Lockett's Argument Against Capital Punishment

Sam Houston state university students walk the campus, attend classes, and eat their daily meals in the same fashion any other student around the country would. A loud horn from a near red bricked fortress rings through the air but which for our campus is just a part of the daily routine. To the faculty and student the horn might as well not even be ringing, but for the new people it’s an ever present reminder of what or better yet whom is within the walls of our towns red fortress. Then again even today is no normal day the horn is replaced by the sound vociferous people protesting, and the sight of an anti-death penalty signs. Today is Wednesday August 12th and Texas will add another tally to the already lengthy list of inmates to receive
The idea of the death penalty has forever been under fire as being an inhumane form of punishment for the men and woman convicted of our most heinous of crimes. The humane nature has once again been brought into question after a 2014 lethal injection in Oklahoma was botched. Clayton Lockett was on death row for the 1999 brutal murder, rape, and kidnap of Stephanie Neiman and seemingly without argument was sentenced the death penalty. However Lockett did not die from lethal injection but rather a heart attack after the “medical potion” administered failed to claim his life. Due to this I will attempt to illustration that lethal injection and the death penalty as a whole is an immoral through John Stewart Mill’s idea of utilitarianism
Numerous studies have been conducted directly examine the cost of death penalty cases and the use of our tax payer dollars being used. Let’s look to Texas as a prime example for a “death penalty state” according to the Death Penalty Information Center “Each death penalty case in Texas costs taxpayers about $2.3 million. That is about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years.” Therefore under that statistic Texas is minimalizing the use of tax payer money. This is the very same money that good go towards educating the youth of society or providing health care to the elderly. That is but the half the suffering families deserve to have a timely trail in order to provide an opportunity for closure but this is not the case when dealing with a court case that the death penalty is an available punishment. When it comes to a “typical” murder, rape, or kidnapping case without the involvement of the death penalty a family can expect to wait six to ten years. However when a trail has decided to go with the death penalty the appeals and other legal issues involved add up to a family suffering and waiting upwards of 25 years. How is it feasible that we make the families, the parents, the children of the victims wait to receive closure? Utilitarianism states