The Death Penalty - Why it Should Not Exist

Amnesty International calls it the “ultimate denial of human rights” but many believe that it is a powerful deterrent that stops people committing violent crimes such as murder.

This is simply not true, if the death penalty is such a good deterrent, why does a country, such as the USA (which has the death penalty), have a much higher homicide rate than other developed nations who do not have the death penalty.

This graph clearly illustrates just how significant the difference is, the United States has over four times the homicide rate of the UK, Germany, Australia and Canada. Considering that the US executed 43 people in 2011, criminals know that they can be executed. It is simply not the deterrent people think it is.

Yet I think one of the most important rebuttals of the death penalty is the chance of convicting innocent people. In the United States, of the 1,300 people executed, 142 have been exonerated since their execution (11% of the total). Considering how difficult it is to get someone exonerated and the fact that in the early years there was no DNA evidence or such, the true figure of innocent people executed must be higher. With this in mind there is no way the death penalty should exist as there is too high a chance of innocent people being executed.  

There are many people, like myself, that are opposed to the death penalty in principle, as well as practice. I simply believe that nobody, not a government, not a judge and not a jury can decide who lives and who dies. No matter what somebody has done, no matter what horrific crime they have committed, the death penalty should never be an option. Nobody has the right to control whether someone lives or dies. I believe that life is the most fundamental human right, it goes above and beyond everything else, and human rights are something that every human has, regardless of gender, race, religion or criminal conviction.

I thought it interesting to make up the following graph to show which type of countries typically use the death penalty. I used information from Freedom House, which categorises countries as free, partly free and not free. I then compared it to nations which use the death penalty. You can make your own conclusions!

*this excludes countries that have the death penalty but have not used
it in the past 10 years.