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The Death Penalty Violates Human Rights
The government should not be allowed to take a human life for a crime that they committed; it is a violation of everyone’s human rights. For example, the right to life and the right to live free from torture is everyone’s right as a human being. The torture of waiting many years in solitary confinement with no contact with the world is inhumane. The death penalty can be considered racist, arbitrary, fallible, and inhumane to do to a human. I have read that the effect of the death penalty has never been proven. It’s clear that although the threat of the death penalty is there, criminals still commit murder and other horrible crimes. In the years 2007 to 2011 the United States executed 220 people. Of the 52 executed in the United States in 2009, the average length of time to wait was over 14 years. In that outcome they could become mentally ill and/or depressed.
I think the government should not take a human life away, and maybe give them a second chance at life, by giving them life in prison. One of the reasons is that the victim's family might want the criminal to be killed, but the people outside the victim's family, or the criminal’s family, might not want the criminal to be executed. I think the people on death row waiting to be killed should have the freedom to move around the prison because they know they are going to die, rather than sitting in a cell all alone.
Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin explains, “Our Wisconsin justice system has effectively dealt with violent offenders by severely punishing those convicted of violent crimes without ever executing an innocent man or woman. We must preserve this honorable Wisconsin tradition.” If the state of Wisconsin has found a way to abolish the death penalty, why can’t the rest of the country?
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