"Lethal Injection (Barbie Jail Fun Series)" by: Isabelle Heitzmann of Paris, France
SHOULD THE DEATH PENALTY BE
LEGAL?
PRO*The existence of capital punishment and the threat that is it is a possibility is enough to deter crime and as a result, this practice should be continued. If future criminals feel that they can easily get off with a light sentence for one of the most horrible possible crimes, it seems only natural that instances of murder would increase (Smith, 2011).
*It is not difficult to maintain the position of being in favor of capital punishment when one takes a close look at the pain and suffering caused when someone’s loved one is murdered. The act of murdering someone is one of the most heinous acts and must be dealt with accordingly so that the families and victims of the crime have some sort of retribution. One finds in the Bible the popular expression, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” and this almost seems a perfect statement for capital punishment (Smith, 2011). *Under a competitive grant process, the National Institute of Justice awarded the RAND Corporation a grant to determine whether racial disparities exist in the federal death penalty system....The RAND study concludes that the findings support the view that decisions to seek the death penalty are driven by characteristics of crimes rather than by race. RAND's findings are very compelling because three independent research teams, using the same data but different methodologies, reached the same conclusions (Muhlhausen, 2007). *Capital punishment does, in fact, save lives. Each additional execution appears to deter between three and 18 murders (Muhlhausen, 2007). *I'm even fine with the high costs of prosecuting such cases. When someone's life is on the line, no expense should be spared (The Seattle Times, 2011). *Opponents of capital punishment have cried, "Many who claim to be pro-life (against abortion) are the same ones who now want to kill. How hypocritical." They err greatly in equating the lives of innocent, unborn babies with the lives of heinous murderers. Those who oppose capital punishment for religious reasons and quote the Sixth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," do not realize that "Thou" is singular. No individual has the God-given right to decide who shall die, but the aforementioned decent, just society with a sound judicial system has this right (Bickmeyer, 2013). |
CON*Proponents of the death penalty might argue that it is less expensive than keeping criminals in prison for life, but the costs associated with the death row — such as individual cells for inmates, security, and the execution process itself — are much more than those for life imprisonment. In California, for instance, it costs an extra $90,000 per inmate for those sentenced to death (The Daily Targum, 2014).
*It should not be up to the government to decide whether a person should be put to death for their crimes. Yes, heinous crimes deserve punishment, but does execution solve anything? (The Daily Targum, 2014). *The very fact that there are any innocent people who are wrongly executed is a huge failure of the system. More than half of the nations in the world have already abolished capital punishment, and it’s about time the United States did too (The Daily Targum, 2014). *Public support for the death penalty...is at its lowest level in four decades, and 40 percent of people surveyed by Gallup say they do not believe it is administered fairly. Surely that is due in part to the hundreds of exonerations based on DNA testing — including 18 death-row inmates — which continue to reveal irreparable failures throughout the system (The New York Times, 2013). *The dishonor and shame of capital punishment are further highlighted by the current shortage of lethal-injection drugs, a “crisis” resulting from the refusal of European drug makers to provide them for executions. As a result, states that use lethal injection have turned to unregulated compounding pharmacies, and have even passed laws to hide the identity of those pharmacies and the chemical makeup of the drugs (The New York Times, 2013). |