Innocent Lives Lost

11 Pages 2630 Words

encing procedures would protect against innocent persons being sentenced to death”. But the chances that innocent persons have been or will be executed remain astoundingly high (Bedua 344). The United States justice system was formed on the premise that it should protect society’s general well being from any harm. Processes and procedures have been formed and created in order to ensure that everyone receives fair treatment, but the system has flaws that have let criminals put innocent people in jail and on death row. How can the nation’s people put trust into an institution, which has repeatedly failed them again and again?
No issue posed by capital punishment is more disturbing to the public than the prospect that the government might execute innocent people. Proponents to the death penalty are, of course, also against executing an innocent person (Hook and Kahn 91). Most everyone would agree that killing someone is wrong. Proponents and opponents agree that murder is a heinous act and should be punished. Despite their hatred for those who kill, proponents support the killing of murderers as a just punishment for their deviant behaviors. In this sense, execution can be termed, “legal murder” because “executions shares enough of the characteristics of murder to be counted as part of the general category: it includes a victim who does not want to die, and an agent that nonetheless kills [the victim]” (Yanich 98]. Murder is synonymous with kill, as found in the Britannica- Webster Dictionary. To kill is to deprive one of life or to put one to death and murder implies motive and intent or premeditation. With respect to theses definitions, execution is a premeditated event, which deprives the accused of his/her life. Therefore, execution is as unrighteous and unjustified as the act of murder itself.

Despite the detrimental errors of the U.S. justice system, the death penalty remains in effect and is costing citizens hundr...