OPENING STATEMENT
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."Death is... an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and in its enormity... The fatal constitutional infirmity in the punishment of death is that it treats 'members of the human race as non humans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded.
There is no evidence that the death penalty is more effective than long term punishment. States that have the death penalty do not have lower crime rates than states without the death penalty. "Retribution is just another word for revenge, and the desire for revenge is one of the lowest human emotions. To kill the person who has killed someone close to you, is simply to continue the violence which destroys the avenger as well as the offender. Expressing one’s violence simply reinforces the desire to express it.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s own figures reveal that between 2001 and 2006, 48 percent of defendants in death penalty cases were African Americans. African Americans make up 13% of the us population, and yet 50% of death row inmates are African American. The biggest argument against the death penalty is that is incredibly biased. A study by Yale showed that African Americans are 3 times more likely to receive the death penalty that white defendants.
Since the reinstatement of the modern death penalty, 87 people have been freed from death row because they were later proven innocent. That is a demonstrated error rate of 1 innocent person for every 7 persons executed.
A study of the cost of the death penalty in Colorado revealed that capital proceedings required 6x more days in court than life without parole cases. This court time increase several strains available resources and clogs up the court system. The cost of the death