Death Penalty in the United States Essay

I used to think that if you were convicted of murder, that you deserve the same fate as your victim, death. The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. I believe â€Å"The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state in the name of justice. It violates the right to life. It is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. There can never be any justification for torture or for cruel treatment.† Is it not right for our children to be taught that killing is right. It does not solve the problem at hand. If a person is put to death for a crime he/she committed, I do not see how that would teach that person not to commit that crime again. The death penalty is considered a way out in a matter of few minutes for most of the criminals. A criminal is not scared of death, just an easy way out to keep from facing what is ahead for them.The death penalty diminishes all of us. We do not gain anything from it. The Constitution forbids cruel punishment, so the death penalty has proven again to be Unconstitutional. There are innocent people being killed due to human judgment error. With the increasing, use of DNA Testing available today an end to innocent people being put to death can be stopped due to human judgment error. There is a lot of cost associated with the appeal and re-appeals in our system for the government and the state. The hours, time, and hard work put in from lawyers and judges is quite lengthy and can occupy a lot of time in our system. There has been a lot study to determine whether future murderers are deterred by the death penalty. In my research Dr. Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University states â€Å"There is no reliable, scientifically sound evidence that shows that executions can exert a deterrent effect. These flaws and omissions in a body of scientific evidence render it unreliable as a basis for law or policy that generate life-and-death decisions.† The eye for an eye temperament is slowly becoming unpopular. Taking the life of a murderer is disproportionate punishment. The ones with the least  resources are the most unfortunate. We do not have our rapists, raped or torture the tortures, so why do we kill the killers or murder the murderers? Statistics show that the death penalty is racist. Prosecutors are more likely to seek a death penalty on African Americans at three times the rate when the victims are white than of white defendants in cases where the victims are white. The killers of white victims are treated more severely than people who kill minorities, when it comes to deciding what charges to bring. In conclusion, Capital Punishment is a moral of dishonor. References Clear, T. R., Cole, G. F., & Reisig, M. D. (2011). American corrections (9th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. ISBN: 9780495807483. Death penalty and race. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.amnestyusa.org/our- work/issues/death-penalty/us-death-penalty facts/death-penalty-and-race Dna testing and death penalty. (n.d.). Retrieved from (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.aclu.org/capital-punishment/dna-testing-and-death-penalty Deterrence studies. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/discussion-recent- deterrence-studies Fagan, J. (n.d.). Death penalty. Retrieved from Retrieved from Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/FaganDeterrence.pdf