Is the Death Penalty Right or Wrong?

“For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. ” This was a quote from Albert Camus; he is questioning the death penalty, by declaring that crime rates haven’t decreased. The death penalty is a court sentence of death by execution. To many, the death penalty is right because it protects people from harm. To take one’s life as capital punishment is wrong, we, America should seek new disciplinary actions to stop crime.

When a person is put on death row, mostly likely nobody exactly knows if the person actually did the crime, evidence shows many things but doesn’t accurately confirm if somebody did something. It isn’t right to kill someone and not know exactly if that person did the crime. According to the Death Penalty Information Center website since the year of 1973, 139 people in 26 states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence.

Also, of the 5,500 inmates currently on death row, at least 14 percent are believed to be innocent, according to the statistics provided by the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D. C. These two statements prove that people, who are put on death row, aren’t always the doers of the crime. Your life is basically over when your put on death row, to be on death row for a crime you didn’t even commit must be terrible.

Various statistics show that the defendant’s income level has lots to do with either a person is put on death row. “Death sentences are imposed in a criminal justice system that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent,” Bryan Stevenson explains. When you are getting treated better than another person, you are more likely going to get the better side in everything, so no death penalty for you, while the other person, who is poor and innocent, is getting the death penalty.

To Helen Prejean, she believes that the poor are selected to die in this country and also that, money gets you good defense, which is why you’ll never see an O. J Simpson on death row. Helen is right, to me, because if you have money in this world you can practically buy almost everything, including a well respected lawyer. With the right resources a guilty man can be put off death row and into prison for maybe a few years unlike, an innocent man who doesn’t have the right resources, be put onto death row.