Capital Punishment Should Be Prohibited - 2167 Words

Capital punishment is a controversial topic and major social issue that has been debated for decades and it still remains up for debate based on the increase of gun violence in both Canada and the U.S. Specifically, capital punishment is when someone is punished to death for a violent crime they have committed. Capital punishment is not justifiable because the legal system needs to be seen as upholding the rights of all human beings, despite even the crimes committed. It is not up to officials to decide when the death of another human occurs. Therefore, capital punishment should be prohibited because the legal system needs to act as a role model for citizens, disallowing the murder or killing of any human being. In this essay, I will†¦show more content†¦Many times, when there is only one suspect found, even if it is not the actual person, prosecution will push the conviction onto people who may be innocent. As a result, a wrongful conviction can threaten the criminal justic e system’s authenticity and it can weaken public trust. From 2009 – 2011, there were ten people in Florida who had their capital sentence overturned because they were not found guilty. Therefore, capital punishment can block the chance of being acquitted for a crime one has not committed. There are about 15% of the population of inmates that have been released from their jail time due to innocence. It is reported by the Death Penalty Information Center, that within 1973 – 1999 there were three exonerations each year and between 2000 and 2007, there were five per year, from the capital punishment sentence. The problem is that in the criminal justice system there are bound to be errors and errors were found within prosecutor misconducts as mentioned earlier, ineffective counsel assistance, judge and jury biases as well as unconstitutional jury instruction, which happen quite frequently in the justice system. While many proponents of the death penalty may say that it is better to have a safeguard, there are too many innocent people being mistreated and who are dying for the wrong cause. This is unfair and unconstitutional in