Analysis: The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty Between the years 1608 to 2002, 239 US prisoners were executed brutally in inhumane ways due to the death penalty. 143 were shot to death, 66 burned, 15 died because they were hung by chains, 14 bludgeoned or broken on a wheel, and finally one was crushed by two heavy objects. This shows that the death penalty is not a way to rid evil from the United States by enforcing the consequences, but it is just a overly complicated, modern representation of the old saying, “an eye for an eye,” since most death penalty cases contain murder or something similar. These types of executions that the death penalty carry out are not helping protect or even making the citizens feel safe. In fact, the act of brutal executions that were
mentioned above, should concern the citizens on the way justice is being dealt in the United States. The death penalty is wrong in every way and should be abolished everywhere. The death penalty is morally wrong.
Many religions and groups of people believe that life, even the life of a murderer, is precious, because when someone dies, life cannot be returned or replenished back to that person. The ironic thing about the death penalty in a case where the defendant is a murderer, is that to enforce the fact that murder is wrong, the government chooses to technically murder the murderer, so that law and order can be upholded. Instead of securing the protection of order throughout the country like what the death penalty is supposed to do, it might do the opposite. A Vatican spokesperson named Reverend Federico Lombardi stated, “The killing of a guilty party is not the way to reconstruct justice and reconcile society. On the contrary, there is a risk that it will feed a spirit of vendetta and sow new violence." This quote explains that when someone is executed, there may be an opposite effect on society that plants a seed of destruction that will renew the violence that the US government was trying to stop, hence creating the one thing that they were trying to
destroy. The death penalty also does not help the victim’s family, but instead causes more pain to them.
After the offender is convicted of the death penalty, the path to execution may take years and can last decades. This is because the judicial system of the US makes the process long and complex, since the result is irreversible and once done, cannot be altered. All death penalty cases must have mandatory reviews that makes sure that the death penalty is being applied right and to the correct person. During this period of time, the victim’s family have endured multiple appeals and press coverage which may leave relatives of the victim traumatized for the rest of their lives because they are constantly reminded of the details of the dramatic incident. In 1980, Debbie Regala, a Washington Senator from 2001 to 2012 according to Women in the Legislature, lost a family member to murder. Later in 2012, she spoke with others at a press conference to repeal the death penalty. Regala said that, the death penalty is a broken system that fails to offer closure and does not lessen crime. This shows that the death penalty does not help in any way. Some of the problems of the death penalty can range from financial to moral reasons that make the death penalty unfavorable among the opposers of the death
penalty. Although the death penalty is still an act that kills, the opposing side thinks that it has some good use to the United States. They might argue that ridding the world of evildoers is a good action that every nation should be doing, which is partially correct in a way, but the death penalty is not the way to solve this issue. The death penalty actually causes more problems than it solves, such as financial problems. Not only does it takes a long time to execute, but is also exceptionally expensive. It takes $137 million dollars annually to operate it, $95 million to put in recommendations which, when added up, is about $230 million per year, and lastly it takes $400 million to construct a new facility to house the Death Row inmates. Life imprisonment, however, only takes about $57.5 million each year to contain an inmate. Studies from the California death penalty system, which is the largest in the US, have found that a death sentence costs at least 18 times as much as a sentence of life without parole, also known as life imprisonment, would cost. This shows that the money used for the death penalty can be saved by changing to life imprisonment, which then can be used to help benefit the country by using it to improve. By using the death penalty, the risk that a false conviction being made is much more dangerous. With this being said, innocent lives may be endangered due to a misunderstanding of evidence, or even a slight slip-up. Every year in the US, mistakes occur and innocents go to prison for crimes they did not commit. Since 1989, more than 200 people are convicted and then later exonerated or released due to the discovery of new evidence. This makes the death penalty extremely risky since it can take an innocent person’s life even if the mistake made was microscopic. To serve as an example for how frequently innocent people are convicted, the National Registry of Exonerations reported that the record high was 87 people per year that were released for false convictions. The Justice Department and the Death Penalty Information Center estimate in 2014 that one out of every twenty-five people on death row are currently innocent. This all leads to the fact that the death penalty is very dangerous because of the risks that could put innocent lives in danger. If the US government execute innocent people for false convictions, they are no better than the murderers that they execute. Every piece of information that is mentioned leads to only one conclusion, the death penalty is wrong in every way and should be abolished everywhere. Instead of the death penalty, the US government should replace it with life imprisonment. The death penalty has many negative standpoints that include being morally wrong, not doing its job of offering closure, bringing more pain to the victim’s family, being overly expensive, and being a great risk to innocent people that are accused of another’s crimes, especially when dealing with the death penalty. The death penalty is not an efficient or even an action that is capable of doing what it is meant to do, which makes it not necessary to the United States of America.