The death penalty denies them their constitutional right to due process of law. In most cases, the difference between a death sentence and life imprisonment is being tried in the wrong state, in the wrong political climate, having a governor reluctant to grant clemency, or being poor, black or uneducated. In an imperfect world innocent people are being executed along with the guilty. Life imprisonment without parole should replace legal execution. Everyone must have the right to be rehabilitated, especially the youths convicted of capital crimes since they are the least set in their ways and offer more hope for rehabilitation.
Life imprisonment is no more of a financial burden to society than capital trials.
A 1982 study by the New York State Defenders Association shows that if the death penalty were reintroduced in New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more than double the cost of a life in prison. People who would not dream of letting the government dictate what morning newspaper to read or what spouse to marry seem to have no problem with letting the government decide whom to kill. And in this century in which we have seen governments shed rivers of blood in wars, revolutions and extermination camps, by militias and death squads and sheriffs, they justify their lethal fury by the benefits the killings will bring to the rest of society. Governments, we might have learned by now, are inappropriate agencies to select some people to be killed. Blacks have always constituted a disproportionately high number of death row inmates relative to their percentage of the population.