Should The Death Penalty Be Banned?

“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”
- M. Gandhi

The topic of the death penalty is one that is often debated about throughout the world. This is so because it encompasses a highly controversial matter that concerns with the punishment given to those who commit capital crime. According to the Amnesty International (2014), at least 2,466 executions took place worldwide in 2014. That number is astounding, especially when considering that it represents individual human life. With the amount of executions taking place, the death penalty has been ever more of a pressing matter. Overall, the death penalty should be banned because of immorality, possible exoneration and inequality.

The death penalty should be banned because of its immorality.
Criminals sentenced to capital punishment are mete with a punishment equal to the crime they commit. There is no justice in the use of a system as such, as a death is inevitable. Capital punishment is thus used for revenge or retribution rather than justice. An example of it being used as revenge is evident in the case of the Curley murder in 1997. Jeffrey Curley was a young boy who was subjugated to rape and killed by suffocation. The murderers were sentenced to life for their heinous crime. However, the public was unhappy with this outcome. They urged the Massachusetts court to reinstate the death penalty despite it being outlawed. This example conveys how anger and outrage blinds the perception of the public. In this case, emotion had overwhelmed the public to the point of justifying the killing of a person (Ring, 1997). In addition to that, the method
It is immoral because it promotes impetuous behavior, justifies the killing of human life and goes against the human rights declaration. In addition to that, there is the possibility that the person convicted is actually innocent. There are cases that have shown this happening due to the fact that humans are prone to err. After the death penalty has been carried out, there is no reversal. Lastly, the death penalty has been statistically shown to be unequal. If a certain ethnic race is more prone to a death penalty conviction than another, it is blatantly unequal. Supporters of the death penalty would argue that it reduces crime rates and that alternative convictions are too expensive. However, it has been shown that there is no clear crime deterrence and that the death penalty process is actually more expensive. In conclusion the death penalty should be banned because of immorality, possibility for exoneration and