Life is precious. While the world is filled with people of different races, social standings, languages, and culture, we all have one thing in common: life. The age-old mystery of what happens to you after you die confuses and scares many people, making murder the ultimate crime. Taking someone’s life robs the person of a future; a future of opportunities, happiness, and providing the world with importance. Due to this, while murderers are the worst kinds of humans, practicing the death penalty is equally wrong. The death penalty and the stages behind it, is a complex process that isn’t taken lightly. The death penalty should be abolished across all states due to the flaws in the justice system. These flaws include, race impacting sentencing, the failure of our legal and social systems, the potential innocence of inmates on death row, and how the abolition of the death penalty will reduce murder rates. 

 Historically, race has always been an issue within the united states. From slavery, to segregation, race has played a factor in our legal system. When it comes to the death penalty, race is still a prevalent issue, especially to jurors and sentencing. Many studies have proven that murderers of white victims have a higher chance of being sentenced to death, than murderers of black victims. In reverend Jesse Jacksons book, “Legal Lynching”, he provides research and statistics to prove the racial inequality. In Georgia, 79 percent of cases where the district attorney proposed the death penalty, the defendant was black. Similarly, in Dr. David Baldus’ research, it was found that in Georgia, those accused of murdering a white victim were 4.3 times more likely to receive the death penalty; than those accused of killing blacks. While race impacts the death penalty, it tends to not impact the defendant themselves. Jackson states, “Fewer than 40 percent of the homicide victims in Georgia are white, yet fully 87 percent of the cases resulting the death penalty involved white victims” (102). The numbers just don’t add up. The problem is not just in Georgia alone. Across the United States, while 50 percent of murder victims are African American, 85 percent of cases where the death penalty was proposed, the victims were white (Jackson, Jesse). 

Jurors and their pre-existing notions impact the sentencing of defendants in death penalty cases. After convicting a defendant for a case, jurors are asked to make a judgement to decide on the punishment. At this stage information is given, providing background on the victim such as, history of violence, home life, and poverty. This information is given in order to provide value to the victim’s life and the impact the crime has on the victim’s friends and family. From the victim evaluation, it shows that the murder of a more positively evaluated victim is seen as more serious than one of a less positively evaluated victim. A positively evaluated victim, is one where their background lacks poverty, violence, and a rough home life; the opposite of a negatively evaluated victim. Jurors tend to take the positively evaluated victim more serious, being that they relate to them more. Race impacts this stage due to the juror’s tendency to group the victim in an “in-group” or “out-group”. Jurors personal factors gives them the ability to relate to the victim, trying to decide whether their lives are similar, and providing empathy (Eldeman, Brian C.). The Capital Jury Project preformed a study where they conducted face-to-face interviews with 1,100 jurors form 14 states. The sample study featured 76 black-defendant/white-victim cases, and 63 black-defendant/black-victim cases. Within the 367 jurors, white jurors were found to empathize more with white, not black victims, and evaluated them more positively. Similarly, the defendants in white victim cases had a harder time convincing jurors to consider mitigating factors, than those who killed blacks. Due to bias and overwhelming statistics showing that race is an issue within the legal community, the death penalty should be abolished. When the scales tip so far to one side, there is a problem. We shouldn’t punish those up for trial by putting them to death, because jurors cannot process circumstances correctly and get rid of their bias. 

With the death penalty active, there are chances of executing those who are innocent. Innocence within the legal system is an umbrella with multiple factors that fall beneath it, not just not committing the crime. Some of these factors include, accidental killings, killing in self-defense, and those mentally ill committing crimes. In the case of Clifford Hallman, Hallman was sentenced to death after cutting Eleanor Groves neck during an attempted robbery. Hallman cut the victim during a fight, but didn’t intend on killing her, and after further medical examination, it was shown that Ms. Groves would have survived if she was given proper medical care. After this information was given Hallman’s sentence was changed from death, to life in prison, but without the case evaluation he would have been executed, posing the question of how many cases have circumstances not been considered? In the case of those mentally ill committed, in Alabama, Varnell Weeks was sentenced to death and killed by the electric chair. On May 13th 1995, the New York Times published an article, stating that Weeks was diagnosed as a “paranoid schizophrenic who believed he would come back to life as a giant flying tortoise that would rule the world”. During the trial, Weeks incompetent attorney never mentioned his insanity, resulting in his death (Radlet, Michael L.). Due to this, it is unknown how may mentally ill convicts wait on death row due to factors that weren’t presented during trial. While these factors contribute towards a dependence innocence, there are actual cases of those put-on death row who didn’t commit the crime. Since 1976, there has been more than one hundred people released from death row due to their innocence (Kirchmeier, Jeffrey). Being that more than one hundred people have been found innocent, there has to be cases where those who are innocent have been executed, and there are. Those who were proven to be wrongfully executed were, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs, and, in England, Derek Bentley. While innocent people have been executed, there is still a death penalty. The chances of someone being put on death row that doesn’t belong there should automatically show there are major flaws within our legal system, and changes need to be made. 

Legal systems are flawed. Persecutors and jurors make mistakes, and those circumstances can prove to be detrimental. David R. Dow has been a lawyer for over one hundred death penalty cases, and during his TED talk, “Lessons from Death Row Inmates”, he gives us an inside view on the death penalty process in Texas. There are four stages to a death row case. The first, the murder trial sentence and direct appeal, second, State habeas, third, federal habeas, and finally clemency commutation and return to court execution. When he started his profession over 20 years ago, death row defendants didn’t have access to lawyers during the second and fourth stages of the process. Until the 1980’s defendants didn’t even have the right to a lawyer in the third stage. This meant that defendants had to rely on volunteer lawyers who didn’t have the skills or interest to work on their cases. Due to this, there were significantly more defendants than lawyers, causing the lawyers to shift their focus to the fourth stage, being that it was the most serious and urgent. In Texas, there has never been a serious decline in executions, averaging around two per month. But over the years there has been in increase in sentencing to life without parole, and a decrease in sentencing to death. The reason for this is now lawyers are shifting their focus to the earlier stages of the death row cases, not only addressing the last one. Dow states that 80 percent of those on death row come from a broken past, and have been exposed to the juvenile justice system. Not only did the Texas legal system fail to properly support death penalty cases, they also fail to support their social system. In his speech he says there are five stages in which there are points of intervention where you can stop someone on the path to a death sentence. These stages include, prenatal infancy, early childhood, k-5, 6-12, and the juvenile justice system. The points where society could intervene, would be providing special schools for kids and teens that specialize in economically challenged individuals. Intervening more aggressively towards dangerous homes by taking out kids and providing them with a place to go. Two professors from Maryland and Yale created a school attached to a prison. The kids in the juvenile system attend a specially modified program to keep them educated and help them not reoffend in the future. The issue with our society and legal system today is, we are paying for the problem later not now. While we spend 80,000 dollars in crime related costs, we could be spending 18,000 on programs to keep kids out of the legal system for good (Dow, David R.).  

A main argument to keeping the death penalty alive and well, is that it provides an end result and threat for those daring enough to commit heinous crimes. In Adam Liptaks article he states, “For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented.” But in Rob Wardens more recent article, there are proven scenarios where the threat of the death penalty actually caused someone to murder. In 1963, Jimmy Lee Smith and Gregory Powell were stopped by two police officer’s due to their license plate light being out. Thinking fast, the men thought they were being arrested for multiple armed robberies they had committed in the past. Because of this, they kidnapped the officers. When they learned about why they had really been pulled over, they panicked. Thinking that kidnapping was a capital offense, the men murdered the two officers in order of “getting rid of witnesses”. As one cop was shot dead, the other escaped, leading to the conviction and execution of Powell and Smith. For fear of the extreme punishment, and the lack of understanding the law (which most Americans don’t), the men felt the pressure to murder the officers, so no one would live to tell the tail. The death penalty was looming over their shoulders, and that end result convinced them that murder was the only answer. The main argument of Liptaks article, is that without the death penalty there wouldn’t be a fear of murdering, and perpetrators wouldn’t be scared of the consequences. But there are studies that prove this theory wrong. States where the death penalty isn’t present, the murder rates are lower, and when there is a highly publicized execution, murder rates tend to rise in that area (Warden, Rob). If the death penalty doesn’t prevent murder, then what is it for. 

No one is perfect, and not one system is perfect either, but those who are in the hands of the law shouldn’t suffer due to our lacking legal, and social systems. Life is the greatest gift, and if we have racism within the court room, innocent people being executed, and kids being lead onto the streets and into jails, we, as a country have no right to take a life away. If those supporting the death penalty want to prevent murders, then why not invest money to prevent kids from getting to that point. While it is proven the death penalty doesn’t actually decrease the murder rate, it is shown that investing in low income neighborhoods and education; prevents kids from ending up in prison and getting to a point where the death penalty wouldn’t be needed. Instead of causing death we should be preventing it, by abolishing the death penalty, and looking into our country as a whole, and what we can fix there. 
