Innocent People Have Been Executed

Firstly, the risk of executing an innocent is a frightening fact. Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice. To execute an innocent person is reprehensible; a risk that should not be taken. What did these innocents get out of their life? They have a right to live. Secondly, there is a better alternative to capital punishment: life without parole. Capital punishment is usually quick. Citizens that commit such serious crimes should realize

The death penalty ?cruel and unusual punishment.? At one time in history around six hundred people were executed, and in those six-hundred eighty of them were innocent but still executed (Thomas 2). Many

According to capital punishment supporters, many of these reasons of the anti-death penalty movement are false and are now wrongly accepted as fact. The argument that the death penalty does not deter crime is debatable. By executing murderers you prevent them from murdering again. If these people no longer exist then they obviously cannot commit more crimes. In addition, criminals have admitted, in thousands of fully documented cases, that the death penalty was the specific threat which deterred them from committing murder (Pro-Death Penalty, 2014). The opponents of capital punishment claim that the death penalty has caused and can cause the execution of innocent people. However, according to the supporters, no evidence indicates that innocent people have been executed. Upon reviewing 23 years of capital sentences, a Wall Street Journal study indicated that they were unable to find a single case in which an innocent person was executed (Eddlem, 2002). Furthermore, advocates note that the

In the last several years, too many people in the United States have been wrongfully sentenced with the death penalty. Several accused have their sentence overturned or they have been totally exonerated. There are at least 8 people who were executed by United States and later proven innocent (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org). Over a 20 year period, 68% of all death sentences were reversed (http://karisable.com). A noteworthy example is of Jerry Banks who was convicted and sentenced with the death penalty for two counts of murder in 1975. Five years later, in 1980, Banks' conviction was overturned on the basis of newly discovered evidence which was allegedly known to the state at the time of trial. Another example was the case of Lawyer Johnson who was sentenced to death in 1971 by an all white jury for the murder of a white victim. Later in 1982, Johnson’s conviction was overturned and Johnson exonerated when a previously silent eyewitness identified the state’s chief witness as the real murderer. (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org) Human error is inevitable, particularly

Throughout history, various cases have not been properly executed in such a way that rightful criminals are taken to justice (hence the creation of courtrooms). The result of improper trials have led to the death of innocent lives which is unfortunately not unprecedented. A trial that epitomizes such unfair charges, leading to the execution of an innocent, was the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping Trial. Bruno Richard Hauptmann was not guilty of the murder pertaining to the Lindbergh’s baby; he was wrongly convicted under circumstantial and biased evidence. The kidnapping of the baby had led to widespread speculations, and caused the case to spread amongst the

There have been some that had been declared innocent before their execution date. In the book, Death Row and Capital Punishment, it states that “Dennis Williams walked free from a Chicago court after 18 years on Death Row after being cleared by DNA evidence” (Kerrigan 88). People make mistakes and innocent people get blamed and killed for nothing. Williams is one of the lucky ones who was found innocent. Not all of them were lucky though. Bessler argues that “as long as the death penalty exists, there will be people like Anthony Porter, one of many death row inmates recently exonerated, who are sent to death row in error” (14). There have been victims who have been killed of a crime they did not commit. Porter was not one of the lucky ones to be alive today. There is too much of a risk that someone could be killing an innocent person and that is why lie in prison is a better option than killing

-Innocence, there are innocent people on death row, and there have been people put to death. Since 1977, 144 prisoners on death row have been found to be innocent of the crimes there were convicted of.

The death penalty can lead to the death of innocent people. For example, “…According to a new study, serious errors occur in almost 70% of all trials leading to the death penalty…”(Leibman). This shows that if 100 people were put on death row, 70 would have serious mistakes in their

Witnesses and lawyers can make mistakes. When this is coupled with flaws in the system that innocent people will be convicted of crimes. Where capital punishment is used such mistakes cannot be put right. State execution (the death penalty) is an irreversible act approved by the state. The risk of killing an innocent human being can never be eliminated.

Thousands of people will attack the death penalty. They will give emotional speeches about the one innocent man or woman who might accidentally get an execution sentence. However, all of these people are forgetting one crucial element. They are forgetting the thousands of victims who die every year by the hands of heartless murderers. There are more murderers out there than people who are wrongly convicted, and that is what we must remember.

"Since 1973, over eighty people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence" (Innocence and the Death Penalty 1). Statistics say that of the three-thousand six hundred people on death row right now, at least one hundred of them are innocent (Capital Punishment 1). When an innocent person is executed, the real killer is still on the streets ready to victimize someone else (Pragmatic Arguments 1). The most important problem is that when an innocent person is executed, they represent another human being who did not deserve to die.

This usually occurs when an innocent person believed to be convicted of a crime gets executed, due to the fact that the evidence provided in court usually contains some flaws to erroneously indicate that he/she is responsible for the crime. In the short story “Two Fishermen”, the narrator states ‘In the morning, young Thomas Delaney, who had grown in the town, was being hanged: he had killed Mathew Rhinehart whom he had caught molesting his wife when she had been berry picking in the hills behind the town. Thomas Delaney had taken a bad beating before he had killed Rhinehart.’ This demonstrates that Thomas was innocent because he tried to save his wife from Rhinehart’s approach. But when Rhinehart starts beating Thomas very badly, Thomas had to react quickly and was forced to kill him in order to defend himself from the bad beating. Hence penalties on innocent can be avoided, only if the right to defence is protected and capital punishment is banned from the

In the United States there have been more than 1,420 prisoners executed since 1976. There are many forms of execution such as hanging, death by firing squad, lethal injection, and electrocution, but the execution that is frequently used compared to the others is lethal injection. More than 85 percent of the prisoners that have been executed since 1976 were put to their death by lethal injection. How many of those people that were put to death could actually be innocent? Everybody makes mistakes even police officers, judges, lawyers, and jurors. Nobody wants to make the mistake of killing an innocent person. After a prisoner is executed there is no way to bring them back to life and apologize for keeping them in a prison and killing them for

Killing the innocent intentionally is at least usually wrong. According to Kant theory, this statement would fit auger well to his Kantian ethics theory. This is because his theory explains actions such as murder are prohibited no matter how much happiness the act could bring it is prohibited. Kant theory the rightness or wrongness of an action does not depend on the consequences but the intention or one’s duty. Therefore if an action that a person want to do would not like everybody else to do or would not like it to be done to them then it is wrong (Ebenstein, 1991).

Although one might think that capital punishment leads to innocent deaths, this is completely false. People against capital punishment constantly claim that there have been numerous cases in which we have executed an innocent man. But the truth is that we do not have any records of ever executing an innocent man. The idea that innocent people can get executed on accident is highly false and inaccurate. Also, it is perceived that capital punishment takes away freedom