Why we need a national moratorium on the death penalty

In yet another astonishing case of how flawed the death penalty is, a man was cleared of all of the charges against him after spending 22 years on death row.

CNN reported that Paul House who was convicted of murder in 1985 and sentenced to death was recently exonerated after repeated doubts from the Supreme Court about his guilt and new DNA evidence was introduced.

What I want to make clear is that this is not a partisan issue. Being anti-death penalty doesn't mean you're soft on crime or that you don't believe in punishing criminals. What it does mean is that you understand that a human judicial system is run by humans who are liable to make a mistake every now and then. Nobody is perfect. That's all you have to admit and you'll easily understand that the death penalty is too flawed to fix.

Paul House was wrongly convicted by 12 honest people. Because people make mistakes. And with the advances in DNA technology, over 100 people have been exonerated and released from death row for crimes they didn't commit. Our tax dollars should be spent wisely, and murdering 100 innocent people would have been an abomination - a sin against justice, and ultimately, anti-American to the core.

But that's just in recent history. Who's to say how many innocent people have been murdered by our government in the name of justice?

Furthermore, if anything, life in prison is a much harsher sentence than death. In a way, the guilty are still condemned to die. The costly appeals process would be removed and taxpayers would save money. The guilty would be forced to contemplate their crimes, deprived of their freedom. And if evidence was introduced at a later date, innocent people could be freed. While it is unfortunate that House was robbed of 22 years of his life, at least he wasn't robbed of his life.

We are the only Western nation that still inflicts a barbaric, outdated system of false justice. Until recently, we were one of only three countries in the world that executed juveniles - Iran and the Democratic Republic of the Congo being the other two. That's terrific company to keep, no? Somalia and the United States are also the only two nations in the world that have refused to ratify the United Nation's Declaration on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits capital punishment for juveniles - Somalia because they don't have a central government, and the United States because of pressure from right-of-center "family" organizations against certain provisions in the Declaration.

If anything, though, House's case should serve as a prime example as to why we need a national moratorium on the death penalty. How many more innocent people have to die as we barbarically pursue justice? How many more innocent people have to be killed in our name before we realize that we're not infallible?