From the day you started crawling to the day you lay on your deathbed, you go through the typical stages of life that everyone and everything in the world faces. Everyone has only one life to live; a life to enjoy that they create as if it were their own. You can choose to be a good person who does good things in their life, or someone who does bad things and doesn't learn from their mistakes. Some people live exuberant lives and make all their dreams come true. Others, however, ruin their lives by committing heinous crimes that come with a high price. These people either get better or worse, but many people in this world do not appreciate the high price of this life when it comes to a punishment where someone is forced to pay with their life by execution. The topic of the death penalty is very controversial and is something that everyone should stop and think about when it is raised or heard. Many people are very opinionated on this particular topic and are either for it or completely against it. In my opinion I am absolutely against the death penalty. I am against capital punishment because this system of punishment has many flaws. To begin with, one of the reasons I am against the death penalty is because they wrongfully convict people of crimes who did not commit that crime. The purpose of prison is to punish those who have done wrong, and if the wrong person is punished, it is clear that the system is not working properly. According to the Chicago Tribune, faulty eyewitness testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment, 86 death row inmates across the country have been exonerated based on claims of innocence. According to a 2001 study by the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, in more than half of these cases the convictions depended at least in part on eyewitnesses. In 33 cases, eyewitness testimony was the only evidence used against the accused. This evidence clearly shows that innocent people are forced to face the death penalty in circumstances where they are purely innocent and could undoubtedly have lived their lives to the fullest. The memory of the face does not always mean that you will be right, and this is something much more serious when it comes to a witness who makes an unfair statement.