Capital Punishment Should be Abolished

C1) The Right To LifeCapital Punishment is a violation of the most fundamental principle of human rights; 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 3Capital Punishment is a direct violation of Article 3, and therefore constituted as a human rights violation. "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. 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)Sam Gross at the University of Michigan Law School published a paper in the National Academy of Science, calculating that there is a 4.1% error rate in executions. . http://www.nytimes.com... ". .. 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) MethodsNow, the method by which the current Death sentences are carried out is by lethal injection. “Lethal Injection…all of the 32 states that have the death penalty use this method… Medical ethics preclude doctors from participating in executions. However, a doctor will certify the inmate is dead. This lack of medical participation can be problematic because often injections are performed by inexperienced technicians or orderlies. If a member of the execution team injects the drugs into a muscle instead of a vein, or if the needle becomes clogged, extreme pain can result. Many prisoners have damaged veins resulting from intravenous drug use and it is sometimes difficult to find a usable vein, resulting in long delays while the inmate remains strapped to the gurney. ”. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...By the current method; lethal injection, there is a sizeable amount risk that could arise from the execution that would result in inhumane pain. The fact that there is any risk at all is enough to rule out Capital Punishment as a broken system. C4) 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. 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. What you have here is a system that treats some lives as more important than others. Capital Punishment is a broken system and needs to be abolished. C5) Lawyer QualitySometimes, it does not depend on what the criminal did; rather quality of the lawyer. "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 been times when lawyers appointed to a death sentence cases reported as sleeping through parts of the trial or under the effect of a hangover. "Death row inmates today face a one-in-three chance of being executed without having the case properly investigated by a competent attorney and without having any claims of innocence or unfairness presented or heard. "(Lethal Indifference: The Fatal Combination of Incompetent Attorneys and Unaccountable Courts Pg. 10) (see . http://www.fordarlieroutier.org...) “26 Death Row inmates…have received a new trial or sentencing because their attorneys' incompetence rendered the verdict or sentence unfair, court records show…33 defendants sentenced to death were represented at trial by an attorney who had been, or was later, disbarred or suspended--disciplinary sanctions reserved for conduct so incompetent, unethical or even criminal that the state believes an attorney's license should be taken away. ”. http://www.chicagotribune.com...Criminals are not sentenced to death by the heinous of their crime, but by the quality of their representation. The Death Penalty is a broken system and should be abolished. ConclusionCapital Punishment is a human rights violation, slays innocents, racially biased, and corrupt. Because of these reasons, I conclude that we should abolish Capital Punishment.