Persuasive Essay On The Death Penalty

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The death penalty is an outdated, costly, discriminating, form of punishment that should be abolished in all states throughout the U.S. Currently, the death penalty is legal in 34 U.S. states. Among those besides the common and heavily expensive lethal injection for killing, states Arizona, Missouri and Wyoming allow gas-chamber executions. Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington state still allow inmates to choose hanging as well as lethal injection. This just shows the barbaric practice of the death penalty and how outdated it is. Besides the discrimination made towards people in cases because of their class or color. Mental health patients are also greatly at risk here in the U.S. Since 1973, 150 people punished with the death penalty were …show more content…

after just a two hour trail with the only real evidence been his “confession.” Stinney was convicted for killing two young white girls because he and his sister and it appeared to be the last person the girls saw. Once the girls were found dead in a ditch they arrested Stinney just a couple hours later. He was interrogated by several white officers in a locked room with no witnesses aside from the officers and within an hour, a deputy announced that Stinney had confessed to the crime. White witnesses suddenly arose testifying to Stinney’s bad character, Stinner’s sister said she was with him that afternoon still after the girls left them but it still did not matter to the police. An all white jury deliberated after the short trail and in 10 minutes sentences Stinney to be executed in the electric chair. In later years the beam discovered that the girls had been killed with weighed over 20 pounds making Stinney unable to left the beam and even if he could he couldn’t swing it hard enough to kill the girls, let alone drag each of their bodies into a ditch. However, the courts don’t see anything wrong with …show more content…

A witness thought it was DeLuna however because he was at the seen and he looks the same. The police knew the whereabouts of another, more likely, suspect. But they didn 't tell the defense this before or after the trial. When the defendant identified the likely killer shortly before trial, the police and prosecutors did not reasonably follow up even though they knew that the man identified was capable of committing the crime. DeLuna was killed and later was exonerated after Hernandez was identified, once he killed again. With mental health and the death penalty is an even more pressing topic because these accused are unfit to be held for their actions and if declared mentally ill are not aware of what they are doing. One of ten people that are killed with capital punishment are deemed mentally

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