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Running head: DEATH PENALTY

The Death Penalty

Jessica Villatoro
Rowan Cabarrus Community College

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Anti Death Penalty

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders. Said French philosopher

Albert Camus. Every year an average of almost 50 criminals are put on death row and executed.
(Dieter, para. 5) The number may not seem high but nonetheless 50 people are being put to death
by lethal injection. Although the death penalty is only given to the criminals who present the
most threat to society, the death of a human is still immoral and cruel. Shouldnt we be able to
trust our government to send criminals to serve their life sentences in prisons secure enough to
ensure zero escapes?
Besides being cruel and unusual, the death penalty has many reasons why we should
oppose it. One of the reasons I strong oppose the death penalty is because there is always the
possibility that an innocent person can be wrongfully accused and executed before they have a
change to be proven innocent. The wrongful execution of an innocent person can never be
rectified. There have been a total number of 18 cases in the United States where DNA has played
a factor in establishing innocence to criminals on death row (Exonerations 2000). No amount of
compensation can match up for killing an innocent person who was wrongfully sentenced to the
death penalty.
Statistics show that it cost more to execute someone than to keep them in prison for life.
There are millions spent on death penalty cases every year. The cost adds up because of how
long and drawn out the judicial process is. Since 1978 more than 3500 men and women have
received a death penalty sentence. $1 billion daily could have been saved is the state of
California would have replaced the death penalty with permanent imprisonment. (High Cost of
the Death Penalty, pg 4) Taxpayers pay $90,000 more per death row prisoner each year. All the

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money spent on death row prisoners can be used towards programs that can help the victims
families cope or for methods of prevention of crime. The death penalty is meant to keep
criminals out of society but life sentences without parole can serve the same purpose and the
money saved can be put towards actually helping society.
The entire purpose of the death penalty is to deter crime and scare criminals from
committing crimes. Yet when interviewed criminals admit that while committing these terrible
crimes they did not once think of the possibility of receiving the death penalty. States without the
death penalty have a lower murder rate. That fact proves that even though the death penalty is a
possible sentence for criminals it will not stop them from committing crimes. If criminals are not
being deterred from crimes than endless amounts of time and money is being used to simply kill
without a reason.
I personally think that the death penalty is wrong because it is simply inhumane. I think
the dragged out process of killing a criminal also drags out the victims familys pain. It prolongs
suffering and the families cannot put the events behind them because the criminals do not get a
set punishment for years. The quote Two wrongs dont make a right, sums up my exact view
on capital punishment. If killing a human results in killing another human then arent we
promoting that killing is okay? I dont think anyone can be the judge of when a person lives or
dies.
My hope is that one-day the death penalty can be put to rest and that our prisons will be
advanced enough to safely keep criminals away from society. I believe that the criminal justice
system will one day see that the death penalty is not only wrong but that there are alternative
ways to deter crime. The killing of anyone is wrong no matter the situation.

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Reference Page

Innocence and the Death Penalty. (2011, September 19). Retrieved November 10, 2014.

Dieter, R. (2014, February 23). The High Cost of the Death Penalty. Retrieved December 5,
2014, from http://www.fnsa.org/v1n1/dieter1.html