Abolish the Death Penalty

             The death penalty is a major issue that brings up a lot of arguments in our society.
             The most important question concerning the death penalty is whether it should be
             abolished or not. I think that the death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It
             violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is
             the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment. Race, social and economic status,
             location of crime, and pure chance may be deciding factors in death sentencing. In
             addition, prosecutors seek the death penalty far more frequently when the victim of the
             homicide is white than when the victim is black. The actual cost of an execution is
             substantially higher than the cost of imprisoning a person for life.
             Death was formerly the penalty for all felonies in English law. In practice the
             death penalty was never applied as widely as the law provided, as a variety of procedures
             were adopted to decrease the harshness of the law. Many offenders who committed
             capital crimes were pardoned, usually on condition that they agreed to be transported to
             what were then the American colonies; others were allowed what was known as benefit of
             clergy(Ploski 2). The beginning of benefit of clergy was that offenders who were
             established priests were subject to trial by the church courts rather than the non-religious
             courts. If the offender convicted of a felony could show that he had be ordained, he was
             allowed to go free, subject to the possibility of being punished by the ecclesiastical courts.
             In medieval times the only proof of ordination was literacy, and it became the custom by
             the 17th century to allow anyone convicted of a felony to escape the death sentence by
             In 18th-century England concern with rising crime led to many statutes either
             extending the number of offenses punishable with death or doing away with benefit of
             clergy for existing fel...

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