First and foremost, capital punishment is infair because it shows discrimination. Accfording to Gunnar Mydral, between 1930 and 1990; 4,016 people were executed in the United States. Of those people, 53% of them were black. He states that, ” The South makes the widest application of the death penalty, and Negro criminals come in much more than their share of the executions.” The courts discriminate against blacks and the death penalty allows courts to take the lives of African-Americans. This evidence shows that discrimination plays an important role in these deaths. In addition, the nation’s death row have always had a disproportionatly large population of African Americans. It is revealed that capital punishment is not justifiable because it shows descrimination.

        For my second contention, the death penalty fails to act as a detterent. Acording to “American Civil Liberty’s Union”, there is no credible evidence that the death penalty detteres crimes more effectively tham long terms of imprisonment. Additionaly, states that have the death penalty laws do not have a lower crome rate than te states without those laws. In fact, the death penalty might insight more violence because it would create a cycle of crimes and deaths. To kill the person who has killed someone close to you is simply to continue the cycle of violence. This ultimately destroys the avenger as well as the offender.

        For my last contention, death is an irrivocable punishment, thus it can not be taken back. Since the reenstatment of the modern death penalty, 87 peoply have been saved from death row because they were later proven innocent. This shows an error rate of one innocent person for every seven executed. According to our criminal justice system, it is better to have many guilty people free than to have one innocent killed and suffered.

        The death penalty is not justifiable because it is not infallable to mistakes; is we continue to use capital punishment, there is a great chance that innocent people will be killed. Thus, capital punishment is not justifiable.

In Paragraph 4 of Civil Disobedience by Henry Thoreau, he states that majority has no meaning and we should use our conscience to make decisions. However, this is not appropriate, because: first, everyone has a different conscience, our conscience may not always be right, and majority does, in fact, represent society’s desicion.

First of all, out conscience does not lead to one unanimous decision, and cause disorder. Not everyone believes in the same morals and ideas, people think in different ways and  develop different values. This causes disorder because if everyone has a different opinion on a subject or question, we will not be able to make a decision as a society. For instance, if we use our conscience to decide how to punish a criminal, it will turn into disorder and chaos. Some might want to let him go and not punish him while others may want to give him the death sentence. These two opinions are the exact opposite, and shows how using our conscience never leads to one vote as a society.

Next, our conscience may not always be right. We are all humans, and humans are not perfect. Therefore, it can be said that we are not perfect and that we have many flaws in our judgment. If we use our conscience to vote and decide for everything, we will not make the right decisions. This can be seen in our everyday lives; people make mistakes (which are caused by their conscious thoughts) everyday. whether it is minor mistakes or important decisions,  it can be seen that our judgment is not always correct in the decisions we make.

Finally, majority does represent the decision of society. Majority shows what society wants, as well as what the people think. In addition, using majority is much better than using conscience because it helps lead to making the right decision. when we use majority, people can discuss their thoughts on decisions and share their ideas; by sharing and discussiing ideas, people are able to think at a broader range and understand others much easily. all of these things contribute to making the right decision for society.

Ultimately, it can be said that Henry David Thoreau was incorrect in stating that majority is nothing, and that we should use our conscience to make decisions for us.