You are against the death penalty aren’t you? Can you explain why? I just don’t understand why anybody would be against it…

congenitaldisease:

I’m against it because capital punishment is a heinous remnant of governments past and it really has no part in modern society. I’m against the death penalty because it isn’t a deterrent to crime, innocent people may, and have, been executed, it costs more for someone to be sent to death row and executed than it would if they were sentenced to life without parole, death sentences aren’t fair as someone could have killed 50 people could get life imprisonment while someone who has killed only one person could get sentenced to death, it’s racist, being sentenced to life in prison also stops them from committing crimes so what’s the point in executing them? It also makes absolutely no sense to kill someone for killing someone. To agree with the “an eye for an eye” logic is illogical, hypocritical, and extremely archaic.

There is an infectious presence of racism in the death penalty and racial disparities plague the justice system. There have been countless studies that indicate racial bias when it comes to sentencing. The Baldus study showed that defendants of colour were 1.7 times more likely to receive the death penalty than white defendants in similar murder cases. It also showed that murderers of colour with white victims were 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than whites that killed people of colour under similar circumstances. A 2007 study in Connecticut showed that defendants of colour receive the death penalty at three times the rate of white defendants. In Philadelphia, the same study found that defendants of colour are four times more likely to be sentenced to death than whites. This same study has been replicated in a number of other states and showed very similar results – people of colour are given the death penalty more often than whites. There was not once State in America that indicated otherwise. There is a clear pattern of evidence that indicates racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty in America. In fact, DA of Texas Chuck Rosenthal resigned after sending and receiving a number of racist emails regarding the death penalty – out of the 32 cases he sought the death penalty, 29 defendants were people of colour.

The department of corrections stated that housing death row inmates costs more than twice as much as life imprisonment inmates. The average cost of defending in a federal death case is around 8 times more expensive than in which the death penalty is not sought. Texas, for example, is spending $2.3 million PER death row case. California would save approximately $90 million per year if they were to abolish the death penalty. This money could go towards something more beneficial, such as victim advocacy and assisting in solving crimes.
It’s a waste of money. Literally hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted on a response to murder which is calculated to be carried out on a small amount of unlucky people per year and which has done nothing to stem the rise in murder, which is therefor ineffective.

Murder is a heinous act, regardless of who has
committed the crime, and should not be sanctioned by the government for any reason. Life imprisonment is punishment, punishment that doesn’t see innocent men killed. Capital punishment is revenge. The death penalty isn’t as black and white as some people like to imagine, and I chose to not support a racist, biased, hypocritical, flawed system that has sent many innocent men to their deaths as opposed to a system which is more effective and less barbaric in which inmates are sentenced to life imprisonment. Furthermore, I believe that capital punishment violates the eighth amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.