The Controversy Surrounding The Death Penalty

Did you know that 1,432 people have been executed since 1976? Capital punishment, aka the death penalty has claimed countless lived since it’s establishment in the United States in 1608. Executions happen pretty often, with 38 people being killed last year alone. The death penalty is an unnecessary and horrible punishment which should not be allowed. Some may claim that the death penalty is just, and others claim it is inhumane. I think that the death penalty can be substituted by a sentence to life in prison. Supporters may say that murderers don’t deserve mercy and that they deserve to die. But what they forget is that though they may have killed someone, they are humans too. In addition, most murders are committed under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or by someone who is mentally ill. Criminals are commonly drug and alcohol abusers. So when they commit a crime under the influence, we should automatically put them to death instead of trying to rehabilitate them to help them be a productive member of society? That just doesn’t sound right. Most supporters believe they should die, but they shouldn’t suffer. But what happens when an execution is botched? Take for example, the execution of Clayton Lockett. On the morning of his execution, he hid under the covers of his bed. He made of noose out of his sheets, pulled the blade out of a safety
razor and cut himself. He swallowed a handful of pills he’d been hoarding. When the team of officers arrived to take him, he hid and refused to go. So they tased him. An execution by lethal injection uses an IV to inject the drugs. It took a paramedic AND a doctor over a dozen tries to get the IV in him, according to detailed court records acquired by Katie Fretland. Executions by lethal injections normally use two IV’s, but because they were running behind schedule they only used one, and a misplaced one at that. To make a long story short, he woke up halfway through his execution, because there weren’t enough drugs in his system to kill him, just enough to cause him excruciating pain. Reading the article The Cruel and Unusual Execution of Clayton Lockett by Jeffrey E. Stern, gives a firsthand account in greater detail.

You might be thinking that if they can a criminal take a life, they deserve to have their life taken.
But does murder solve murders? According to multiple scientific studies, they don’t. In fact, in states without the death penalty, the crime rate is lower than the states that do. North Carolina’s crime rates dropped almost immediately after executions stopped. In a 2008 survey, criminologists and police chiefs around the country ranked the use of the death penalty at the bottom of a list of effective crime fighting tools. They said that more law enforcement resources were the most needed tool for reducing violent
crime.