The death penalty in the United States is an inherently flawed punishment, wrought with class and racial biases.

It is a cruel and unusual punishment that does not act as a deterrent, costs more than a life sentence and, above all, is an abuse of human rights. There has never been a conclusive study that proves that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to crime.

The facts speak for themselves: “Consistent with previous years, the 2002 FBI Uniform Crime Report shows that the South repeatedly has the highest murder rate. The South accounts for over 80 percent of executions. The Northeast, which has less than one percent of all executions in the United States, again had the lowest murder rate.”

Not only do the numbers disprove theories of deterrence, but a 1995 Hart Research Poll of police chiefs in the U.S. found that the majority of the [police] chiefs do not believe that the death penalty is an effective law enforcement tool.

Many citizens who support the death penalty claim that executing their fellow citizens is cheaper than imprisoning criminals for life. The facts prove contrary.

“It is three times more costly to execute a prisoner than it is to keep them in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years,” according to The New Press. In Texas, “sending a killer to death row costs an average of $2.3 million,” reports the Dallas Morning News.

Because of the vast appeals process, capital punishment is quite cost ineffective. Despite the appeals process, capital punishment is faulty in nature, as it relies on the fallible nature of human beings. Room for human error is huge. According to The Nation, “Between 1973 and 1995, seven out of 10 death-penalty cases were thrown out on appeal due to flaws in the trial.”

Is this justice being served?

Countless studies have proven that the death penalty in the United States is riddled with bias – not only in class injustices, but also in racial injustices. The facts speak for themselves — Amnesty International reports that “95 percent of all people sentenced to death in the United States could not afford their own attorney.”

Not only do the poor suffer from our legal system, but minorities do as well. A recent study at the University of North Carolina has proven that the “odds of receiving a death sentence rose 3.5 times among those defendants whose victims were white.” Bias against the defendant as well cannot be hidden. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, “between 1995 and 2000, 75 percent of the federal cases in which juries recommended the death penalty involved black or Latino defendants.”

How can we call ourselves the “land of the free” with a straight face while remaining one of the only first world counties that still executes its citizens? How can we sleep at night knowing that our government executes mentally retarded people and children? Is it comforting to know that “the United States, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia account for over 80 percent of executions” according to Amnesty International?

We must end this vicious practice of capital punishment in the United States. Not only is human justice fallible, but when we kill our own citizens, we are only perpetuating the cycle of violent behavior. I encourage you to join the battle and abolish the death penalty.

Write to your congressional representative, discuss it with your friends or join groups that support human rights, such as the University of Denver’s chapter of Amnesty International. As Amnesty International says, “if we truly believe that killing is wrong, we must abolish the death penalty.”

More information on this matter can be found through the following Web sites: “The Death Penalty Information Center” (deathpenaltyinfo.org); “Coloradans Against the Death Penalty” (coadp.org); and “Amnesty International” (amnesty.org).

As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”