Opposing the death penalty The death penalty is believed to be the ultimate punishment in extreme cases to bring one's actions to justice. When you ask the question, “Is something right?”, you are actually asking whether something is moral and/or the right thing to do. Justice is supposed to represent fairness, righteousness, impartiality, and/or impartiality; none of which apply to the legal system of capital punishment. The death penalty is immoral because innocent people have been and will be executed, it is racially and financially unjust, and it is a cruel and unusual form of punishment. For these reasons the death penalty is immoral and should be abolished. Since we are overall only human, we are prone to making mistakes. We are not perfect and we have many flaws. For this reason alone, errors in the death penalty system are inevitable. “No justice system can produce 100% certain results all the time.” (Szunski 185) Among the list of these errors in the death penalty system are identification errors, inaccurate laboratory tests, and prosecutorial misconduct. According to the United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Between 1960 and 1984, 4,050 people were reported to have been sentenced to death in state and federal prisons. In the same period, 228 people were executed (192 in the 1960s and 21 in 1984 alone). At the end of 1984, there were 1,405 people awaiting execution, by far the highest number in U.S. history.” by mistake, then at least one innocent life has been wrongfully taken, and at least twenty innocent men and women have wronged... half of the paper... move, breathe, while the potassium chloride burned through your veins.”(Szunski 202) This is torture and it is immoral. No human being should be allowed to be legally tortured to death. In conclusion, capital punishment has the potential to take away innocent individuals' autonomy and ultimately their lives. “The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in an April 9, 2007 website section titled “The Death Penalty: Questions and Answers,” offered the following: “[Capital punishment] is immoral in principle , and unfair and discriminatory in practical terms...No one deserves to die. When the government metes out vengeance disguised as justice, it becomes complicit with murderers in devaluing human life and human dignity.""("Is the death penalty immoral?", sec. 3) The death penalty is a cruel and unusual, and therefore unconstitutional and immoral and should be abolished.