Amnesty International-NIU presented reasons Wednesday for abolishing the death penalty, sparking an hour-long debate from the audience.

Through Debbie Heyward, area coordinator from the regional office in Chicago, AI-NIU’s views were introduced to more than 100 students in room 305 of the Holmes Student Center.

“The focus is on education of the death penalty and it is important that people in Illinois know the arguments against the death penalty,” Heyward said.

An active debate following her speech, however, provided opposing views to Amnesty’s ideology. Some AI-NIU members are not against the penalty, Heyward admitted.

“Where do you draw the line?” asked member Allyson Batts, who is undecided on the topic.

“Torture and execution are in no instances justified,” Heyward said, referring to the 2,100 people on death row in Illinois awaiting execution.

Heyward presented three main reasons people favor the penalty—deterrence, costs, and retribution—and offered Amnesty’s contrary views.

Heyward said the penalty is not an effective form of retribution because the punishment “has to be a real threat that the person will suffer the consequence.” Additionally, “most murders are done impulsively without forethought and the desire to carry out the act,” she said.

In attacking cost as an invalid argument against the penalty, Heyward said “confinement is much less expensive to taxpayers than execution.”

Spending money for death row criminals is “diverting money that can be used for other solutions instead of perpetuating violence,” Heyward said. When an audience member asked Heyward why Amnesty’s time is devoted to abolishing the penalty rather than rehabilitation and education, Heyward cited lack of time and funds as reasons.

“There is no monetary comparison to human life,” Heyward said. The death penalty “places a moral and financial burden on society.”

Heyward said retribution involves four areas demonstrating that “under any circumstance, taking a life is immoral.”

Heyward said the U.S. legal system and the use of execution discriminate against minorities.

“Seventy-five percent of the death row population can’t afford legal defense,” she said.

A second retribution reason against the penalty is that those executed are sometimes found innocent afterward, Heyward said, adding that since 1900, 23 such cases have been discovered.

“The death penalty can never be reversed” while life imprisonment sentences can, Heyward said. An audience member said if sentences are reversed, criminals will go back into society.

“A state is not protecting citizens by using violence against them,” Heyward said, noting the third point against the idea of retribution. “The penalty legitimates violence.”

Heyward lastly discussed the torture behind an execution through electrocution, lethal injection, and the gas chamber. “The individual suffers mental anguish until executed and the ultimate torture is killing someone.”

In the debate, an audience member asked, “What about the torture the victims were put through?” Heyward responded by explaining Amnesty’s stand against the eye-for-an-eye punishment concept.

Amnesty wants to “find justice in this country and not just vengeance,” Heyward said. “It is not a function of the state to deprive anyone of his life.”

Due process, however, “gives the state the right to take away life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness through a fair trial,” an audience member said during constitutional discussion.

Leeanne Frydrychowicz, AI-NIU treasurer, said the penalty “adds to the grief” because some families who have had their loved ones taken away do not want the murderer’s family to experience such trauma.

The New York based group Solice fights against the death penalty for such reasons, AI-NIU President Donna Lundstrom said.

The more than 20 questions brought forward during debate included thoughts on retribution, self defense, insanity and public/private defenders.