Death Penalty

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Death by execution has existed as a punishment since the dawn of time. Yet although this has existed seemingly forever, the question of its morality has also existed for that same amount of time. Killers kill innocent people, there is no question about that, but does that give us the right to kill these killers? I do not think so.

Racism is often the driving force behind crime. Yet in a justice system that preaches equality, it too is led by racism. There is “a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty” according to a 1990 U.S. Government report. An overwhelming majority of death row defendants since 1977 were executed for killing whites despite the fact that whites and blacks are victims of murder in approximately equal numbers. In Texas, for example, blacks found guilty of killing whites were found to be six times more likely to receive the death penalty that whites convicted of killing whites. Of the 3,061 inmates on death row 1,246 of them are black, making 40% of death row inmates black. Compare this to the fact that blacks make up 12% of the U.S. population. Furthermore, many black prisoners on death row were sentenced to death by all-white juries after prosecutors had deliberately excluded black people from the jury pool.

Racism alone is not the only problem with Capital Punishment. Many inmates on death ...

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