Persuasive Essay On The Death Penalty

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Capital punishment has been legal in the United Sates since the 18th Century. A few crimes that have the death penalty as its consequence are drug trafficking, espionage, treason, attempting to kill a juror or witness, and federal murder. Capital punishment is very controversial since different people have different opinions. The big debate that’s been discussed is whether or not the death penalty is right or wrong. Other countries seem to be more accustomed to the death penalty, rather than the United States, so our country will look at the death penalty as a harsher reality than other countries would. A lot of people are in favor of the death penalty, and a lot of people are not. One reason people could be in favor of the death penalty is …show more content…

There have been many stories in the past stating that innocent people have lost their life because of the death penalty. Mistakes happen and false rulings may be made, but the life of another person will still be taken away. Human beings run the judicial system and all human beings are subject to making mistakes. “The best way to ensure the protection of innocents is to replace the death penalty with the sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole” (Williams 5). Some people wouldn’t agree with life without parole because it’s still giving the murder a gift to stay alive. If someone is on death row, his or her case should be looked over to ensure that they are guilty. Within four years of the starting the death penalty, several hundred people had been sentenced to death. Since 1973, hundreds of people have been released from death rows in 26 states because of innocence. …show more content…

“The FBI has found that the states with the death penalty have the highest murder rates” (Bedau). Although the death penalty hasn’t been proven to deter crimes, it is still taken as an option to lower the crime rates. Other countries like Japan, India, Thailand, and a lot of the Caribbean islands, such as Barbados, do not have very much commitment to the death penalty as a crime deterrent. The death penalty is very costly for just one execution. To send someone to death row in Florida, the state with the most people on death row, it would cost around 3.2 million dollars all together (Bedau 16). For someone to be in a state prison annually, it would cost around 16 thousand dollars (Hood 84). It is cheaper to punish someone with life in jail rather than putting criminals to

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