Death Penalty Be Mandatory for

¶ … death penalty be mandatory for people that kill other people? There has been much debate on the legitimacy of the death penalty throughout the world. It has been considered to be the most cruel and inhumane penalty established by the legal system. However, at the same time, in some cases it has been viewed as the legitimate ultimate penalty applied to an individual who has committed a crime against another individual. The debate is rather heated.

Still, the right to life is given, according to religious creeds, by a superior force. There are several arguments to be taken into account. Firstly, it is very difficult, if not impossible to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, the guilt of an individual. There are many cases in which people were convicted for particular crimes and were found years after to be innocent. Although they had been given the death sentence, their eventual release from prison proved that the death penalty would have been a wrong doing.

More precisely, one particular case points out the way in which the system can commit important mistakes and decisively affect the lives of innocent people. The case of Kerry Max Cook who was convicted for having killed a woman in 1978 was eventually released from prison after several Supreme Court appeals and after having been discovered that the prosecutors had hidden important evidence for the case (Babineck, 1997).

This comes to point out the fact that justice errors can at any time take place, regardless of the system which makes them or tolerates them. However, the death penalty represents a ruling which cannot be reversed and the risk of eventually taking the life of a potential innocent human being represents an immense one. Secondly, when discussing the death penalty there is also the matter of human rights. From this point-of-view, the right to life of every individual is sine qua non.

It is not similar to civil rights or political rights which can be taken away. Even more, the right to life must be at all times protected because it stands at the base of human existence on the planet. The state, and in this case the judicial system cannot be responsible for deciding on this right. From this point-of-view, "the death penalty is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state.

The state can exercise no greater power over a person than that of deliberately depriving him or her of life" (Amnesty International, 2007). Given the two elements mentioned above, it is important to underline that the maintenance of the death penalty even for cases where crimes against other people have been committed is not justified. This is particularly because the state, in its essence, is not without flaws.

At the same time, taking into account the legal system in the U.S., based on the ruling of the 12 jurors, the life of the accused lies solely in the hands of those jurors. It is well-known that for every case and trial, the jurors are handpicked to support one or another party's case. Even if their impartiality should not be questioned, it is rarely the situation in which the jurors are completely unpartial.

Therefore, it is very important to underline the fact that no man should decide on the right of a human being to life or to.