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Leslie Aguilar

Mr. Ficker

AP Government

22 October 2018

Capital Punishment

The death penalty does violate the 8th Amendment ban on Cruel and Unusual Punishments because it is

unethical to decide to end a person life. Not only is it unethical, it very often takes away the life of minorities

which are the subject of prejudice. There is a very high risk of taking away the life of an innocent person, which

is impossible to undo once new evidence is revealed. The death penalty is also a very costly process that at time

surpasses the billion depending on how much the state executes prisoners. We all have the right to life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness which is stated in the United States Constitution. Interpreting that the government

does not have the right to take away the life of whom they please, not mattering the crimes they committed it is

not allowed.

Due to the uncertainty of whether a witness is truly saying the truth, there is not a clear statement that

accurately displays the guilty. For example, on the 23rd of July, Ivan Teleguz, a Ukrainian national, was

sentenced to the death penalty for the alleged hiring of Michael Hetrick to murder Stephanie Sipe. The killer

was given the option to testify against him in order to receive a sentence of life without parole. However, he

gave a false testimony which led Teleguz to be placed on death row. Hetrick, the killer, was able to later admit

to his crime which then allowed him to be given innocence in the case. The risk that is faced with the death

penalty is that once innocent people receive the capital punishment no way to undo the act, because what are

they to do to a dead person? Not only does this affect the prisoner but also the family that lost a loved one.

Those listed on death row are often a product of prejudice. As stated on Death Penalty Focus, 36% are

black men, 32% are white men, and 24% are Latino men which is disproportionate to the percentage which each
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race makes up in the United States. In Florida, Clemente Aguirre- Jarquin a Honduran native, was accused of

the slaughter of Carol Bareis and Cheryl Williams, a mother, and daughter. Aguirre lived next door to the

victims, allowing him to find the victims, which were drenched in blood given that they one-hundred and

thirty-one stab wounds with a ten-inch chef’s knife. He was able to make the mistake of holding the knife as a

way to defend himself because he feared the person who killed the victims was still there. Aguirre claimed to

have failed to report the crime since he feared that if he did, he would face deportation back to Honduras. He

had no prior criminal history before being charged. When officials first arrived at the crime scene, Aguirre

claimed to have no knowledge of the crime, but later admitted to having found the bodies and attempt to revive

one of the victims. Prosecutors were able to examine the t-shirt he was wearing which was drenched in blood. It

was later examined by a blood stain expert, that reported the stains had been caused by “motion” rather than

“contact.” Later on, in the case, the state judge asked for DNA testing of the one-hundred-and-fifty bloodstain

which was able to reveal that none of the bloodstain matched with Aguirre’s DNA. Instead, it matched the

daughter of the victim and granddaughter of the other victim. Samantha Williams was them considered to be the

killer. All in all, it took less than five hours to convict Aguirre of two first degree murder and around forty-five

minutes to recommended a sentence of death. This displays that the jury and juror did not want to at least

investigate other options that could have stated that Aguirre was not the killer. It was very quick for them to

assume that it would be a minority, an immigrant, to kill two people without exploring other theories.

Year after year the United States spends a great deal of money to process capital punishment for all of

the people who are currently on death row. Given that each prisoner is provided with an attorney, it is the

United States who pays for all of it. Appeals can take an average 16 years for prisoners to be on death row

before they are executed. This means that throughout those sixteen years, it is the government that is paying the

attorney. Not only does the government spend money on attorneys, but on special facilities for those on death

row and the administration of the lethal injection which used by all states. According to the Death Penalty

Information Center, the average cost of a death penalty case is at an astonishing amount of one-million dollars.

In states like Washington, executions have cost twenty-four million. Given the severity of a capital punishment
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case, the defense cost three times more than a non-death penalty case, stated in the Death Penalty Information

website. It is economical to sentence a prisoner to a life sentence in prison than to receive the capital

punishment. For example, in Texas, the cost of an average death penalty case is nearly three times higher than

imprisoning someone in maximum security for life, according to a study by the Dallas Morning News. In

California, the state’s Legislative Analyst’s office was able to recognize and estimate that California would save

$150 million a year if it replaced the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole (Death Penalty Focus).

If the purpose of the death penalty is to get revenge for the family who lost a loved, would they not want them

to live with their guilt, also knowing that they would never have the opportunity to be free?

In conclusion, the death penalty violates the 8th amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment by

depriving a person of life. In the U.S Constitution, does it not state that “nor shall any State deprive any person

of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law?” Meaning that the states and the government do not get

to decide who can live and who gets to die. Acknowledging the high cost of the death penalty, it is more

beneficial to sentence a person to jail without parole than for them to receive capital punishment.
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Citations:
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty
https://deathpenalty.org/facts/death-penalty-is-broken-beyond-repair-costly-failure/
https://www.amnestyusa.org/victories/urgent-action-victory-virginia-governor-commutes-death-sentence-usa-u
a-55-17/
https://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/arguments/argument3a.htm
https://www.aclu.org/issues/capital-punishment?redirect=capital-punishment