To Pay or Not to Pay

Christopher White

Professor Ariel Medina

Comp 135

14 June 2010

The Death Penalty

“I have never heard a murderer say they thought about the death penalty as consequence of their actions prior to committing their crimes.” This was stated by Gregory Ruff who is a police chief in Kansas. Personally I agree with him, even though a person may have commented murder; does that give us the right to do the same thing to him. The death penalty should be abolished in the US because it goes against the amendment and is cruel and unusual punishment. Henry ford once said that “Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

First off we must take a look what exactly capital punishment is. Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is the killing of a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offense. Capital punishment has been practiced in just about every society around the world in some sort of way or another. I think that capital punishment should be abolished because it is morally wrong and it is obviously not working because people still kill others in our society. If capital punishment was working then it should strike fear in people and make them think twice about murdering someone. The big question is whether those who commit a crime deserves to die than with whether state and federal governments deserve to kill those whom it has imprisoned (deathpenalty.procon.org). Death sentences are imposed in a criminal justice system that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent (deathpenatly.procon.org). Also I do not understand why they have to keep you in prison so long. Yes I understand that there is a trial process and an appeal process but do you really have to sit in jail for 10 years just waiting to die.

As of 2008 the death penalty was authorized by 37 states, the Federal Government and the U.S. Military (www.clarkprosecutor.org). There are only 13 states...