No Easy Way Out

824 Words2 Pages

The war between capital punishment and life without parole is an ongoing debate being waged between the states. Capital Punishment, or the death penalty, is the process by which an individual is put to death by the state for a capital offense, whereas life without parole is when a capital offender is sentenced to a life behind bars with no opportunity for freedom. The choice to adopt or abolish capital punishment is up to each state, and it is the state’s verdict to determine if capital punishment is unjust or not. I do not believe in the capital punishment for four very important reasons: to execute an inmate the humane and correct way costs more than a lifetime in prison, it is not a deterrent for crime, the innocent may be wrongly executed, and capital punishment offers those on death row an easy way out.
The world revolves around money, so our government should not waste it putting an inmate to death when we can keep him/her alive for a quarter of the cost. The reason it costs so much to give an inmate capital punishment is because they must submit to a extensive and strenuous judicial process. By doing so, the courts are making sure that they are not executing an innocent man for a crime that he did not commit, but even with these protections, the risk of murdering an innocent man cannot be completely eliminated. Life without parole not only saves millions of dollars, it safeguards the community from an irreversible mistake in taking the wrong life. The money that is saved can then be put towards programs that can improve the community (High Cost).
When a victim who has nothing to live for commits a crime in a state where he/she knows is punishable by death, death becomes a sanctuary for the victim. The point of capital pu...

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...l punishment is still around. So why keep the Death Penalty in the United States if it only executes 3% of the inmates sentenced to it? After all, the Holy Bible says that an eye for an eye is wrong, and who is to go against that?

Works Cited

Bedau, Hugo Adam. “The Case Against the Death Penalty.” ACLU.org. 2012. Web. 4 December 2013. https://www.aclu.org/capital-punishment/case-against-death-penalty

“Over Population of the Prison System and Economic Costs.” EconomicPapers.net. 2013. Web. 4 December 2013. http://www.economicspapers.net/over-population-of-the-prison-system-and-economic-costs.html

“The High Cost of the Death Penalty.” Deathpenalty.org. 2011. Web. 4 December 2013. http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42

“Wrongful Executions.” CrimeMuseum.org. 2008. Web. 4 December 2013. http://www.crimemuseum.org/library/execution/wrongfulExecution.html

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