As the 21st century begins, Americans are bombarded with the growing report of murders, violent crimes, especially the recent attacks of terrorists all over the country. The society has created many punishments to discourage such crimes and damages, furthermore, to ask the murderers to pay back what they have done. Since the society has the highest interest in preventing murder, it should use the strongest and most severe punishment available to deter murder, and that is no other than the death penalty, which has existed for thousands of years. The death penalty is considered as the legal infliction of death for violating criminal law, the right of taking a human's life is a serious problem, so the issue has continually created tension and debates in today society. Whenever the word "death penalty" comes up, extremists from both sides start yelling out their arguments. One side says deterrence, the other side says there is a potential of executing the innocents, one says justice, retribution and punishment, the other says execution is murder. Crime is an evident part of society, and everyone is aware that something must be done about it. But does the death penalty achieve its objectives and maintain fairness? To my opinion, there are two main reasons that the death penalty must not be used.
First, the death penalty is not the best protection from a murderer. In other words, it doesn't serve as a deterrent to criminal behavior as people used to think. Scientific studies of deterrent effect of the death penalty have been conducted for several years, with varying results. Most of these studies have failed to produce evidence that it deterred murders more effectively than the threat of imprisonment. There are 38 states in the US that have the death penalty as the punishment while the other 12 do not. When comparisons are made between states with the death penalty and states without, the majority of death penalty states show murder rates consistently higher than non-death penalty states ( from 48% to 101%).
