Anthony Porter's Arguments Against Capital Punishment

Between 1973 and 2015, one hundred and fifty-six inmates were exonerated from death row in the United States after new evidence demonstrated they were wrongfully convicted (Mallicoat, 2016). Anthony Porter came within forty-eight hours of being put to death for a double murder after serving seventeen years on death row before new evidence proved his innocence (University of Michigan Law School, 2012). Although the death penalty remains a controversial topic in the United States, most Americans support capital punishment for murderers. While it is true that capital punishment has some positive arguments, it is still an expensive irreversible punishment that states without it has a consistently lower murder rate than the states with it. Therefore, …show more content…
When it takes over an hour to insert and secure intravenous lines into a convict’s vein on death row before preparing to die involuntarily, it is torture. The state of Oklahoma became guilty of this when inmate Clayton Lockett was accidentally killed before the three-drug lethal cocktail was administered. Clayton Lockett died of a heart attack approximately forty-five minutes after the execution started upon receiving one of the three drug cocktails via an intravenous line in his groin (Shah, 2015). Romell Broom’s execution was terminated after attempts to find a useable vein for more than two hours failed. Romell Broom is the only inmate in the history of the United States to survive a botched execution attempt (Alper, 2011). The inmates who are on death row awaiting execution are being punished for their crimes, but that does not give the state the right to torture them via botched executions before they die. The problems with the botched executions can be easily resolved by putting an end to the death penalty. Even those preparing for execution do not deserve to suffer excruciating pain before they die, regardless of the crime