no influence over the decision making of the person doing the crime.

Some people may argue that the taking of life can restore the balance of justice and show society that murder and other heinous crimes are intolerable. Likewise, for people who commit the cruelest crime, they deserved the worst punishment under our law system. On the other hand, I think retribution or in other word revenge is not a justified reason to inflict our capital punishment on the people who commit the crime. The founding father created the law and criminal system to demonstrate the respect for life, and even the life of a murderer. It should be noted that encouraging our feeling of vengeance will only extend the chain of violence in people and will do no good for society as a whole.

Overall, the ultimate capital punishment of the death penalty should be abolished by all states in America for the reason that it is ineffective and has no real benefits to society as a whole. Not only is the death penalty a costly method to punish people as it cost $1.26 million on average to execute one person but it serves as a very bad deterrent to crime, shown in reports done by the FBI. Even in some tragic cases, the innocent can get executed and by getting rid of the death penalty it can prevent these tragedies from happening. A better solution compared to the death penalty could be a sentence without parole, since it prevents the criminal from doing the crime and it serves as a justified punishment for them.