Reevaluating the Death Penalty: A Dilemma in America

The United States guarantees the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; however, if the death penalty is legal, the same country which promises life, has the ability to take it away. If a person were to commit first degree murder, take part in terrorism, or commit an act of espionage, they would be faced with capital punishment. Many Americans disagree with the death penalty because of the high expense of death, the possibility of innocent people murdered, and the amount of crime deterred by the elimination of the death penalty. However, many citizens realize the advantages to the death penalty such as, prison escapees who might commit more crimes, a potential solution to overcrowded prisons, and a way for victims’ families

It has been demonstrated the one in seven people, or fourteen percent, who are put on death row were innocent of their convicted crimes. The American society is outraged when an innocent person is killed, the fourteen percent would not have to suffer if the death penalty was illegal throughout the country. There is no way to tell how the more one thousand people, possibly more, executed since 1976 may also have been innocent, courts do not generally entertain claims of innocence when the defendant is dead. Wrongful convictions and executions can be made from many of the following factors: mistaken eyewitness testimony, faulty forensic science, fabricated testimony or testimony from jailhouse informants, grossly incompetent lawyers, false confessions, police or prosecutorial misconduct and racial bias. Many of the people who are resentenced from death to life imprisonment may be innocent and rotting behind bars, since without the imminent threat of death, no one will take up their case to exonerate them. Along with the con of the death of innocent people, the elimination of the death penalty proves as a more effective way to deter