Pros and Cons of Death Penalty

Death Penalties The death penalty is a controversy discussed by many state governments in the United States, the 8th amendment in the Bill of Rights is a right that protects people from cruel and unusual punishment. This amendment originally created by our founding fathers has been the main reason for this debate; some states look at death as cruel and unusual punishment while others don’t. Though the decision to sentence someone to death is considered harsh by some judges and juries, there have been crimes and occurrences where a judge feels a death penalty is reasonable.

I am against the death penalty, with my knowledge of its pros and cons it seems that the pros are over powered by the cons. Criminals who are facing life in prison, crimes of rape, torture, treason, kidnapping, murder, larceny, and perjury. People like these who can never handle themselves in the normal world; constantly being resent back to prison, or permanently in prison from their beginning sentencing. Although these people pay their own consequences and debts by their punishment, we must also help support them; with our taxes we pay for their living.

However it may sound that we invest more money paying for their stay in prison rather than their death. In reality, the process of a death penalty is more expensive and complex than life without parole. This is so because we must pay for their incarceration, automatic appeals, and federal habeas corpus appeals. This process ends up costing us millions more, millions more that can be used to create programs for teenagers to avoid ending up in the same position.

People also believe that the death penalty could decrease criminal acts because it could frighten people from committing something extreme, which is also incorrect. In my perspective the death penalty does not reach the minds of most criminals because a criminal rarely believes he/she could be caught. They hold a belief that they are intelligent enough to outsmart authorities. There is other whom holds such anger towards certain crimes that they believe death is a rightful punishment, but death does not “undo” a crime they have committed. I think it would be better for a criminal to think and reminisce their conscious.

Their death would only put peace in their state of mind and except them from the punishments that prison holds for them. Families harmed by these criminals are sometimes frightened by the thought that they’re persecutor could escape and harm them again, however someone sentenced to life in parole in the united states has never escaped or been released. There is also a possibility that an innocent person could be convicted of a crime they did not commit, even with all our new technology and DNA testing there is always a chance of making a mistake.

Though there are also pros to the death penalty, my opinion is that it should not be allowed. I say this because it is more costly than life in prison being the process is more complex and long. It does not secure the deficiency of crime acts because of criminal’s confidence that they will not be revealed. Persecuted families are just as secure due to our highly restricted and watched prisons. There is also always a possibility we convict the wrong person, these reason lead me to be against the death penalty.