The death penalty is a controversial issue in America. Every time a murderer is executed, human rights and religious figures who oppose the death penalty will come out to protest. The European Union, which opposes the death penalty system, and some international human rights organizations also criticize the US federal government and 33 states for still retaining the death penalty.
American people's opposition to the death penalty reached its peak at 1966. At that time, 47% people in the United States opposed the death penalty, more than those who supported it (42% at that time). At that time, there were 1 1% people who "had no opinion" about it. At the same time, in the 1960s and 1960s, the proportion of Americans who supported the death penalty increased, and reached its peak in the 1960s and 1980s, when 80% of the people supported the death penalty.
After that, the movement against the death penalty intensified again. In the latest Gallup poll conducted on 20 1 1, 35% of Americans are against the death penalty. In addition, as a result of the death penalty referendum in California in 20 12, 53% people opposed a proposal that would lead to the abolition of the death penalty (Proposal No.34), while 47% people supported it.
The United States abolished the death penalty;
1948 When the United Nations adopted the Declaration of Human Rights, 14 countries abolished the death penalty. Today, 66 years later, 166 countries have abolished or suspended the death penalty.
But there are still 26 countries in the world that run counter to the global trend and are executing the death penalty. These countries have various reasons, but the United Nations insists that the death penalty violates the basic human right to life, which proves that its role in punishing crimes is not effective, and in the case of misjudgment, the consequences of the death penalty are irreversible. The last point is particularly illustrated by the experience of a famous American human rights activist, who was cleared of grievances on death row. Listen to A-Lin, a reporter from United Nations Radio.
On March 5th, at the high-level meeting of the Human Rights Council on the death penalty, there was an American NGO activist named Kirk Bloodworth. He was the first person in American history to pass DNA testing and avoid the death penalty.
When he was acquitted in 1993, he had spent eight years, ten months and 19 days in prison for a crime he didn't commit at all. If he is executed immediately, the consequences of this wrong judgment will never be recovered, and Kirk will not stand on the podium now, clamoring for the abolition of the death penalty.
Baidu Encyclopedia-American Death Penalty System