Death Penalty Justified or Not?

Death Penalty Justified or Not?
When people sit back and think about the death penalty, they begin to either get offended or deeply saddened as to their thoughts on the death penalty. One may feel as if the death penalty is cruel and just plain wrong, where as another person may feel as if the death penalty is a good punishment but is not being used as much as it should be. The arguments based upon the idea of the death penalty would be as such, the death penalty was put into place to execute a person for their heinous crime(s) or people do not believe in taking another person’s life for something they have done and believe they should just sit in prison for the rest of their life. When it comes to the death penalty my opinion on the death penalty as to whether or not it is justified would be no, it is not justified because I believe that the death penalty was setup for a reason and that if a person is sentenced to death then they should not be allowed to sit on death row for fifty years awaiting their death.
The death penalty which was established in the nineteen hundreds was created to put people to death for the crime they have committed. My argument for this topic is I am for the death penalty in many different ways. If a person is about to be sentenced to death they might possibly take a plea bargain. “Interviews with prosecutors and defense attorneys in a state where the maximum punishment for murder is death and a state where the maximum punishment for murder is life without parole are used to explore the role of the death penalt as leverage in plea bargaining, as compared to the role of a maximum sentence of life without parole” (Ehrhard-Dietzel, 2012). It cost the state nearly 216,000 dollars to follow through with a prisoner being executed. Yes, this seems like a lot of money but in turn it is actually a lot less than it costs to pay for an inmate to live in prison for the rest of their life until they die. It cost about sixty five dollars a day to house an inmate so if you multiply that by 365 days you get 23,725. If you multiply that by 50 years then you get 1,186,250. This is how much the state is paying for each prisoner to live on death row. The state is throwing away money every year by continuing to pay to house death row inmates rather than paying for the execution.
On the opposite side of the argument are those people who are totally against the death penalty saying things like “who are we to decide when another person should die?” when in fact if the person who is on death row for murder should lose their life just as they took the life of someone else for no apparent reason. The idea of keeping an inmate locked up in prison with no possible chance of parole seems to be the better thing to do than executing someone. Many will use the excuse “they did nothing to me, so why should I choose their fate”? Although many feel safer when criminals are locked up for the rest of their life there are some people who feel safer when those who have killed people are killed themselves. The constitution allows American citizens the right to bear arms and many Americans do carry weapons to protect themselves if they were to ever be in danger. The death penalty is a serious subject when you are a juror, sitting in on a case where you ultimately have to decide to take away the rights of another human being does not usually sit well with people. It is very hard to choose a side in this argument and have actual facts and statistics as to why your argument is better than anyone else’s.
In conclusion, when asked how you feel about the death penalty could you actually give a honest answer as to why you feel the way you do? In my opinion I can honestly say that the death penalty is not used to its full advantage as it should be. It is costing extremely way to much time and money to keep these criminals locked up for years and get nothing but more debt and overcrowded prison systems. The argument as to whether or not the death penalty is justified and fair should be left up to an individual not to society as a whole. With all the commotion about how fair it is that we take away the rights and life of another human being is completely absurd considering if the person on trial is being convicted of killing someone then why should the murder not be executed?

References
Ehrhard-Dietzel, S. (2012, March). The Use of Life and Death as Tools in Plea Bargining . Criminal Justice
Review , pp. Vol. 37, Iss. 1; pg. 89.

References: Ehrhard-Dietzel, S. (2012, March). The Use of Life and Death as Tools in Plea Bargining . Criminal Justice Review , pp. Vol. 37, Iss. 1; pg. 89.