If it was only political leaders that failed to see the damage their biases and self-centeredness was causing, it is possible that not nearly as many convicts would be facing the horrors of death row in America today. The problem is that within our justice system today, discrimination and prejudices continue to destroy many lives. Although in our modern society of perceived acceptance and toleration, people want to believe discrimination is a problem of the past, this is sadly not the situation. Subtle, but potent prejudices towards race and social class continue to plague and disease the upholding of justice in our society today.
Although statistics can be manipulated to serve a personal agenda, the issue of racial discrimination should not …show more content…
While many criminals who were punished through the use of the death penalty were indeed guilty, the reality is that many more were innocent but charged as guilty due to intentional or unintentional errors from crime scene witnesses, police, or court systems. Sadly, after death has taken place, the case is often closed, making it impossible to say how many innocent people are killed every year at the hands of our justice system. As in the case of Troy Davis (mentioned earlier), many inmates plead their innocence until the minute they die. The unspeakable horror of facing decades of cruel abuse and eventual death as an innocent man can hardly be imagined. Would it not be better to error on the side of caution and free a guilty criminal rather than mercilessly torture and kill an innocent man? Although John Stuart Mills was arguing in support of capital punishment to the British Parliament in 1869, he still declared these timeless and thought-provoking words: “There is one argument against capital punishment, even in extreme cases, which I cannot deny to have weight. . . . It is this-- that if by an error of justice an innocent person is put to death, the mistake can never be corrected” (qtd. in Hanks