Capital Punishment Essay, Research Paper

I once saw a bumper sticker that read, ?Why do we kill people, who kill

people, to show that killing is wrong?? Suddenly I thought about what I had

read. I am against the death penalty as a solution to crime. Capital

punishment is a sign of a deep sickness in our civilization. Execution is an

act of violence, but you cannot use violence to end violence. The death

penalty is not an effective way to punish a criminal. It is used by the

powerful to pretend that violent crime is under control, and being disposed of,

but in reality the death penalty disposes of the poor, the uneducated, and the

minorities in the world. Even states that use the death penalty seem to have

a higher number of homicides than states that do not use it. Capital

punishment has never been shown to eliminate crime more effectively than

other punishments. If the death penalty isn?t lowering the murder rate then

why waste the taxpayers money? It cost more to put a prisoner to death with

any method than it does to keep them incarcerated. Our justice system

shouldn?t just execute the criminal, they should also make his life miserable.

Prisons should supply the bare necessities and nothing else. One solution is

to eliminate televisions, libraries, gyms and basketball courts. Even though

our prisons need to toughen up, I do give them credit for taking away a

criminals freedom. Many family members want to see the offenders dead.

The families emotions are understandable, but death is not a solution. The

victims family has to suffer for a lifetime, so why shouldn?t the murderer

suffer too?

Another problem is the chance or executing an innocent person. The

executed prisoner cannot be given another chance. In the last hundred years

there have been more that seventy-five documented cases of wrongful

convictions in criminal homicide cases. One example is Walter McMillian

who was released from Alabama?s death row after having spent six years

there because of perjured testimony and withheld evidence that indicated his

innocence. He was convicted of the shooting death of a storekeeper. On the

day of the murder he was at a fish fry with his friends and relatives, many of

whom testified to this at his trial. No physical evidence linked him to the

crime, but three people who testified at his trial connected him to the murder.

Only sheer luck saved Walter McMillian. After listening to a tape recording

of a key witnesses testimony against McMillian, a volunteer lawyer flipped

the tape to see if there was anything on the other side. Only then did he hear

the same witness complaining that he was being pressured to frame

McMillian. With that fourutious break, the whole case against McMillian

began to fall apart. All three prosecution witnesses recanted their testimony.

On March 3, 1993, the County District Attorney joined the defense in a

motion to dismiss the charges. Walter McMillian was finally freed. There

are many other cases of mistaken conviction and execution that occur and

remain undocumented. An innocent person can be freed, but neither release

or compensation is possible for a corpse. If a man is truly a murder, the

thought of execution will not stop him from committing murder. So if capital

punishment is not lowering the murder rate, is more expensive, and being

alive is more of a punishment than being dead, then why not abolish the death

penalty?