Progressive Death Penalty Essay
Today I came across a discussion on the death penalty on a progressive Facebook page. The post was in favor of execution, which was interesting to me because this is not the progressive position. In fact progressive position is staunchly opposed to the death penalty.
Needless to say this got me thinking, and gave me the idea new series that will cover one topic a week. We are going to look at a certain issue every week, explain the progressive position, and the reasoning behind it. Clearly this week we will start with the death penalty.
Progressive strongly oppose the death penalty, let's take a look at why this is. First off is the death penalty is extremely barbaric, most Western countries have abolished the death penalty. In fact the United States is the only country in the western world that still allows the death penalty. In fact even Russia …show more content…
A Study done by The Innocence Project concluded at least 4.1% of prisoners on death row are innocent. Experts from the same organization have stated that this is a low estimate and could possibly be much higher. Based on this fact alone it is completely immoral for any to support the death penalty. We have constantly seen the wrong people convicted to later be exonerated based DNA, new witnesses, and newly discovered evidence.
As stated before another reason is that it is barbaric. How is it barbaric? For starters it is state-sanctioned premeditated murder, and no matter how carried out it's still legal violence committed by the government . Even when lethal injection is administered there is a chance there will be complications, sometimes taking hours of pain and discomfort. Furthermore the use of firing squads and hanging were discontinued because of how it made people feel, and doesn't that say something? The switch to lethal injection was for the public, not the person
Needless to say this got me thinking, and gave me the idea new series that will cover one topic a week. We are going to look at a certain issue every week, explain the progressive position, and the reasoning behind it. Clearly this week we will start with the death penalty.
Progressive strongly oppose the death penalty, let's take a look at why this is. First off is the death penalty is extremely barbaric, most Western countries have abolished the death penalty. In fact the United States is the only country in the western world that still allows the death penalty. In fact even Russia …show more content…
A Study done by The Innocence Project concluded at least 4.1% of prisoners on death row are innocent. Experts from the same organization have stated that this is a low estimate and could possibly be much higher. Based on this fact alone it is completely immoral for any to support the death penalty. We have constantly seen the wrong people convicted to later be exonerated based DNA, new witnesses, and newly discovered evidence.
As stated before another reason is that it is barbaric. How is it barbaric? For starters it is state-sanctioned premeditated murder, and no matter how carried out it's still legal violence committed by the government . Even when lethal injection is administered there is a chance there will be complications, sometimes taking hours of pain and discomfort. Furthermore the use of firing squads and hanging were discontinued because of how it made people feel, and doesn't that say something? The switch to lethal injection was for the public, not the person