How the Death Penalty Is Against Our Human Rights

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In this paper, I am going to be arguing how the death penalty is against our human rights. Capital punishment is when a person is executed for a capital crime or capital offense. The death penalty has been along long enough for us to realize something has got to change. In 1772 B.C. the Code of Hammurabi was established. This is where we get the statement “an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.” Later in 621 B.C., Draco’s code of law for Athens would sentence every offender to death (Melusky 175). It did not matter the severity of the crime. Fortunately, we have come a long way since that time period. But what I am going to argue is that have we come far enough?
More recently from 1930 until 1973, 3,859 people were executed under civil jurisdiction according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Since 2000, executions have been done multiple ways throughout the world: beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection, shooting, and stoning (Clapham153). The United States government is always quick to think about going into another country to fix their problems. For example, recently there was a debate whether or not to send out troops to Syria to fix their problems. I would think we, the United States, would like to stop the ongoing beheading and stoning of people. That would just be hypocritical though, because what we are doing to our criminals is not that much better. Since 2000, we have come up with another way to execute people, lethal injection. Many people believe that this is painless, but in fact they are wrong. Dr. Edward Brunner from Northwestern University Medical School does not agree with this “painless” injection. He says that people could look completely comfortable and lying still, when really their sleep drug c...

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... in a drive-by shooting. His fingerprints were never found on the weapon or car. A professor from the University of Michigan Law School found him innocent in 2005. As you can see, the faults in our system killed innocent men just like it did Larry Griffin.
The death penalty has done nothing good for this country. Taking someone’s life does not bring back the other life he or she took. Almost all religions believe in forgiveness. This type of punishment does not show one sign of forgiveness. Capital punishment can be painful, costly, and take lives of the innocent. It is also against religion. In the constitution, it does state that we can practice any type of religion. Most religions are not being completely practiced if we are letting this go on in our country. With all of the negative effects that come from capital punishment, the death penalty should be illegal.

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