Analyzing The Death Penalty

Let me tell you a story about Mike. Mike was a black man having relations with a white woman in the 70’s. His community didn’t much care for that, and the white woman ended up dead. Everyone knew it was Mike, the police, the news outlets, the families of the community. Mike was arrested and sentenced to death on circumstantial evidence, because the jury knew it was him. He was executed last year after 45 years on death row fighting his innocence. Shortly after, DNA evidence exonerated him and proved him not guilty. The death penalty (except in cases of heinous crimes) does more harm than good. Many people have strong feelings about capital punishment without having statistics and facts to back up their stance. Every year valuable community …show more content…
Every year innocent men are executed. How many criminals have been executed since 1976? According to (DPIC, 2016) there have been 1,437 criminals put to death. This number may not sound like a lot when compared to the massive rate of incarcerated individuals in the prison system, but when you look at the number of criminals that have been exonerated after having been put on death row that number seems to shrink a bit. Of the criminals put on death row, one hundred and fifty-six criminals have been exonerated since 1976 (DPIC, 2016). How many these executed men have been innocent? There really is no exact figure, according to the study (Gross, 2013) rate of false conviction of criminal defendants who are sentenced to death, 4.1% is a conservative number. That means 4.1 percent of 1,437 people or roughly 47 innocent lives have been ended prematurely. Until there is a change in the way criminal proceedings are navigated, there is no fool proof way to ensure guilt. Now you know that the system is fundamentally flawed in the false conviction rate, and many innocent men have been put to death. Let’s take a look at who the vast majority of these people