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Does anyone truly deserve to die? No matter what their actions were, do they deserve this fragile thing called life snatched away from them? No, they do not. Whether you are the law or not nobody should be given the authority to kill another person. So many people die each day for reasons which are beyond our control, cancer, car accidents, natural disasters, etc. It is a shame to allow more deaths when it is right under our fingertips, when we have full control over it. Killing a human being has no right or wrong. It is just wrong. The death penalty is useless, hypocritical and immoral and should be abolished. People believe that no innocent man is likely to be executed due to the extensive period of time it takes for the death penalty to come in effect. The death penalty puts a life at risk, no matter how long the process takes and that is a chance we cannot take. It is gambling away someones life, hoping that the decision that was made was the right one. We cannot afford to shoot first and ask questions later because there will not be a later. Mistakes happen but this is not just a little glitch at work, it is someones life being taken away and there is no way of fixing that. It has been proven that some of these poor souls did not commit the crimes of which they have been sentenced to death for (Rozen 2). The governor of Illinois, George Ryan commuted the death sentence to 167 inmates in June of 2003. Three years later it was discovered that 13 of the accused were wrongly convicted; thirteen people whose families have lost them forever, thirteen lives taken because of one mistake (Wilson 1). It is unforgivable to make an error this grave when involving a human beings life. Psychologically, the death penalty does not prevent people from committing crimes. It has been said that the death penalty is a tool used more as a threat, scaring people into doing the right thing which leads to lower homicide rates. This fact has been proven in being anything but true. Between the years 2010 and 2011, states with the death penalty have had an 18 to 25%

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higher homicide rate than states without it. The death penalty results in more homicides and crimes than it deters. The death penalty is supposedly used as an example of what would happen if you performed such vicious acts. Executing convicts does not positively affect the number of crimes in the state, therefor losing its entire purpose. If the penalty does not reduce but in fact raises the number of homicides, the punishment of death is endangering the society, not protecting it. The Death Penalty has executed 1,270 prisoners from 1976 to 2011 (Kern, 1). More than a thousand people killed in the hands of the court in less than 40 years. People may argue that the death penalty is a form of punishment and revenge toward the accused. Punishment is given as a lesson, to make people realize their actions were wrong. How will that be accomplished if they are dead? The Death Penalty ends a life instead of changing it around and does not change the tragedy which has occurred. An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. So many people seek revenge in this world, it is human instinct but revenge is not the answer. The U.S justice system is not based on revenge, It serves more as noble ends; punishment, restitution and protection of the rest of society. Those ends are served as well by life without parole as they are by the death penalty (Hopkins 1). If the accused gets killed, the victims family can finally sleep peacefully right? Wrong. Killing the accused will not bring the victim back; it will not erase the horrifying tragedy which was experienced. Instead, it will just be the cause of another life being swept of the face the Earth. The death of another man should not give us any type of closure or satisfaction. So many people are murdered and tortured each day. We think to ourselves, who in their right mind would proceed with a stunt like this? The person responsible for such misfortunes is usually considered as cold, heartless, a monster. Why, because they had committed a crime

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which was immoral and unethical in the eyes of the community. And what do we as a society do to make things better? We shed more blood proving that we are no better than the killer himself. By going forth with the death penalty we are just as cold, heartless, and unethical. Is this really what we want, a cluster of lives spiraling downward, deeper and deeper to their ends?