Capital Punishment Should be Abolished

PrefaceWhen we are talking about Capital Punishment we are referring to the system enforced by the US government as it is today. It is by burden to prove that we should abolish this system, and it is my opponent’s burden to defend the current system. The chief issue in this debate is whether Capital Punishment is justified. Is Capital Punishment a moral course of action? Is Capital Punishment justice or revenge? These are the issues that my opponent and I must address. C1) The Right to LifeCapital Punishment is a violation of the most basic of human rights, it violates the most fundamental principle under human rights law; the right to life. The right to life is protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), ratified by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. Article 3 specifies the right to life as a human right:Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. (see . http://www.un.org... Article 3)As long as the government has the right to take their citizens lives, they maintain the power to deny all other rights that are prescribed to us by the Declaration. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. . http://www.archives.gov...Our founding fathers listed the right to life first for a reason. The right to life underpins every right we have; it is the fundamental building block of all our rights. Without life, you cannot attain liberty. Without liberty, you cannot pursue happiness. Without the right to life, nothing else matters. Capital Punishment is not only a human rights violation, it also negates the purpose of government. As the Declaration outlines, and the philosopher John Locke writes, the central role of government is to protect the property of its citizens (property being life, liberty and property). The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions… (and) when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another. (see . http://oll.libertyfund.org...)Capital Punishment violates our most fundamental human rights and negates the role of government, to protect our rights. C2) InnocenceWhenever irreversible acts are being committed, irreversible consequences arise. We can never be 100% sure a criminal is guilty of a crime, so committing an irreversible act is bound to end in tragedy. Between 1973 and 2015, 148 innocent citizens were exonerated and released from death-row. . https://www.aclu.org... "Whether or not any innocent defendants have actually been executed, abundant evidence accumulated in recent years has resulted in the exoneration of an unacceptable number of defendants found guilty of capital offenses. The risk of executing innocent defendants can be entirely eliminated by treating any penalty more severe than life imprisonment without the possibility of parole as constitutionally excessive. "U. S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (Baze v. Rees)". .. Since the reinstatement of the modern death penalty, 87 people have been freed from death row because they were later proven innocent. That is a demonstrated error rate of 1 innocent person for every 7 persons executed. When the consequences are life and death, we need to demand the same standard for our system of justice as we would for our airlines. .. It is a central pillar of our criminal justice system that it is better that many guilty people go free than that one innocent should suffer. .. Let us reflect to ensure that we are being just. Let us pause to be certain we do not kill a single innocent person. This is really not too much to ask for a civilized society. "-Russ Feingold (US Senator) Introducing the "National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2000"Although the possibility an innocent person will be executed is small, the fact that there is a possibility at all, is reason enough to abolish Capital Punishment as a faulty system. C3) PrejudiceCapital Punishment enforces corrupt racial bias in its decisions; it targets people of color. The National Death-Row population is 42% black, while the national black population is only 13.6%. The disproportion is represented by the graph. . http://www.theatlantic.com...David C. Baldus did a comprehensive study of victims on death row, the published results showed the racist intentions. Out of the 667 homicides in Philadelphia between 1983 and 1993, black defendants were 4 times more likely to receive a death sentence than whites. . http://articles.latimes.com...Also, the same study found that defendants who were charged with killing whites are 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than defendants charged with killing blacks. Capital Punishment targets those of color and executes victims through racial bias. It is a faulty system and should be abolished immediately to prevent future racial executions. B) Lawyer QualityMost of the time, it does not depend on the crime you did, it depends on the quality of your lawyer to determine whether or not one is sentenced to death. "I have yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial? People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty. "Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,April 9, 2001“There have even been instances in which lawyers appointed to a death case were so inexperienced that they were completely unprepared for the sentencing phase of the trial. Other appointed attorneys have slept through parts of the trial, or arrived at the court under the influence of alcohol. ”(. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...)Death Sentences are not determined by the crime, but the quality of the lawyers. The Death Penalty is a broken system and should be abolished immediately. ConclusionI conclude that we should abolish Capital Punishment because it violation of rights, it kills innocent people, morality unjustified, and is racially biased.