Death Penalty

The Death Penalty We’re all in school one day going about our daily lives, and slowly we start hearing murmurs that something has happened a few towns over. Is it a shooting, just a suspicious person walking around, a robbery? We all begin to question and then we hear an announcement in the halls, a mass-murder has occurred in an elementary school not too far away where many of us know little kids who attended the school. Kids and teachers ask themselves how someone can do such a thing to innocent little children and feel no remorse. Unfortunately, things like this occur all the time, maybe not as severe as the Sandy Hook incident but there are evil people in this world. For a person to commit such a crime as killing someone them themself should be put to death. In a just society, the punishment should equal the seriousness of the offense. The death penalty started a long time ago in the eighteenth century and has grown into many other countries including the United States. As of now, there are 18 states without the death penalty and 32 with it. I believe that with the death penalty it shows the society’s commitment to stopping heinous crimes. If people were to think about one’s they love and then see them being in a murder case like the one above, they would want that person to suffer as much as their family member did. The death penalty gives closure to the family and justice is better served. “Life in prison just means the criminal is still around to haunt the victim.” In prison, the criminal gets food and a place to sleep; it’s not too bad. Why do they deserve to live when the other person had no choice? If they get life in prison there’s nothing that would stop them from continuing to murder in prison because they’ll be there no matter what. The biggest reason to have the death penalty is to stop a terrible crime from happening again. Prisons across the country are facing the problem of overpopulation. There’s not enough room for everyone and all their crimes in jail. Each prisoner includes clothes, food, bedding, guards, and more. Without the death penalty and just life in jail that’s a cell that’s occupied for a long time when it could be used plenty of times on different prisoners. Without enough guards because of the amount of all the prisoners can cause escapes from jail with a possibility of a crime/murder spree. It is all very scary to think about, by eliminating the people that do not deserve to live because of their evil ways it may make that type of crime rate go down. If a criminal knows they will be put to death following their crime it could prevent one from wanting to do it. Instead of just thinking, “oh well I’ll be put in jail with food, clothing, and shelter that’s not even too bad.” “Mass murderers and serial murderers will always reoffend. It is who they are. Treat them as they would treat you, with complete harshness and no empathy. This process should be bought to a quick resolution, no years and years of appeals, just get it done.” This punishment just protects citizens from living in fear and not feeling safe. In Maryland, what happens with the death penalty is the sentence is decided by the jury, execution dates are decided by a trial judge, the governor decides clemency or commutation, and then the execution is carried out by a lethal injection at the Maryland State Penitentiary in Baltimore. If every state were like this everyone would feel more safe knowing such a criminal couldn’t harm him or her anymore. “The 775 killers who were executed between 1998 and 2008 had murdered at least 1591 people. That is an average of 2 victims per executed killer.” It is scary to think about the type of people we have living in the world and unless they are executed after their terrible crimes many families and people will live in fear that they could come out somehow and do it all over again. At the end of my research I found a very important quote by Mike Royko “It's because I have so much regard for human life that I favor capital punishment. Murder is the most terrible crime there is. Anything less than the death penalty is an insult to the victim and society. It says…that we don't value the victim's life enough to punish the killer fully."