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The Death Penalty in Practice…
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The death penalty is applied selectively. It is imposed disproportionately on the poor, racial minorities, social and political minorities and on the political prisoners.
Even if the effects of racial discrimination or economic inequality could be eliminated, other possible sources of error and inconsistency would remain in any criminal justice system devised and administered by fallible human beings. Arbitrary decisions that deprive people of their liberty are unacceptable and should be corrected. Arbitrary decisions which deprive people of life are intolerable and without remedy.
One of the most compelling reasons for abolishing the death penalty is the risk of executing the innocent. A study published in 1987 concluded that 23 innocent people are known to have been executed in the USA alone this century.
It is impossible to determine the exact number of innocent people who have been put to death. Judicial reviews or investigations of cases rarely occur once a prisoner has died. What is certain is that abolition is the only way to ensure that such mistakes do not occur.
Cases in which incompetence, corruption and duress led to innocent people being sentenced to death have recently been exposed by news investigators had extracted a confession from him during night-time interrogations and beaten his 15-year-old brother to obtain corroborative evidence. When the real culprit emerged, some years later, they suppressed the information to conceal what they had done.
A similar case was brought to light in the Belorussian Republic with the execution, in 1988, of Gennady Mikhasevich on charges of multiple murder, rape and robbery. The case received wide public attention because 14 people had already been convicted of these crimes, one of whom had been executed. And abolishing the death penalty is the only way to ensure that innocent people are not executed.
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