Death Penalty In Australia Essay

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Capital Punishment was originally used to describe death by decapitation but more recently now applies to any execution that is authorised by the state. More than two thirds of the world’s countries have now abolished the death penalty. America is not one of those countries. Cody 2011 argues that this is an important issue of fairness and about the role of America as a moral leader in today’s society. Cody’s (2011) argument is that of error in relation to sentencing people to death row. He states that 75% of death row prisoners who were sent back for a retrial were found to have a sentence less than death and 7% were acquitted all together. Since 1976, of the 6000 people sent to death row, 80 of them have been cleared of any charges and 12 innocent people have been executed, on record in America. He also argues that America needs to join the majority of progressive and advanced nations and call for the elimination of the death penalty. Australia is one of these progressive countries that abolished capital punishment in 1973 and more recently amended the law which blocks any state or territory attempting to reinstate it (Lennan &Williams 2012). Since 1973 Australia has taken several steps to reinforce its opposition to the death penalty both domestically and internationally. Keirn & Henderson (2011) state that Australia has an international…show more content…
Amnesty International (2010) believes that the death penalty legalises an irreversible act of Violence by the state “While the death penalty runs the risk of irrevocable error it has not been proven to have any special deterrent effect. It denies the possibility of rehabilitation. It promotes simplistic responses to complex human problems, rather than pursuing constructive solutions…. It is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. It is an affront to human dignity” (Amnesty International

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