False Arguments Against The Death Penalty

Improved Essays
The death penalty. It’s the highest punishment that can be dished to a convicted person. The problem is that the system of condemning one to that sentence is highly inaccurate. As the article said, “...around 120 of the 3,000 inmates on death row in America are not guilty.” That’s much to high of a number to tolerate. Even one is too much. This punishment is supposed to end the most dangerous and effective criminals. How then are innocent people being killed for the sake of ‘justice’? “False convictions...are extremely difficult to detect after the fact,” said a law professor, Samuel R. Gross from the University of Michigan and Barbara O'Brien from Michigan wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of science. This shows

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    In 2012, a man named Mark Klaas was interviewed about how he felt after the man who kidnapped and murdered his daughter, was executed. His response was that he was disappointed that it had to come to that, but satisfied that justice had been fulfilled. Mark now knows that the man that killed his twelve year-old, will never cause harm to anyone else. But what if the court had decided that it was not a "heinous" murder? Closure is what the death penalty brings to many hurting families, which is why the death penalty should be allowed in any murder cases where someone was proven guilty.…

    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Psychological studies have contributed to our understanding that there are many factors that lead cases to be exonerated at court. Factors such as: eye witnesses, juries, false confessions and biases. Using studies from Peter J. van Koppen and Shara K. Lochun, and Tim Newburn, we can understand how unreliable eyewitnesses can be to a crime and how juries can be unreliable as a judging panel, respectively. Using Keith A. Findley’s research we can comprehend how false confessions and biases come to occur during the process of retrieving information to a court hearing. This essay will conclude that these four areas are the major reasons as to why perpetrators fail to be convicted at court.…

    • 847 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A man named Cameron Todd Willingham who resided in Texas, was convicted of murder in 1992, it was believed that he had set his home on fire with his three children still alive. With this evidence he was put to death in 2002. Later after further evidence was discovered it was sadly too late for Willingham, it was found that none of the evidence used against him was in fact valid. They said they simply misinterpreted the evidence, that the fire was just an accident. They sentenced an innocent, grieving man to death.…

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Causes of Wrongful Convictions “Wrongful conviction is on the rise because the protections against it have been eroded” stated by Paul Craig Roberts in his article “The Causes of Wrongful Conviction. (Roberts, Spring 2003). It is a very old yet modern problem in today’s society. Wrongful convictions claim the lives of many innocent people in the justice system. In order to understand how wrongful convictions take place, one must be conscious of the causes.…

    • 1063 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The death penalty has been the the most effective, yet controversial punishments when dealing with…

    • 2649 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Lethal Injection

    • 1135 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Although the Death Penalty is cost effective and could save the lives of innocents, the Death Penalty actually goes against the First Amendment, in many instances has executed the wrong person, and goes against many religious and moral views; and additionally is becoming a problem in our own state as the penalty is being rushed in order to make sure the necessary drug does not expire. One of the most controversial arguments is the Eighth Amendment vs. Lethal Injection argument. While lethal injection is proposed as a quick, efficient, and painless way to end the life of those convicted, this is not the case. Lethal injections can be faulty, there are many reports of individuals surviving or needing a second attempt.…

    • 1135 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Every year in the United States approximately ten thousand individuals may be convicted of a serious crime that they did not commit (Spring 1). Therefore, allowing guilty parties who are a danger to society to remain on the streets resulting in a lack of trust from members in the public towards the judicial system; this source of an undermine towards the judicial system created by the viewpoints of the public on wrongful convictions may be considered as the foremost source of what leads to the main causes for wrongful convictions. The main causes for wrongful convictions in the criminal justice system are mistaken identification by an eye witness, ineffective assistance of the defense counsel, police or prosecutorial misconduct, and false…

    • 645 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Falsified DNA Evidence

    • 942 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Conventional wisdom dictates than an innocent person will not be convicted of a crime in America.1 “Like many criminal justice officials, most people appear to believe in what . . . has been labeled ‘the myth of psychological interrogation’: that an innocent person will not falsely confess to a serious crime. ”2 This myth, though easily dispelled by psychological and sociological literature on the subject, continues to play an integral role in the criminal justice system.3 Both experimental and field studies demonstrate that criminal officials and jurors place an almost “blind faith in the evidentiary value of confession evidence. ”4…

    • 942 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay On Wrong Conviction

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Literature Review Crime convictions occur every day in America. Not everyone that is convicted for a crime means he/ she did the crime. Unfortunately, in the American criminal justice system, people are convicted for crime they have not occurred. Wrongful convictions are the cause of people having convictions that they did not deserve.…

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Capital punishment is a government sanctioned law by which person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime. The crimes that result in death are known by capital offences. For example: rape, torture, treason, kidnapping, murder. Capital punishment was common in the past, now a days the large majority discontinued the process.…

    • 869 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    ‘Killing people is wrong’, a statement everyone can stand behind, however, in some arguments, would depend on who did the killing (Koch 483). The death penalty has been under the watchful eye of the United States population for some time now, and has developed an audience on both sides of the argument. Many believe the death penalty is morally wrong, alluding to scriptures from the Bible. Others would argue the death penalty is a way of justice for the murderers and ultimately for the victims. The light shed from opposing views could help reach a resolve and put the issue at rest, however, in the meantime, one must pull from both sides to decide for themselves.…

    • 1017 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    False confessions have become more prevalent in today’s world. With all of the technology advances today we have found out that we have convicted people who have falsely confessed. In Marion’s peer review article it says, “Since 1989, more than 1,400 wrongful convictions of innocent people have been exposed in the United States—either through DNA testing or via the discovery of other types of evidence” (Marion 65). However today we have organizations that are trying to help people with cases. These organizations included the Innocence Project, and the Advocates 4 Wrongfully Convicted.…

    • 282 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Death Penalty: The Price Society Pays The death penalty has been a topic of controversy for centuries, known for its inhumane brutality methods which have evolved over the years from lynching to gassing, electrocuting and now the lethal injection; it is in fact the sentencing of those who have committed a heinous crime. On the other hand, justice has been served when the death penalty has finally been executed on the prisoner, bringing a sense of retribution to those who have lost a loved one due to the crime committed. Although many people might think it is a working system, others land in the mixture of controversy for various reasons. Over the course of time, the death penalty has started to become obsolete and is slowly making a turnover…

    • 1158 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Capital Punishments role in America plays a huge part in how America handles offenders and repeat offenders. Staticbrain.com reports that Time magazine says,” An estimated 2,000,000 people have been victims of crimes, from assault to murder. With insufficient laws to address these issues, criminals become careless and bolder. For this reason, there is a need for a death penalty.” Capital punishment, should not be abolished because, it takes committing a heinous act to receive the death penalty.…

    • 1214 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Adrianna Coffee Dr. Huck GSTR 110 Capital Punishment The death penalty should never be applied as a punishment to a person convicted of intentionally killing another person because the death penalty is a costly, unfair punishment that does not benefit society as a whole. What is the death penalty? The death penalty is defined as “the punishment of execution, administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime.” (Definition of Death Penalty in English) Since 1976 there have been over fourteen hundred executions in the United States.…

    • 1379 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays