Campaign to End the Death Penalty

The death penalty is impractical, inhumane, and needs to be stopped.





Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty


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1. Execution is a violation of the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.





2. It is a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, whether by the hangman's rope (most common method), the firing squad (China, Nigeria, and Iraq), poison gas (USA), lethal injection (USA), the executioner's sword (Saudi Arabia), stoning (Iran, Afghanistan) or the electric chair (USA).





3. Capital punishment does not deter crime. Studies by the UN show the death penalty does not stop crime any better than other punishments. Criminals do not usually take the punishment into account when they commit a crime; they only think about how likely it is that theyll be caught.





4. Courts can make mistakes and innocent people can be killed. In the USA a 1987 study showed that 350 innocent people had been condemned to death since 1900 and 23 of them were executed.





5. Poor people, black people and people who haven't got a good lawyer end upon death row far more often than white people & people who can afford expensive lawyers to defend them. Therefore, the system discriminates on the basis of race & wealth.





6. The idea of dying for their cause may actually encourage some terrorists to carry out attacks.





7. Public opinion does not simply call for the death penalty, but wants effective protection against crime. When people are told that the death penalty is not effective in preventing crime, they instead call for other measures such as life in prison.





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In signing below, we agree that the world needs alternate, non-violent solutions to the death penalty for the violent problems that exist in today's society.