Death Penalty: A brutal act against humanity

The first historically established death penalty laws dated as far back as the 18th Century B.C.
was imposed by King Hammurabi of Babylon. Initially it was adopted for 25 different crimes.
In 14th Century B.C. Hittite Code, Death Penalty was adopted as part of their law. In the 17th
Century B.C. Draconian Code of Athens, death penalty was the only punishment for all crimes.
and in the 15th Century B.C. Roman Law of the Twelve Tablet, death sentences were carried out
by various methods like crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement.

In the 11th Century A.D William the Conqueror opted not to allow a person to be hanged or
otherwise executed for any crime with exceptions of wars. This trend would not last, for in the
16th Century, under the reign of Henry VIII, as many as 72,000 people are estimated to have
been executed.

Ref: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/part-I-history-death-penalty

There are many factors that could be debated in criminal judicial system which needs to be refined and
re-defined in the light of biased or wrong historical judgments. These factors include, Misjudgment, Bias,
Racial discrimination, Incompetence of defendant’s lawyer, Political inclination etc.

“American support for capital punishment is around 55% according to a 2017 Gallup poll, and that’s the
lowest it’s been in decades. For many Americans, the typical narrative around the death penalty is that it
is reserved for “evil” people who committed wrongdoings and are getting what they deserve; this line of
thinking is overly-simplistic, apathetic and shortsighted. We can and must do better as a nation.”

Ref: Autobiography of Anthony Ray Hinton, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death
Row

The fight between those who support capital punishment and those who oppose it is rather
simple compared to many other debates. Those in support of capital punishment believe it deters
crimes and, more often than not believe that certain crimes eliminate one’s right to life. Those
who oppose capital punishment believe, first and foremost, that any person, including the
government, has no right to take a life for any reason. They often believe that living with one’s
crimes is a worse punishment than dying for them, and that the threat of capital punishment will
not deter a person from committing a crime. They also believe that the risk of executing an
innocent person is too high. The debate between these two sides is often heated, with both sides
protesting outside court houses and jails during high profile cases. However, a worldwide poll
conducted in 2006 indicates that 52% of the world’s population supports the death penalty. In the
US, that number is 65%.

Death penalty should be considered as a barbaric act against humanity and it must be abolished.
A horrifying number of innocent people have been wrongfully sentenced to death due to reasons
discussed above. Alarmingly in USA 1 out of every 9 people sentenced to death penalty is
innocent who could be saved with more legitimate judicial system. And those people could’ve
been playing a positive role in our socio-economical system.
There have been and always will be cases of executions of innocent people. No matter how
developed a justice system is, it will always remain susceptible to human failure. Unlike prison
sentences, the death penalty is irreversible and irreparable.

Many of the people who are facing death penalty confined in jails generally have severe mental
illness.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in Ford v. Wainwright that the Eighth Amendment
(which outlaws cruel and unusual punishment) “prohibits a State from carrying out a sentence of
death upon a prisoner who is insane.” However, they failed to clarify what qualifies as mental
illness — a standard which remains problematically nebulous. Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 held
that executing people with intellectual disability was an unfair punishment that contradicted the
deterrent purposes of the death penalty, as a result of their “diminished capacities to understand
and process information, to communicate, to abstract from mistakes and learn from experience,
to engage in logical reasoning, to control impulses, and to understand the reactions of others.”

Ref: https://medium.com/@mmosner/6-reasons-why-the-death-penalty-needs-to-die-b8bbd92755cc

Theoretically, the criminal justice system should maintain law and order and preserve public
safety but statically that is not what the capital punishment have achieved. Canada has abolished
capital punishment from their criminal justice system and ever since their murder rate had
declined by 44%. South America with highest murder rate has a rate of 81% of capital
punishment. On the contrary Northeast with lowest murder rate carry out less than 1% of all
executions.

Many of countries in the world have either formally abolished the death penalty laws or have
ceased to use it. In 2016 the USA executed the 6th highest number of people in the world, which
was exceeded only by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan. Japan and Taiwan are the
only other fully developed countries that still engage in the practice of capital punishment. The
death penalty violates the right to life which happens to be the most basic of all human rights. It
also violates the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading
treatment or punishment. Furthermore, the death penalty undermines human dignity which is
inherent to every human being.

The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment and it qualifies as human torture as the
methods adopted like be-heading, hanging, lethal injections, electrocution etc that take a fair bit
it time to had an effect and these should be overruled for any act of crime. We shouldn’t
reciprocate a crime with the same intensity to a criminal, a murder cannot be an acceptable
punishment for murderers? The focus should be more on reforming convicted criminals, the
death penalty simply seizes life altogether, curbing and diminishing any potential for reform and
for that individual taking away any chance of self-correction.

The death penalty lacks the deterrent effect from crimes which is commonly referred to by its
advocates. As recently stated by the General Assembly of the United Nations, “there is no
conclusive evidence of the deterrent value of the death penalty” (UNGA Resolution 65/206). It is
notable that in many states, the effectiveness of the death penalty in order to prevent crime is
being seriously questioned and reasonably ineffective.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in section on its website titled "The Death Penalty:
Questions and Answers," (accessed Mar. 27, 2017) stated the following:

"The death penalty has no deterrent effect. Claims that each execution deters a certain number
of murders have been thoroughly discredited by social science research...

In civilized society, we reject the principle of literally doing to criminals what they do to their
victims: The penalty for rape cannot be rape, or for arson, the burning down of the arsonist's
house. We should not, therefore, punish the murderer with death...

Capital punishment is a barbaric remnant of uncivilized society. It is immoral in principle, and

unfair and discriminatory in practice. It assures the execution of some innocent people. As a
remedy for crime, it has no purpose and no effect. Capital punishment ought to be abolished
now."

Ref: Mar. 27, 2017 - American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

As murder is considered to be the highest level of sin/crime in our modern society which should
be reciprocated with the same kind of act with the offender/criminal raises a bold question
against death sentence, what if the judgement was erroneous or weak due to flaws in criminal
judicial system and an innocent person was put to death?

This punishment is unreasonably disciplinary, and it reflects a cultural obsession with

unattainable perfectionism and severe punishment as we are a widely unforgiving society.

The “tough on crime” doctrine has been embraced on a vast and bipartisan scale.

A renowned quote from Bryan Stevenson professes that “each of us is more than the worst thing
we’ve ever done.” There are so many reasons why people make mistakes or misbehave in one
way or another, and it’s often arbitrary and/or unjust how consequences are doled out for those
mistakes. This does not justify or trivialize those mistakes in any way — particularly when they
have caused harm to other people. But it’s important to consider context when we are
contemplating crime and punishment

It is 2018, but the death penalty is a practice that is keeping us in the dark ages. The Emma
Lazarus poem that appears on the Statue of Liberty — “Give me your tired, your poor…” belies
the practices and beliefs of a society that literally kills its own people.

Public support for the death penalty does not necessarily mean that taking away the life of a
human being by the state is right. There are undisputed historical precedence where gross human
rights violations had had the support of a majority of the people, but which were condemned
vigorously later on. It is the job of leading figures and politicians to underline the incompatibility
of capital punishment with human rights and human dignity.

It needs to be pointed out that public support for the death penalty is inextricably linked to the
desire of the people to be free from crime. However, there exist more effective ways to prevent
crime. We have the power to change these practices, but it starts from within. We must
individually and collectively examine our own capacities for compassion and clemency and do
the work to expand those. America can be a better, more just and safer place if we do the work to
make it so.