Death Penalty

"One thousand one hundred and eighty eight people have been executed in the United States from 1977 to 2009 by lethal injection" (Death Penalty Trends, Web). Most Penalty cases involve executing murders although it is legal to use this type of punishment for treason, and other crimes. There are many issues surrounding the death penalty and whether it should be legal or not. The death penalty is wrong and should not be used in the United Sates today. We should create harsher punishments inside the jail community.

First, the process of convicting someone for the death penalty is highly expensive. There is a variety of costs associated with capital punishment. You have to pay for attorneys, expert witnesses, reporters, jury members and psychiatrists to determine the state of mind of the accused. Cases such as these can rack up 2 million dollar legal fees which are 4 times higher than murder trials and the executions themselves cost around 1.2 million dollars. Not only is the process costly it takes time. Death penalty cases are complicated and tend to last several years and have multiple phases. Usually, the cases start at felony court or district court that tries your case to determine if you're eligible for bail. After court then you have the penalty phase where the sentence of death is actually pronounced. You can also appeal your case which can take years to process and appeals must pass through four basic levels.

If you overlook the cost and the length of death penalty cases you have to think about the person being convicted. There is a high rate of innocent people being convicted of a crime they did not do. You would need solid evidence showing that the person being convicted did indeed do a crime that was punishable of death. Even if you had solid evidence, in our society today it is socially unacceptable to do what others did to you for a crime. You may believe that justice is better served with the death penalty but, when someone plans and brutally murders another person it doesn't it make sense that the punishment be death. We don't cut off a person's arm for stealing or abuse a person for abusing someone else. No, we punish them with the correct sentence time in jail according to the court and jury's decision.

I think life without parole is a better option than death role. The death penalty is costly, time consuming, and puts innocent lives at risk. Life without parole provides swift, severe and certain punishment that death cannot. Death is an easy way out in my opinion. Choosing life in jail provides justice to survivors of murder victims and allows more resources to be investigated into solving murders and preventing violence on the streets. My idea of life without parole would be life of imprisonment without the possibility of parole. No minimums or maximums, no time off for good behavior and no work study programs. They would be in jail until they died, it would be a sentence