Valueofhumanlife

Everyone thinks human life is valuable. Some of those

against capital punishment believe that human life is so
valuable that even the worst murderers should not be
deprived of the value of their lives.
They believe that the value of the offender's life cannot be
destroyed by the offender's bad conduct - even if they
have killed someone.
Some abolitionists don't go that far. They say that life
should be preserved unless there is a very good reason
not to, and that the those who are in favour of capital
punishment are the ones who have to justify their position.
Right to live

Everyone has an inalienable human right to life, even

those who commit murder; sentencing a person to death
and executing them violates that right.
This is very similar to the 'value of life' argument, but
approached from the perspective of human rights.
The counter-argument is that a person can, by their
actions, forfeit human rights, and that murderers forfeit
their right to life.
Another example will make this clear - a person forfeits
their right to life if they start a murderous attack and the
only way the victim can save their own life is by killing the
attacker.
The most common and most cogent argument against
capital punishment is that sooner or later, innocent people
will get killed, because of mistakes or flaws in the justice
system.
Witnesses, (where they are part of the process),
prosecutors and jurors can all make mistakes. When this is
coupled with flaws in the system it is inevitable that

innocent people will be convicted of crimes. Where capital

punishment is used such mistakes cannot be put right.
The death penalty legitimizes an irreversible act of
violence by the state and will inevitably claim innocent
victims. As long as human justice remains fallible, the risk
of executing the innocent can never be eliminated
Amnesty International
Investigations conducted by Amnesty International show
ample evidence that such mistakes are possible: in the
USA, 130 people sentenced to death have been found
innocent since 1973 and released from death row. Source:
Amnesty
The average time on death row before these exonerations
was 11 years. Source: Death Penalty Information Center
Things were made worse in the USA when the Supreme
Court refused to hold explicitly that the execution of a
defendant in the face of significant evidence of innocence
would be unconstitutional [Herrera v. Collins, 560 U.S. 390
(1993)]. However many US lawyers believe that in practice
the court would not permit an execution in a case
demonstrating persuasive evidence of "actual innocence".
The continuous threat of execution makes the ordeal of
those wrongly convicted particularly horrible.
Statistics taken from an FBI Uniform Crime Report, from
the Death Penalty Information Center shows that the
death penalty leads to a brutalization of society and an
increase in murder rate. In the USA, more murders take
place in states where capital punishment is allowed. In
2010, the murder rate in states where the death penalty
has been abolished was 4.01 per cent per 100,000 people.
In states where the death penalty is used, the figure was
5.00 per cent. These calculations are based on figures
from the FBI. The gap between death penalty states and
non-death penalty states rose considerably from 4 per
cent difference in 1990 to 25 per cent in 2010.

Another problem is racial discrimination, in many

countries around the world especially those who have not
implemented a proper human rights system tend to have
death penalties most based on the race this is a significant
problem since even innocent civilians can be killed for a
matter as small as a shoplift.
Another major reason for the decline is that the death
penalty involves enormous expense and numerous
appeals; some prosecutors say they prefer life
imprisonment. The main reason is simply due to the fact
that a death penalty is simply unethical.
Nations realize that this is simply a death penalty a
unethical invalid solution therefore the number of death
penalties globally have decreased rapidly over the last
decade according to reports conducted by Amnesty
International.