There have always been instances of opposition to the death penalty, usually regarding the use of execution to punish a particular person or specific criminal act. Widespread opposition to the death penalty as an overarching moral stance appears to have its roots in The Enlightenment and The Age of Reason, when the question of inherent human rights first gained popularity. Today, opponents have concerns that using the death penalty reduces the apparent value of human life throughout any society that implements it. When life appears to have little value, people are more likely to harm or commit crimes against other people. Historical evidence for this argument can be traced back to the aforementioned small community implementations of the death penalty, where community members would not usually use this against one another but only on outsiders that threatened them, because the life of an outsider would not be as valuable as the life of someone from within the same community. According to Steven Hawkins, the director of the Coalition Against the Death Penalty, says that "capital punishment devalues human life," (Liebson 2003) and therefore crime will be increased rather than reduced by using the death penalty because criminals will not hesitate to kill other people in this society where lives are essentially worthless. This phenomenon may be referred to as the brutalizing effect or brutalizing hypothesis; the argument is that the death penalty has a coarsening effect on society as a whole, and specifically upon the officials and jurors that are directly involved in the criminal justice system that executes people. "It sends out a message that it is acceptable to kill in some circumstances or due to the societal disregard for the 'sanctity of life'....Individuals often state that their actions should be classed as 'justifiable homicide' because, like the state, they feel their action was appropriate." (Wikipedia 2006b) Since there is usually no way for jurors or judges to determine with absolute certainty that an individual is guilty of a crime exactly as the prosecutor has portrayed it, people are sentenced to death because it seems most likely that they deserve it, however on appeal and later investigation many people are actually found to be innocent of the crimes for which they were originally set to be executed.

The fact that implementation of the death penalty does not deter people from committing crimes in the first place is an argument that stands on its own in the anti-death-penalty community. Part of the reasoning behind this argument is that most people who believe they will get caught for a crime they commit will not do it in the first place. If the potential criminal believes in his or her cause strongly enough to risk, for example, certain imprisonment or police brutality, then having the death penalty on the table is not likely to be a greatly influencing factor. Most people who commit crimes believe they will get away with it, or are caught up

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Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)