Issue 149

Waterfront Debate: Against the Death Penalty

20th November 2006

Amnesty International believes the death penalty is the "ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment" which violates the right to life, and can be inflicted on innocent people.

AI work to protect this right to life and are working towards an end of worldwide executions and their dream is to achieve abolition of the death penalty. AI is one of many members of a coalition of national and international human rights organizations, trade unions and local and regional authorities campaigning for this goal.

But despite efforts by this international organisation around the globe, the death penalty is still enacted in just under half the countries worldwide.

China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the USA were accountable for 94 percent of all executions in 2005 through beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection, shooting and stoning. In the modern, civilised world, how can we substantiate employing such barbaric methods?

Who are we to have the right to end human life? Quickly ending a convicted murderer's life through the death penalty is an easy way out of a complex problem. Remaining in this world locked away 'living' with the eternal damnation from the public, the extreme feelings of hate and of bitterness constantly gnawing away at you would be justice enough.

A life locked behind bars, with nothing but cell walls surrounding them for the rest of their days, is the life of loneliness which such a person would deserve. Encouraging base motives of revenge only succeeds in extending the chain of violence, making us no better than them. Also alarming is the fact that innocent people lose their lives through the death penalty.

According to Amnesty International, a total of 69 people in the US have been released from death row since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. These people were on a path to being killed innocently.

Race and other arbitrary factors, such as economics and geography are still very prevalent in this modern world and in many cases used as a determinant of who lives and who dies. Many of the people facing the death penalty can often only afford minimal defence. When a person's life is at risk, this is clearly unacceptable.

The Department of Justice released a study revealing that the federal death penalty has been disproportionately used against minorities, especially African Americans. According to the report, the death sentence was "applied in a geographically arbitrary way, with some states, like Virginia and Texas, accounting for a large share of death penalty prosecutions." Until such arbitrary factors are eliminated, the death penalty should not be considered.

The stance of a 'life for a life' puts reliance on the death penalty and actually obscures the true causes of crime, distracting attention from the social measures that can contribute to its control. The public are actually being deceived by politicians that are using the death penalty to 'rid' society of its problems as an attempt to mask their own failure in decreasing crime through the types of wider ranging, social measures that could actually reduce crime.

Emily Long