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Life Without Parole Research Paper

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The punishment reserved for the worst offenders can be either the death penalty or life in prison without parole. Today, there are thirty-two states that choose to execute criminals for their horrendous crimes and eighteen states that use life without parole to punish those who committed the worst crimes. Life without parole often called “Civil Death” is a punishment that specifies that offenders will spend the remainder of their life in Jail, while death penalty is a punishment allowing to put offenders on the death row for crimes they committed. At first sight death penalty and life without parole seem different but they have more in common than what meets the eyes.
First, death penalty and life without parole are both the highest form of …show more content…

However, with the life without parole, offenders lose their right to request a lawyer, they abandoned their right to appeal. Life without parole takes the freedom away from offenders and it condemned them to a life filled with suffering. Since then, the prison becomes their cemetery. One can say that offenders abandoned their right in return of the lives they have taken. Death penalty and life without parole both take something valuable from the offenders to compensate the lives they have taken. Death penalty takes their lives and life without parole take their civil rights. Thus life without parole and death penalty have many similarities. Nevertheless, as one takes a further look into those two types of punishment, one can see that they also differ in many …show more content…

Recent studies show that the death penalty has sixty percent error rate, it means that 1in 25 given death penalty sentences are likely innocent. In the past 20 years, six innocents have been freed from the death row in Pennsylvania. Sometimes, an offender is executed and later the authorities found out that s/he was innocent. That’s what happened with Cameron Todd Willingham. In 1992 Texas, Willingham was accused to have intentionally set a fire that killed his three children. In 2004, he was executed. Later, the Texas Forensic Science Commission found that the evidence used against him wasn’t valid and the fire was accidental. As opposed to death penalty, life without parole protects offenders against wrongful executions. In fact, life without parole doesn’t put any lives at risk because during their incarceration, offenders can be free anytime if they are found to be

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