Wouldn't you feel guilty if you were responsible for the execution of an innocent person?

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Emma Finch

Wouldn’t you feel guilty if you were responsible for the execution of an innocent person? Every year, thousands of people from around the world are executed or sentenced to death after being convicted of murder. In 2003, there were over 80 executions in the USA. But all of these may have been innocent. Since 1973, 112 people have been let off death row in the USA after being cleared of the murder they were convicted of. All of these could have been killed, by millions of electric bolts shooting through their bodies, or a deadly mixture of poisons being injected into their blood stream. Then when they were found innocent, they could not have been released. If they had simply been imprisoned, they could have been freed, but once someone is dead, they cannot be brought back to life.

Many people say that a murderer has taken someone’s life, so their life should be taken too. But that just makes us as bad as them. They are being killed for murdering someone, so shouldn’t the Government be executed for killing them? It is a sinister cycle, a never-ending loop, which can only result in the execution of the entire world. Unless the death sentence is abolished completely, it will destroy society as we know it.

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Another reason why people are against the death sentence is because the alternative is a life sentence. However, life imprisonment doesn’t usually mean a lifetime in jail. So if someone is put in prison with a life sentence they could easily be released and then they could kill again. I agree with this point and believe that murderers should be put in prison for the rest of their lives. That way, they are never released and therefore never given the chance to kill again, but we do not have to go to the length of executing them.

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