Pros And Cons Of The Death Penalty

Anthony Ray Hinton, a recently exonerated death row inmate, once said, “Being on death row has taken so much from me as a human being. I spent 30 years on death row for something I didn’t do” (Wolf and Johnson 1). Unfortunately, Hinton is not the only one. From 1973 to 2015, about 155 prisoners were exonerated after being sentenced to the death penalty. Capital punishment, or the death penalty, has been around since the eighteenth century B.C. and is still used today. A wide variety of methods are used to punish criminals, such as lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber, a firing squad, hanging, and beheading. The death penalty must be outlawed due to it being an outdated method of punishment, the system can convict innocent people, and it is fiscally irresponsible. To begin with, the death penalty is an obsolete and cruel method of punishment. Throughout the years, as society’s views have changed, so have the way that the prisoners on death row have been executed. From hanging to …show more content…
Recently, twelve men on death row were exonerated, and they served a combined total of 322 years for crimes they did not commit (Wolf and Johnson 2). However, if they had been executed, it would have been state sponsored murder. Due to the recent advances in DNA technology, over 100 prisoners have been granted pardons and some researchers estimate that around 4% of people sentenced to death are innocent. “Hinton, who is black, was an apparent victim of racial discrimination. He was convicted in a county known for delivering death sentences, making him a victim of geographic disparities. And ultimately, the prosecution admitted it no longer had a case” (Wolf and Johnson 1). Racial discrimination also comes into effect in many cases, out of the 2,905 death row inmates, about 43% are African American (Death Penalty Information Center). Thus showing how the judicial system can sometimes convict people that are