Many criminals die each year because of the death penalty. It is a cruel and horrible way to die. People who are sentenced to the death penalty are first put on death row. Most people are on death row for around ten years. Some people will wait for twenty or thirty years. Once it is their turn, they either are given a lethal injection, electrocuted, put in a gas chamber, and occasionally shot by a firing squad or hanged. By killing them, the people who gave them the death sentence are just as bad as the criminal. The people who kill the criminals are criminals themselves.
The death penalty is very wrong. I believe that the death penalty should not be legal. By killing the criminal they are committing a felony themselves. They think that it is okay because of what the criminal did, but it is not. It is still taking a person’s life. Virginia has executed more people than any other state. The U. S. is the only current, industrialized nation that allows the death penalty. Many politicians talk about how horrible other countries are, when we are one of the only ones that kill criminals. Only about 22 other countries allow the death penalty, and they rarely use it, if at all.
If the procedures are done right then death is quick, but much oo often they are performed incorrectly causing a slow and painful death. In the last 33 years around 150 people who were convicted of the death penalty were found innocent. Those people were lucky to have been proved innocent before they died. Many people were not as lucky as them. First of all, when you are dead, you are dead, innocent or not. How would you feel if you were sentenced to die for a crime that you didn’t do? I would feel very upset and very cheated by law enforcement.
If someone is sentenced to die and is killed, and later police find evidence that proves them innocent, there re no take backs, they are still dead, no matter what. That is killing an innocent human being. If that person was sentenced with life, and evidence showed to prove them not guilty, it would be possible to release them from prison. The study “Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced to Death” shows that One out of Twenty-Five people sentenced to death are innocent. That doesn’t sound like a big number, but those innocent people could have been saved if the death penalty was illegal.
Many cases where the person killed was actually innocent have not been investigated further to see if hey are actually innocent. After they die, in most cases, they just drop the case and do not look for any more evidence. Although, in some cases more evidence is looked for. For example, Joseph O? Dell was executed in 1997 after eleven years on death row. He was convicted of strangling Helen Schartner to death. The court refused to retest evidence found at the murder site even though O’Dell’s lawyers though it would have proven him innocent.
Second of all, the death penalty is very expensive. An average case without the death penalty costs around 740 thousand dollars, while an average case with the death penalty costs round 1. 26 million dollars. That is around 500 thousand more dollars. Also, it costs 90 thousand more tax dollars to keep a prisoner on death row. That is money that could be spent on causes that will benefit the future. We could help feed the poor, improve educations, or expand the police and fire department with that money.
Also, the cost of the death penalty is so much, that the government is having to lay off hundreds of police officers and correctional personnel plus inmates are only spending twenty percent of their sentences due to budget cuts. Without these police officers and correctional personnel the rime rate in many states with the death penalty has gone up. If we were to take away the death penalty we wouldn’t have to lay off as many officers and inmates would have to do their full sentence. Third of all, it is morally wrong. If it is not okay for a criminal to kill someone, why is it okay for an executioner to kill someone?
How do they have extra rights to kill that those criminals do not have. Ignore the reasons they want to kill. They are both human with supposedly the same rights doing the same thing. That is most definitely unfair and wrong. Why not just sentence them to life in prison without parole? They have no freedom and they can’t hurt anymore people, but they are also not dead. No one deserves to die, no matter how horrible they, or their actions, are. Many families of the victims of the executed criminals have said that it didn’t give them closure any more than having them in jail did.
They still missed their family member and that didn’t change because of the criminal’s execution. Also killing the criminals does not bring the victim’s back. The victims are still dead, and another life has been lost. Take the Boston Bombing for example. Many of the survivors and families of the victims asked for the death penalty not to be used. Even people who lost their young children asked for death penalty to not be an option. My last major point in that the execution can go wrong, torturing the person being executed and violating the eighth amendment.
The eighth amendment states that the government cannot demand excessive bail, excessive fines, or any cruel and unusual punishment, including torture. When the executions go wrong they torture the victim, therefore, violating the eighth amendment. If a person is hung a certain way that it doesn’t automatically kill them, it can cause anaphylaxis which is when they choke to death. If they are electrocuted wrong it may ake 45 minutes for them to be declared dead. In the case of Stephen McCoy, he had a very violent reaction to the drugs, causing him to choke, consequently torturing him for the last moments of his life.
In conclusion, the death penalty in not only wrong, but it is unconstitutional and very costly. It causes us to have higher taxes and that extra taxes go to a fruitless cause. It costs around 90 thousand dollars to keep the death penalty going. It causes us to have to fire hundreds of police officers which is making our streets even more unsafe. When done incorrectly, it can violate the eighth amendment by giving them a slow painful death, hich is considered a cruel and unusual punishment. For all these reasons, the death penalty must be abolished.
Please, help me to put an end to this unjust practice. To many people, innocent and not, are dying because of this. Life in prison is a much better option that allows us to punish the criminals, while not committing a felony ourselves. Abolishing the death penalty can save many jobs in law enforcement, and make sure that criminals do their full sentence. Together, we can make the streets safer, and keep people off of the deathbed, at the same time. The death penalty is an unjust practice that need to be abolished.
