Society has always used punishment to prevent criminals from committing illegitimate acts. Since society has the greatest interest in preventing murder, it should use the most severe punishment to deter murder, and that is the death penalty. If murderers are sentenced to death and executed, potential murderers will think twice before killing, for fear of losing their own lives. Human Rights Council, Biannual Roundtable on the Issue of the Death Penalty – Theme: Violations of Human Rights in the Application of the Death Penalty, particularly with regard to the right to non-discrimination and equality, 26 February 2019Conception Webcast Everyone agrees that crime is bad and that we must put an end to it. It seems reasonable and logical in all respects, until we ask the following question: Do we need the death penalty to fight “hard” against crime? The answer is no, not us. “The death penalty has no place in the 21st century.” These new empirical studies highlight a persistent pattern of racial differences that has occurred across the country over the past twenty years.39 Investigations into the relationship between race and death penalty, with different degrees of rigour and sophistication, have been conducted in each major case of the death penalty. In 96% of these assessments, there was a pattern of discrimination against the victims or the race of the accused, or both. Race is more a death sentence than smoking affects the likelihood of dying from heart disease. Since the early 1960s, although the majority of countries still use the death penalty, the authors of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) had already taken steps to abolish international law. This application of the death penalty has irrevocable consequences, excludes any correction of errors of law and excludes any possibility of modifying or rehabilitating convicts; Sentences that may be illegal under international law, such as the execution of young people, the mentally disabled and foreigners who have not been informed of their consular rights, are not excluded from the Convention on Torture.
The Convention on Torture also prohibits pain and suffering that are on the margins of legal punishment, such as solitary confinement on death row for years and unnecessarily inflicting pain through atrocious forms of gratuitous execution. Finally, the arbitrary and discriminatory application of any punishment is prohibited, both by the Convention on Race and by the Convention on Torture. To the extent that the death penalty is racially discriminatory, the United States is required to take corrective action to end the discrimination. Instead of legislating on the prevention of racial discrimination, the United States has extended the death penalty to new crimes and reduced opportunities and grounds of appeal. Such actions defy not only the spirit, but also the letter of these important international treaties. Another study by Professor Jeffrey Pokorak of the University of St. Mary`s Law School in Texas found that the top decision makers in deaths across the country are almost exclusively white men.