Abstract

Death penalty is considered as a punishment which aims to create a sense of fear among the citizens and stop them from committing serious crimes but it is very important to understand that death penalty is not the right way to execute an individual. The objectives of the government should be to take preventive measures to prevent crime effectively in the country and not to punish individuals by taking their lives after committing a serious crime.

Death Penalty

Introduction

The death penalty remains a source of contentious public debate in the United States. No other democracy in the world uses it, yet public opinion polls in the United States have shown that support for the death penalty has been as high as eighty percent and rarely as low as fifty percent, although for a brief moment in the 1960s it fell below the fiftieth percentile. Currently, public opinion polls show that sixty-seven percent of the American people support the death penalty, although that figure drops to fifty-three percent when the option of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is presented as an alternative (Russell: 121).

Thirty-eight states and the federal government currently authorize the use of the death penalty. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, there have been 887 executions, including ten of women of those 887 executions, 730 have been carried out in the South. Texas and Virginia account for 403 executions. A leading argument against the death penalty is that it is possible to execute an innocent human being. One very disturbing figure is that 112 death row inmates have been exonerated since 1973. These exonerations have occurred as a result of DNA testing (which is not always available), because substantive questions have been raised about a convicted defendant's inconsistencies on a confession, and, in at least one case, ...