Pros And Cons Of Abolishing The Death Penalty

The death penalty is discriminatory usually against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious groups. Since humans are fallible, the risk of executing innocent people can never be fully eliminated. Putting a person on death row comes with astronomical costs. Having to pay for investigations, lengthy trials and appeals, leady a majority of states to re-think having this flawed and unjust system.
Over two-thirds of the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. The death penalty is racially bias, since 1977, 77% of death row defendants have been executed for killing white victims. Even though black men and women make up about half of all homicide victims. Since 1973, 140 people have gotten

off of death row based on evidence that has proved them to be not-guilty. During the same time period 1,200 people have been executed by the death penalty. The death penalty does not stop people from committing murder. FBI data shows that the 14 states that do not have capital punishment had homicide rates at or below the national rate. The death penalty is not fair to the people that cannot afford their own attorney. Local politics, the location, plea bargaining and pure chance determine the outcome of the trial, who lives, who dies. Since 1976, 82% of all executions have been in the south, and 37% were just in Texas. Since 1988, 28 foreign nationals have been executed in the U.S. The death penalty can never be voluntary. It cannot disguise the fact that the state is involved in a premeditated killing. Since the year 1976 there have been 138 voluntary executions. The federal death penalty can be enacted in any state of territory in the U.S., even when the state does not have the death penalty. There are currently 60 people on death row in the U.S.
In 1948, The United Nations unanimously adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This declaration states that every individual person has the right to live. It also states that no person shall be a victim of cruel and/or unusual degrading punishment. In 1966, the UN adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life”. Neither pregnant women nor children under the age of eighteen may be given the death penalty. In 1984, they adopted the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, which main focus was to abolish the death penalty. In 1989, the UN Economic and Social Council adopted “Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty. In 1990, the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights was adopted by the General Assembly of the Organization of American States. In 1995, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child came into force that prohibits the death penalty for persons under 18 at the time of the crime. In 1999, the UN Commission in Human Rights passed a resolution calling on all states that maintain the death penalty to restrict the number of offenses punishable by death. In 2002, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers adopted Protocol 13 of the European Convention of Human Rights which abolished the death penalty for any circumstances with no exceptions to be made. In 2005, the UNCHR approved Human Rights Resolution 2005/59 on the question of the death penalty and they requested that the death penalty be abolished completely in every state. In 2007, the UN General Assembly approved Resolution 62/149 which called for all states that still maintain the death penalty to establish a moratorium on executions.