Why should the death penalty be abolished? What are the problems with the death penalty today?

I think the death penalty should be abolished. What are the problems with the death penalty today?

 

I think the death penalty should be abolished. There are many problems with the death penalty today. With the recent spate of crimes and the prevailing opinion that the worst offenders deserve the death penalty, I take the opposite view. Is the death penalty really justified? I don’t think so, so what are the problems with today’s death penalty?
First, the death penalty is inhumane. Today, almost every industrialized country, with the exception of the United States, is unconditionally opposed to the death penalty. As Amnesty International reminded us in the 1977 Stockholm Declaration, “The execution of the death penalty is an act of violence, violence tends to provoke violence, and the imposition of the death penalty brutalizes all those involved in the process.” According to the declaration, every execution is inhumane, cruel to those who carry it out, and devalues the value society places on human life. For example, on December 30, 2006, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hanged following a trial that failed to meet international fair trial standards. Iraqi authorities officially released a silent film of the moments leading up to the execution, and additional illegally recorded footage was subsequently circulated. The illegal footage showed prison guards mocking Saddam Hussein and the detailed execution process leading up to the opening of the gibbet. The execution of Saddam Hussein and his entourage drew global condemnation.
The cruelty of the death penalty extends from the prisoner to the prisoner’s family, prison guards, and executioners. Information from around the world indicates that the role of an executioner is a deeply disturbing one, sometimes leaving an unforgettable psychological impact. Judges, prosecutors, and other public officials also experience difficult moral dilemmas when their views and beliefs conflict with the role they are required to play in the execution of a death sentence.
Furthermore, not only the death penalty itself, but also the methods of execution are dehumanizing. Law enforcement in the United States has tried to make the death penalty acceptable by constantly changing the methods of execution, from hanging to firing squad, gas chamber, electric chair, and now lethal injection, but even so, there are still instances where the death penalty is carried out in an inhumane form. A prime example is the case of Angel Diaz, who was executed by lethal injection in December 2006. At the time of his execution, he was still moving after the first injection, his eyes rolling and his face grimacing as he tried to say something. His death was confirmed 34 minutes after the second injection was administered. The coroner stated that the needle had pierced a vein and the poison had been injected into soft tissue(柔組織) rather than a vein. Concerns about this method of execution have led authorities in some US states to recently halt executions and review the issue. Not only lethal injection, but many other forms of execution can be seen as violating the human rights of those on death row, either by human error or by their inherent inhumanity.
Secondly, the death penalty can be imposed on innocent people through wrongful convictions. According to a report by Amnesty International, people of questionable innocence have continued to be executed over the past decade, though it is unclear how many are innocently killed. It is only in exceptional cases that a prisoner is re-investigated after his death and found to have been wrongly convicted, and it is only when the death penalty is abolished that these mistakes will be eradicated. A short and clear study of 349 cases of innocent people being convicted in the United States sheds light on the problems associated with the death penalty. The study covers cases between 1900 and 1985. These are mostly people who were executed or sent to prison for murder. In most cases, the death sentence was strongly questioned. In most cases, acquittals or pardons were granted, often after the sentence had been carried out. However, 23 innocent people were executed. In some cases, the clarification of trial errors came later in the appeals process, through the efforts of lawyers. Other errors came to light by chance or through newspaper reports or investigations of others. In 32 cases, the accused did not commit the crime at all, often with the victim later turning up alive. In other cases, the crime was committed by someone else, alibis were found to be true, or witnesses were found to be liars. The study points to about 50 trial errors since 1970. During a debate on the death penalty in the British House of Commons in April 1987, former Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, who was instrumental in changing death sentences in the cabinet over two terms, said. “I had to investigate 10 cases where the death penalty had been imposed, and there was too much doubt to assume guilt, and in many cases it was an error of judgment.” He also concluded that “the frailty of human capacity in judgment is becoming increasingly clear to me, especially when it comes to such a final measure as the death penalty.” These innocent people should not be lost to the dew of sentencing. And today, the question of the death penalty is being raised in many countries, particularly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The root of these problems is that most of these countries are politically unstable, and over the past few decades, the death penalty has been used as a tool for political repression.
Third, the death penalty can be abused by dictators and autocratic regimes. We’re all familiar with the horrific examples of this, not just in recent history, but from the beginning of history. But once the abolition of the death penalty became an international movement, like the abolition of slavery, it became a movement as a whole, and therefore more amenable to abuse. But still, it’s impossible to remain silent against many dictators who punish their opponents with death and threaten them with death. The death penalty is also used to consolidate power gained through coups. Members of political opposition groups are executed in the name of political ends. Executions are often carried out after military coups against sympathizers of the previous regime or suspected rebels. In the past decade, this form of execution has been carried out in at least 14 countries, often with great zeal and under the guise of a fair trial.
These killings can no longer have a veneer of legitimacy; dictators must recognize that they are being ostracized by world opinion and that their actions are unjust. Killing only begets killing, and they can no longer put up a facade of justice. Even in countries where the death penalty is no longer practiced, lawyers are concerned that it still exists as a threat. A report by Amnesty International shows that over the years, attempts have been made to prevent the death penalty from being used for political purposes. Since the mid-19th century, many countries have prohibited or restricted the use of the death penalty for political purposes in their constitutions or laws. The American Human Rights Association states. “In no case should the death penalty be allowed to be used for political quarrels or in connection with crimes.” But despite these words, the death penalty still exists as a means of political repression in many parts of the world.
Proponents of the death penalty use a different rationale for its existence: they argue that criminals on death row, especially those who have committed murder, have given up their inherent human rights by trampling on the lives and dignity of others, and therefore their dignity does not need to be respected. They may also argue that protecting the dignity of murderers will prevent their victims from protecting the dignity that has been violated against them. If so, I would ask them this question. “Aren’t murder and the death penalty essentially the same action?” Of course, murder is the most extreme sin and immoral act we can commit as human beings, but the death penalty, which is the inhumane act of legally killing a person for murder, is also formally the same as murder. And no matter how deserving a criminal is of death, can we take that criminal’s life. There are some differences in the definitions of human rights, and different people’s ideas about them, so we might conclude that by killing, the murderers have abandoned their human rights. But even if death row inmates have given up their human dignity, they are still human beings. Do we, as human beings, have the right to kill other human beings? I don’t think so, and even if we assume that we do, the philosophical question of who grants us that right is not easily answered. Nevertheless, proponents of the death penalty argue for an “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” approach to punishment: the murderer killed a human being and therefore deserves to die. However, this approach to execution is fraught with contradictions. If the victim is already dead, even if the law and the system execute the perpetrator, it is only a punishment by a third party and cannot be a perfect judgment. And, according to this argument, the death penalty should be executed only for murder, and the method of execution should be the same as the method of committing the murder, so that it does not violate the principle of equity in the law. However, the common execution is hanging, and furthermore, the death penalty is also sought for economic and political crimes, so it is a contradiction, and in this sense, it deviates from the purpose of punishment.
In addition, proponents of the death penalty may argue that the death penalty is an extreme punishment that deprives people of their lives and therefore has a significant deterrent effect on crime by frightening the general public. In other words, the death penalty can be used to deal with serious crimes or cruel and unusual crimes, and it can maintain national order and maintain a humane culture. In other words, proponents of the death penalty argue that the value of the lives and property of the entire population is more important than the lives of individual criminals for the purpose of respecting human life and protecting it. In other words, the death penalty can prevent and deter crime by instilling fear of death in prospective criminals.
However, there is little objective, scientific evidence to support the death penalty as a deterrent or punishment. On the contrary, a wealth of data on the correlation between actual homicides and the death penalty demonstrates the weakness of such claims. For example, in the U.S. state of Delaware, homicides actually increased after the death penalty was reinstated in 1961, and in Canada, which abolished the death penalty in 1976, the homicide rate per 100,000 people increased from 3. In fact, a 1988 and 2002 UN study on the deterrent effectiveness of the death penalty concluded that ‘it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on homicide, and that the statistical evidence suggests that abolition of the death penalty would not result in a drastic and serious change in society’. It was on the basis of these findings that the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty in 2007, stating that there was no conclusive evidence that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on crime and that not using it would help in the enjoyment and promotion of human rights.
Finally, some argue in favor of the death penalty because if death row inmates are kept in prison for life instead of being executed, the state is responsible for the cost of feeding and clothing them. In fact, by 2012, South Korea spent a whopping 25.5 billion won in taxes on convicted criminals sentenced to death, which translates to about 25 million won per inmate.
However, even if the death penalty doesn’t cost more than life imprisonment, it’s not fair to associate the death penalty with money. Society cannot tolerate violence and abandon human rights in the name of saving money – the decision to take a person’s life shouldn’t be based on economic motivations. Furthermore, if the death penalty should be used because it saves taxpayer money, it’s the same logic as saying that those who can pay for it shouldn’t be held accountable for their crimes. In short, it leads to the same illogical and irrational conclusion as genetic innocence. Therefore, money is not an argument for the death penalty.
These various arguments show that the death penalty is an evil that needs to be eradicated worldwide. Sixty-one years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, there is a clear global trend toward abolition. As of 2014, 139 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, only eight countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. As of 2014, 93 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Ten of these countries have abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes and retain it only for exceptional crimes, such as crimes under military law or crimes committed during wartime. The remaining 36 countries can be considered “de facto abolitionists,” meaning that they have not carried out a sentence in more than 10 years or have made an international commitment not to use the death penalty. Thus, 139 of the 192 UN member states have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. Moreover, once abolished, it is very rare for the death penalty to be reintroduced, meaning that more than two-thirds of the world has abolished the death penalty in law or in practice out of respect for human life and dignity. However, there are still countries that retain the death penalty, and global public opinion is not perfectly aligned against the death penalty. Nevertheless, it may be a rash judgment to assume that the most extreme punishment, the death penalty, is necessary because of the low sentences given to criminals, and that it is just another form of violence by the state. Perhaps what is needed before maximizing the punishment for the perpetrator is an effort to expand the social safety net to prevent victims from becoming victims. It is less desirable to maintain the death penalty than to make an effort to ensure the protection of the people. In conclusion, the death penalty should be abolished. However, since it is not possible to abolish the death penalty right away, countries that still have the death penalty should do their best to gradually move away from the death penalty by making the current system more reasonable and humane.