Is the Death Penalty Effective?

Is the Death Penalty Effective?
Oniel Blair
10 October 2020
Is the Death Penalty Effective?
The death penalty is one of the controversial issues that people cannot see to agree. As of July 2020, the US supreme court has executed about 1516 people through the death penalty since 1976, some who were guilty and others that were innocent, and as of July 2020, about 60 people were waiting to be executed by the government and the military (Baumgartner et al., 2017). The death penalty is still being applied in many jurisdictions. A study by Baumgartner et al. (2017) concluded that about 4% of the people executed are likely to be innocent. Death is not reversible. Even if a person is proven to be innocent after their execution, nothing could be done since they are already dead, which would only leave their family and friends hurting that justice was not served (Yelderman et al., 2019). Whether the death penalty is significant has been controversial for a long time since some people think it should be one way to do justice, while others strongly disagree. For ethical reasons, the death penalty should be abolished since it is irreversible, ineffective, and mistakes also occur frequently during convictions.
The death penalty outweighs the advantages of other forms of execution, and social ethics do not support the death penalty. Death is perceived as one of the most inhumane ways to pass justice to people. Based on social ethics, capital punishment is an abuse of human rights, and it cannot be justified under all circumstances (Yelderman et al., 2019). The judiciary aims to promote justice in our society, but sentencing a person to death negates this value. The community believes in rehabilitating people who commit crimes but passing the death sentence means that this opportunity is not presented to the victim, making the matter an injustice since their human rights are not respected (Yelderman et al., 2019). If there were a remedy to death where one can be brought back to life after a while, probably even the anti-death penalty campaigners would agree to this form of sentencing. Killing a person for their mistakes is not justice, and it is irreversible. Death is irreversible, and nothing can be done to bring back the person to life if they are later on proved to be innocent and should, therefore, be abolished as a way of passing judgment. It is unjust that a person pays for a crime that they did not commit, and if he or she were in jail, it would have been as easy as letting them free, but with the death sentence, nothing can be done to ease the situation. According to Cholbi and Madva (2018), “black capital defendants are more likely to be subjected to execution than are those who murder members of other races” (p. 517). This means that the death penalty promotes racism, thus should be abolished since it encourages other negative things in society. It is illogical to solve a problem by creating another one, and this is what the death penalty does when they execute an innocent person, yet he or she cannot be brought back to life (Cholbi & Madva, 2018). After a dead person is declared innocent, his or her family and friends will seek justice under the basis of innocent murder, something that could have been avoided....