Photo taken by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty from a protest in New Hampshire.
The death penalty, or rather capital punishment, is legal in 31 U.S. states.
The types of capital punishment involve electrocution, lethal gas, firing squad, hanging, and, the most common, lethal injection. Netflix has been making this issue more widely known, with the release of shows such as Life and Death Row, Making a Murderer and The Confession Tapes. Shows like these make people fascinated with murder, as odd as that might sound, and uses the lives of people as their selling point.
Life and Death Row includes chilling stories of kids no older than 16 being sentenced to death. During all these episodes, viewers get a glimpse of the people protesting the death penalty.
Is the death penalty a form of revenge or is it actually social justice?
It all comes down to questions: What gives someone the right to decide the fate of another person’s life? Should a civilian’s job ever have to entail going to work and lethally injecting another person?
The death penalty does not acknowledge that people are capable of change, and by putting them on death row, they are denied the chance to ever rejoin society. Although rare, innocent people have been killed after being convicted of a crime they did not commit. And there’s the cost of the death penalty. It is extremely expensive, with the high cost of trials, appeals and high security providedon death row.
What the death penalty tells people is that they are beyond redemption. The death penalty is uncivilized. Most civilized countries have banned the death penalty banned, while places such as North Korea and Saudi Arabia, which have a more dictatorial government, continue on with capital punishment.
If the death penalty was supposed to make people afraid to commit more violent crimes, then why isn’t it working?
The United States is the only Western country that still continues to use capital punishment. Honestly, why?
