Capital punishment

My OPP made sound arguments it is just that as he stated "I think that judges need to contemplate what punishment would be suitable for a particular criminal, and if the DP is seen as suitable, then so be it." Well there is no room for emotions and hot-headed behavior in the judicial system. A judge can be biased. Our system of criminal justice for all its protections is sufficiently fallible that innocent people are convicted of capital crimes. The morality of the death penalty has been hotly debated for almost a century in the U.S. The debate has swayed both ways, resulting in a moratorium on the punishment and a change in the procedure for applying the punishment. The institution of the death penalty in the United States is a fallible, unconstitutional and grossly abused appendage of the judicial system. One major argument against the death penalty highlights the fact that killing a person ends their right to due process. Once a person is dead they can no longer appeal their conviction, so even if new evidence comes forward, the person remains dead. The death penalty is the most final and unforgiving punishment imaginable. This poses problems because our system is fallible and prone to error. That is why the appeals process exists, so that errors can be corrected. In a system that prides itself on the importance of the appeals process the death penalty remains as the juggernaut of punishments. If the death penalty is cruel and it is a fallible system in which innocents have been executed, does this mean that the State if guilty of murder? Under a representative democracy there is no absolute leader that is placed above the law. Because murders have been committed and they have been done so in a systematic manner, doesn't this then mean the State has murdered? Many people would argue that the State has to be able to make mistakes, because it is a institution of humanity. If the punishment is absolute and final, shouldn't the State doing the punishing be fallible? The idea of a State that can be wrong convicting and executing its citizens is everything the framers of the Constitution stood against. People that have been proven innocent after execution: http://listverse.com... http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... (1) Carlos De Luna was executed in 1989 In February 1983, Wanda Lopez, was stabbed to death during her night shift at the gas station where she worked. After a manhunt, police found De Luna hiding under a truck. Recently released from prison, he was violating his parole by drinking in public. De Luna told police that he was innocent and he offered the name of the person who he saw at the gas station. Police ignored the fact that he did not have a drop of blood on him even though the crime scene was covered in blood. The single eyewitness confirmed to police that De Luna was the murderer after police told him he was the right guy. At trial De Luna named Carlos Hernandez as the man he saw inside the gas station, across the street from the bar where De Luna had been drinking. Hernandez and DeLuna were strikingly similar in appearance but, unlike DeLuna, Hernandez had a long history of knife attacks similar to the convenience store killing and repeatedly told friends and relatives that he had committed the murder. Friends confirmed that he was romantically linked to Lopez as well. De Luna's lawyers knew of Hernandez's criminal past but never thoroughly investigated his previous crimes. On December 7, 1989, Texas executed 27-year old Carlos De Luna. (2) Larry Griffin executed in 1995 On June 26, 1980 in St. Louis 19-year-old Quintin Moss was killed in a drive-by shooting. The conviction was based largely on the testimony from Robert Fitzgerald a white career criminal, who was at the scene at the time of the murder. He testified that he saw three black men in the car when shots were fired and that Griffin shot the victim through the window of the car with his right hand. This was Griffin's attorneys first murder trial and he did not challenge the testimony even though Griffin was left-handed. He also failed to bring forth an alibi witness who was with Griffin at the time of the murder. Griffin's fingerprints were not found on the car or the weapon all evidence against him was circumstantial. There is evidence that suggests Fitzgerald was promised a reduce sentence in exchange for his testimony. The prosecution also failed to address that there were two other witnesses who confirmed that Griffin did not commit the murder and they were able to name the three men who did. Appeals courts upheld his conviction and death sentence. Griffin was executed by lethal injection on June 21, 1995. Griffin maintained his innocence right up to his execution. In 2005, a professor University of Michigan Law School reopened the case. His investigation concluded that Griffin was innocent. (3) Leo Jones executed 1998 On May 23, 1981 in Jacksonville, FL police officer Thomas Szafranski killed when shots were fired at his police cruiser when he was stopped at an intersection. Within minutes police officers busted into Leo Jones' apartment where they found Jones and his cousin, Bobby Hammonds. Police took both men in for questioning and then charged Jones, who they claimed had confessed. Hammonds gave a statement, saying he saw Jones leave the apartment with a rifle and return after he heard some gunshots. In 1997, a retired police officer, Cleveland Smith, came forward and said the officer that arrested Jones had bragged that he beat Jones after his arrest. Smith, who described the officer as an "enforcer" testified that he once watched him get a confession from a suspect through torture. Smith claimed that he waited so long to come forward with this evidence because he wanted to secure his pension. More than a dozen people had implicated another man as the killer saying they either saw him carrying a rifle as he ran from the crime scene or heard him brag he had shot the officer. Even Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw wrote that Jones case had become "a horse of a different color". Newly discovered evidence, Shaw wrote, "casts serious doubt on Jones guilt." Shaw and one other judge voted to grant Jones a new trial. However, a five-judge majority ruled against him. Jones was executed by electric chair on March 24, 1998. These are just a few innocent people executed. Since 1976 there have been 1292 people executed...How many were innocent nobody will ever know. If one INNOCENT person is executed capital punishment is flawed and has to be abolished. This is literally life and death. "I will believe in the death penalty when you will prove to me the infallibility of human beings" --Marquis de Lafayette