The Death Penalty should be Abolished

1. The death penalty is not in fact necessary - saying that it is necessary implies that it provides a service and/or solution that cannot otherwise be obtained. And that is patently false. Rather what the death penalty does is allow individuals to sate their need for vengeance. But vengeance is not nearly the same thing as justice and therefore the death penalty should be considered cruel and unusual punishment that does not fit the scope of any crime. 2. The point of the Justice system is to a.) punish and b.) rehabilitate offenders to become useful members of society. I've already addressed point a, but in regards to point b - it's rather hard to rehabilitate a corpse. A dead person can never become a better or more decent person nor can they be taught the value of remorse. Most importantly someone who is dead cannot be taught to repent of their crime - which is to say they cannot be taught to work toward repaying the debt of what they have deprived society and their victims of. 3.) Which brings me to my third point - "vile" and "evil" are not only subjective values, but there are very few individuals who entirely lack the ability to be taught to recognize the errors of their ways if not the actual import of what they've done. And most of those who exist in that category are what would be known as sociopaths and/or psychopaths. A sociopath can be tried as someone with the competence to know better, but sociopathy does possess a biological component and therefore there is a discernible gray space as to whether they need help or punishment. A psychopath meanwhile can be held accountable, but the gray space for the agreed upon treatment is even wider in nature. Killing either of type of person would therefore be as big a sin as anything they might have done. 4.) And of course in bringing up competence we then must look at how accurate the Justice system even is when it comes to convictions. Because you can't simply apologize to someone you've executed after the fact. Apologies have never brought anyone back from the dead. And unfortunately there have been more than a few executions that proceeded on little if any real evidence and an ungodly amount of racial bias. Consider the Scottboros Boys or Brown vs Mississippi or Lena Brown the only woman to have been executed in Georgia with electrocution because she dared to defend herself against a white kidnapper. Of course, it's not just blacks - plenty of whites have been screwed over as well. 5.) Now to address the point of deterrence - the death penalty has been shown to fail as a deterrence. There are many reasons for that, but the one that counts most is that the application of the death penalty is simply shoddy. Depending on location, race, gender, and socio-economics it's possible for someone who meets the requirements for such a sentence to be passed over in favor of someone who does not. It's also possible for evidence to be fudged or "lost" or simply discounted. And then there is the fact a conviction can be appealed for decades all on the tax payer's dime. For the person who would conceivably "deserve" such a punishment it's effectively a Paper Tiger rather than an actual punishment to watch out for. 6.) Which brings up another point - the cost. Maintaining Death Row, providing that final meal, the cost of the attendant form of execution, the cost of appeals, and such all lay a rather heavy fine on the tax payers many of whom aren't in fact okay with this sort of punishment. Is it really fair for money that could go to any number of more socially acceptable gains be instead used in the act of ending someone's life? No, of course not. 7.) Finally ... what right does anyone have to take a life? If it is wrong to murder, why is it okay to kill someone just because a judge and jury says so? If a lynch mob is wrong to hang a man based on their brand of "justice" then isn't it also wrong for the courts to kill a person? This is not like a war where one must kill or be killed nor is a form of self-defense. It is the conscious decision to deprive someone of their life and that can never be correct. Not if actual justices rather than emotional vengeance is to be served.