We teach our children very early on that two wrongs do not make a right.
The crime of murder carries our harshest of sentences such is our disdain for the crime. Yet the death penalty is nothing more nothing less than murder carried out in a cruel and calculated manner by the state.
The death penalty is contrary and in violation of Human rights norms. This-is not a new phenomena with China having previously abolished the death penalty between 1747 and 1759. The modem abolition movement was inspired by Italian Cesare Beccaria in his work Dei Delitti e Delle Pene. On Crimes and Punishments published in 1764.
Cesare argued that not only was the death penalty an injustice of itself but a futile exercise.
Cesare's work inspired a Movement based on Human-Rights that led to the first nation's abolishing the Death penalty in modem times. They were the Roman Republic in 1849, Venezuela in 1863 and Portugal in 1867. Even earlier in 1786 then independent Tuscany abolished the death penalty and the date 30th November marks an annual holiday to-celebrate the event.
Following the Second World War a new era of Human Rights and International Law sought first to lay down the foundations of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948), to move towards country by country to introduce moratorium's and later in 1966 (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) and 1990 (Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) to Universally abolish the death penalty universally.
The mere fact that the death penalty is by nature irreversible also raises a number of other issues. These serious flaw issues have with the [death penalty] again recently been highlighted in a report by the American Law Institute.
Firstly that judges and juries do make mistakes. Studies around the