Police officers are supposed to protect people. Lawyers are supposed to reveal the truth. Our criminal justice system is supposed to uphold justice and peace in our society. However, in reality, we often see the opposite--police interrogations so aggressive that the truly innocent believe they are guilty and lawyers so corrupt that they weave lies out of the truth. We must not let a system made up of imperfect and corrupt human beings decide who lives and who dies. Therefore, we must abolish the death penalty.
We see aspects of our broken "justice" system in the documentary play The Exonerated by Eric Jensen and Jessica Blank. Robert, a poor black man from the South, was accused and convicted of raping and killing his ex-girlfriend, a young white woman. When the cops found the victim, she had a piece of long red hair in her hand, the hair of the true criminal. However, in court the prosecutor insisted that the murderer was Robert, a black man with short black hair. The prosecutor misrepresented the evidence by saying that the victim pulled her own hair in her distress, which is utterly illogical. When she is being attacked, why would the victim pull her own hair? Robert posed this question to the prosecutor, and, not surprisingly, the prosecutor conveniently ignored it. Unfortunately, the jury did too, and Robert was sentenced to death. Seven years later, another lawyer takes on Robert's case and proves his innocence by matching the red hair with the true murderer.
Even though the justice system and the world ignored the truth, at least Robert had peace of mind knowing he was innocent. Gary, on the other hand, did not. After he found his parents murdered, the police brainwashed Gary into believing he killed them. Instead of allowing Gary the time to grieve the loss of his parents, the police immediately called Gary in for questioning and interrogated him all night long. They lied to him saying they had all the evidence they needed to convict him.
