Capital Punishment Should Be A

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to death, 490 people have been executed while 76 have been freed from Death Row. This calculates into one innocent person being released from Death Row for every six individuals that were executed. This figure correlates with the 1996 U.S. Department of Justice report that indicates that over a 7-year period, beginning in 1989, when DNA evidence in various cases was tested, 26% of primary suspects were exonerated. This has led some to conclude that a similar percentage of inmates presently serving time behind bars may have been wrongly convicted prior to the advent of forensic DNA typing. Whitehead 2 Amnesty International, in its 1998 report "Fatal Flaws: Innocence and the Death Penalty", supports the American Bar Association's call for a death penalty moratorium. Michelle Stevens, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, reported that in 1998 Illinois State Representative Coy Pugh (D-Chicago) introduced a resolution calling for a bi-partisan panel to study the death penalty in ...

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to than the individuals who walk the thin blue line- law enforcement officials may be better equipped to address this subject. Time magazine reports that 67% of polled police chiefs also did not believe that the death penalty deters [crime such as] homicide. According to a 1994 Government Accounting Office report (GAO) substantial evidence indicates that courts have been unfair in death sentencing. The 1990 GAO report, summarizing numerous capital punishment studies, confirmed "a consistent pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty." The GAO also revealed that those who murdered whites were more likely to be ...

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