Capital Punishment has been used for thousands of years and has killed many people. It has been used in ways that are inhumane and are just plain wrong. Killing people, that have killed people, because they killed people is too much killing for one to wrap their head around. I am here to talk about the many things that are wrong and unjust about the death penalty. To prove that Capital Punishment does not deter crime and it costs more for taxpayers to kill a prisoner than to keep him/her in prison for life. When a person is proven innocent after being executed, it is an “Oh well” moment for the justice system. For a matter of fact, most legal cases are never looked at again after the execution. Capital Punishment has been wrong for as long as it has been around, people just haven’t taken the time to notice.

To begin with, one has to understand the history of Capital Punishment to understand the reasons why it is wrong. The death penalty was first used in 18th Century B.C. and has been kept alive in modern times too. One ruler that made distorted and insane laws was King Hammurabi. King Hammurabi ruled around the time when the death penalty was first originated. He executed people for things as simple as lying or stealing. He had over 25 laws that were punishable by death! Another ruler right around 7th Century B.C. that made harsh laws was a man by the name of Draco. He was leader of Athens, Greece in his time. He was known for his harsh laws for the simplest of punishments. Thats where the term Draconian laws comes from! Draconian Laws are any type of law that is harsh or unfair. Draco killed people for treason, arson, and rape which may or may not have deterred crime back then. Nowadays, we execute people for crimes such as murder and let a jury of people decide if the person should die or not. We execute people mostly with lethal injection, but in some states people are executed by hanging or even firing squads. There are many flaws with these types of execution, which is why it is argued that we shouldn't kill people. When you hang someone, for example, the rope has to be the perfect length. If the rope is too short, the victim could still stay alive and choke for over 2 minutes which is extremely painful. If the rope is too long, then the head of the victim could come flying off, which no one wants to see. Scientists even argue that the poison that is put in the lethal injection is extremely painful, and is in no way right to be put into a human being.

Furthermore, you will see how unfair Capital Punishment is and how many victims of execution have been proven innocent. As a country we have executed 1,234 people from 1976 to 2010 and a lot of those victims had been innocent. In fact, 1 of every 7 people that have been executed since 1976 was innocent. Texas, holding the top number of executions at 464, is a very interesting state when it comes to Capital Punishment. First of all, Texas can have very crazy verdicts when it comes to juries deciding a case. In the case of Texas v. Soffar, the state of Texas accused Max Soffar of killing 4 youths at a bowling alley. He even told the police he robbed the alley the night before. The police later found out that he never robbed the alley at all, he didn’t even try to break in. He was then declared “mentally ill”. He then went on trial with a lawyer who was famously known for sleeping through cases. In the trial, the bowling alley showed a message that they received from a man saying he was going to come and kill at the bowling alley, and that the bowling alley personnel should “Watch their backs”. Even with the evidence, Max Soffar still remains on death row to this day. The case of Texas v. Soffar really shows just how distorted and insane the death penalty is and why it should be stopped. One other thing that is wrong about the death penalty is the taxes. Did you know that it costs more to keep a person in prison for life than to execute him/her. A lot of people don’t know this and continue to think that it costs more to keep a person in prison their entire life. Another thing that is unfair about the death penalty is the random “what if” statements the prosecutors make that are just plain crazy. That is called Junk Science. Junk Science includes the prosecutors telling the jury that the defendant will “pose a future danger” and “cannot be trusted in the outside world”. This tactic is used all of the time and actually works a lot of the time which is just completely insane. One other thing that is unfair about Capital Punishment is the lawyers that are given to poor defendants. Most lawyers that are given to defendants that can't pay for a lawyer are inexperienced and most of the time lose against the experienced prosecutor. One last thing that is completely unfair about the death penalty is racist courts. Almost every single prosecutor is white which speaks volumes. 86% of people on death row in Philadelphia are African-American, and 96% of reviews on the death penalty found a pattern with the race of the defendant on death row. Those are only a couple of the things that make Capital Punishment horrible and insane to ever even think of doing.

Moving on, you will now see the types of people that get put on death row and how crazy it is. Back in medieval times, witches and heretics were commonly executed. It was completely random, considering there were no such things as witches. If someone in power wanted another person dead, then he/she could call the other a witch and have them killed by burning them at the stake. Even now we put children on death row or adults for crimes they did when they were a kid. Is there a difference between killing people for being witches or killing kids. No, there isn’t. Capital Punishment is just as brutal now as it was then. Yes, what I said was true, adults are being executed for crimes they did when they were a kid. In fact, 1 in 50 people on death row are there for crimes they did when they were a kid. This actually violates the IHRL, International Human Rights Law. Lets say there are 2,000 people on death row; 6 of those 2,000 people are there for their crimes when they were a kid and innocent, meaning they never did those crimes, at the same time! That is absolutely insane and is mind boggling to think of. Another unfair thing about the types of people that get put on death row is genders. Yes, both men and women get put on death row, but did you know that only 48 women have been executed since 1964 and 1,176 men have been executed since 1976. Another group of people that get put on death row are the mentally ill. But, there is a law prohibiting the mentally ill from getting executed, how could there be mentally ill on death row? Well, first let's describe “mentally ill” or “mentally insane”. Anyone who is mentally ill, relating to a death penalty trial, is someone who is so insane that they didn’t understand what they did or what their punishment is. This is really easy to fake though, but the courts have created tests to see if a person is really mentally ill. Are those tests completely reliable? No. That is why we can’t really know if a person can get away from the death penalty by pretending if they’re mentally ill or if they really are mentally insane.
To conclude, now you can see just how unorganized and ill hearted Capital Punishment really is. From its painful history, to the madness of modern times the death penalty has been stealing lives for thousands of years. The racist courts, the inexperienced lawyers, the Junk Science. It all must come to an end. Over 91 countries have banned the death penalty and 16 states have come to their wits and banned the death penalty. Capital Punishment is plagued with biased and racist juries and punishes the poor by giving them no chance at all to escape death. The death penalty doesn’t deter any crime whatsoever and costs a ton of money just to execute one person. The death penalty has executed over 15,000 people since colonial times and 1 in 7 of those people were innocent. Yes, I hope you all agree, Capital Punishment is Just Plain Wrong.