lCapital punishment is a topic that our country has struggled with for many years. Both the government and the general public have been divided about the moral problems that are raised from this issue. Capital punishment is defined as the legal infliction of death as a penalty for violating criminal law ("Capital"), but there is a great debate about how just it is. Some feel it is appropriate punishment for certain crimes against society. Many feel it is unjust, for three main reasons: it often punishes innocent people, convicts are often subjected to prejudice, and statistics show that the abolishment of the death penalty lowers the crime rate. .
People convicted of a crime that is punishable by death have later been found to be innocent. Between 1900 and 1992, there were 416 documented cases in which a person was convicted with a death penalty and later were proven innocent ("Five"). In addition, since 1976, eighty-two people (or one-seventh of capital punishment convicts) were later released due to their innocence after being sentenced to death ("Five").
The death penalty is, of course, a permanent punishment, and it cannot be rectified once it has been carried out. This is especially disturbing, when there are known cases where someone was wrongly put to death. Unfortunately, since 1976, there have been twenty-three identified cases where an innocent person had their sentence carried out ("Five").
The court system was created by humans and is run by humans; therefore it has its flaws. Like anything else, it has prejudices. Regrettably, people have often been convicted due to their outward appearance rather than the facts. The judiciary system has in the past recognized this, and because of the 1972 court case Furman versus Georgia (which eventually reached the Supreme Court), the death penalty was abolished for four years with the justification that it was racist ("Five"). Other countries have also recognized the racism of the death penalty; in 1994, for example, South Africa outlawed the death penalty because it was often associated with an official policy of racial segregation that had been in place since the last 1940s known as "apartheid"("Capital").
