Use Of The Death Penalty In To Kill A Mockingbird

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Kill the Death Penalty, Not People Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that illustrates the cruelty of capital punishment. It takes place in the 1930’s and focuses on the case of Tom Robinson, a black man who is wrongly accused of beating and raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman. Tom Robinson’s lawyer, Atticus Finch, provides clear evidence of Tom’s innocence, yet the jury sentences Tom to the death penalty. The death penalty must be abolished because it is criminally ineffective and racially inequitable. Capital punishment is not effective in preventing future murders. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Mayella Ewell kisses Tom Robinson. This was socially unacceptable in 1930’s, and during the trial, Atticus says: She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. ... She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she…show more content…
In a survey of former and current presidents of the nation’s top academic criminological societies, 88% did not believe that the death penalty had a deterrent effect on murder rates (“Facts about the Death Penalty” 3). A clear majority of the country’s best criminological experts believes that executions have no effect on homicide rates. The 2013 FBI Uniform Crime Report showed that the South had the highest murder rate (5.3 per 100,000 people), yet it received over 80% of executions. The Northeast had less than 1% of executions, but it had the lowest murder rate (3.5 per 100,000 people) (“Facts about the Death Penalty” 3). Evidently, the death penalty has a minimal effect on homicide rates or the South’s homicide rate would be much lower. As the death penalty does not affect crime, it should be
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