The Death Penalty: A Cause To Die For .
A prisoner sits alone in a tiny gray cell in Raleigh's Central Prison. In just a few hours, he will die as the state of North Carolina takes his life as punishment for murder. Each time a prisoner dies in this manner, it raises compelling questions, which our society must answer. Is capital punishment fair? Is it applied equally to all segments of society? Does it truly serve to discourage violent crimes? The answer to all of their questions is a resounding "NO." Capital punishment should be abolished in the United States. It has too often been applied to innocent victims, it is used against minorities and the poor far too much, and it is not an effective deterrent against future crimes.
In North Carolina there are about 250 people added to death row each year and 35 executed. The death penalty is the harshest form of punishment enforced in the United States today. People today have been put on death row, because they committed a crime that was so severe the jury sentenced them. Sometimes the jury can sentence people that are innocent. The evidence was not shown in court so they are going to die for something they did not commit. North Carolina's Death Row is one of the nation's largest. The state has more then 200 inmates on death row. About half of them could be innocent, but they have already been convicted and the case is over. "In the last hundred years there have been more than 75 documented cases of wrongful conviction of criminal homicide. The death sentence was carried out in eight of these cases. Unfortunately many other cases of mistaken conviction and execution occurred and remained undocumented." (Cantu). If a living prisoner is discovered to be blameless he can be freed; but neither release nor compensation is possible for a corpse. Even though only eight of the 75 wrongfully accused were executed, there is no way society can bring them back and give them another chance.