Do you know a man called Troy Davis? He was a convict in death row in America. He was accused of murder and got executed in 2011.The surprising fact that startled people all over the world was that there was no physical or concrete evidence indicating he was the murderer. The victim was shot, but no gun was found. By the logical reasoning the government is pursuing, he shouldn't have been accused from the first place. Nevertheless, only based on witnesses's testimony, he was found guilty and was sentenced to death because the state he was living adopted death penalty. 7 out of 9 witnesses confessed that they were forced to testify, however the confessions were too late. It was after Troy Davis's execution in 2011. Many people mourned for his death, for there was hope that a young possibly innocent man could have been found innocent and have lived if the state didn't adopt death penalty. His death threw a heavy question about the modern society's policy, death penalty. If he was an innocent man, he is a representative victim of this policy. Not only there are victims that are resulted by the mistakes made in the process of the penalty such as Troy Davis in this case, but adopting death penalty doesn't have enough advantages than not adopting it. Therefore, the death penalty is right to be and should be abolished.
Now, let's find out some general background information about the topic. Death penalty, also known as capital punishment, is a punishment that legally executes criminal whose crime regards lives of people. Currently 58 nations adopts capital punishment, 98 countries have abolished it , 7 have abolished it for only ordinary crimes, and 35 are not using it practically. We can consider most of the countries are abolitionist and surprisingly 90% of all executions are performed in Asia. According to death penalty information center, death penalty states have higher murder rates than non-death penalty states. Murder rates in non-death penalty states grows down more and more each year, faster than death penalty states so that the murder rate percent difference in two areas increase each year. As you can see, the background information shows that death penalty is an old-fashioned vice so that people should pursue not adopting it. If people ignore the following arguments of mine, it would lead to generation of more innocent victims of the system.
Death penalty should be abolished because its original purposes and anticipated results are inappropriate in modern society. Death Penalty's original goals, revenge and eliminating dissidents, are too ancient to be conducted nowadays. They were very significant goals that should be kept over the rights of people in ancient times. However, these days we know that revenge cannot help anyone related to the crime let alone the victims. This cannot help or solve anything. Also, in contemporary society, eliminating dissidents only exist in societies of dictators because we know that dissidents are meant to exist as long as people have their basic human right to think in the way they want to think. Therefore, death penalty is inappropriate for us to use in modern community.
Also, death penalty ignores people's rights. People's right is a very important social issue. For hundreds of years people had fought and earned their rights, but in the death penalty system, we ignore such rights just because they are the ones of criminals. They are the same humans as innocent people and thus should have equal rights as innocent people. It is inevitable to treat them differently from the innocent ones since they have committed crimes and I agree with the idea of punishing them in proper ways. However that doesn't mean we can throw away their rights in the name of law. We should also consider the rights of the physicians that work in the death penalty execution sites. When doctors become doctors, they make oath called the Hippocratic Oath which includes basic ethical foundation of doctors which is always working for the health of people. However, by making them perform the execution, we are forcing them to break the oath and possibly giving them unforgettable memory of guilt. That is violating the rights of the physicians. Whether they chose to work doesn't matter because some might be subtly forced by the things such as financial difficulties and needing of jobs. Considering these, we should abolish death penalty if we care for people's rights.
Anticipated opposing argument against my thesis is that the death penalty prevents crimes by making the would-be-criminals afraid of the punishment, which is death in this case, of their behaviors. This could be true if we consider the possible criminals that are only brave enough to commit crimes when their lives are guaranteed to be safe. However, according to the survey conducted by death penalty information center, as I mentioned before, the visible result is actually opposite of their argument; death penalty states have higher murder rates than non-death penalty states. Murder rates in non-death penalty states grows down each year and that reduction is faster than that of the death penalty states so the murder rate percent difference increased each year. This shows that the opponent to the abolishment of the death penalty has already failed to meet their anticipations and is keep insisting it irrationally hoping it would work someday.
We are living in a rational world. As humans evolved, they became intelligent and logical. We became able to know that logic, reason, and effects should be our goals in our lives in order to survive. However, there are still some things that cannot be explained rationally. Some of them are good enough to remain unreasonable such as love, sacrifice, and other emotions, but we cannot ignore the vices, the things that are just too old and too stiff to follow up the growth of the consciousness of people. Then what we should do to them is not letting them be. That is actually not different from blinding yourself while a man in front of you is in danger, calling for your help. If we let the death penalty exist, victims of this old-fashioned vice system will eventually come out. Victims such as Troy Davis will keep coming up. We should not let that happen. We should prevent that from happening while we can do so by abolishing irrational death penalty.
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