What Is The Death Penalty Wrong

Lips quivering, people talking, cold, metal eyes staring, you know what is about to happen,you know you can’t stop it. Then comes the shot. Your body is burning, you're screaming in agony,you wish for this to end.Then comes the silence,the cold silence and that’s when you know the job is done. Can you imagine this? Would you be scared? This is how an inmate would probably feel and think he would feel when the judge sentences him to the worst kind of punishment that we sanction in our government and it is the Death Penalty.

How did this problem start,well this problem started when, “As far back as the Ancient Laws of China, the death penalty has been established as a punishment for crimes. In the 18th Century BC, the Code of King Hammurabi

of Babylon codified the death penalty for twenty five different crimes, although murder was not one of them”(Michael Reggio).But specifically the problem with that is that when our nation began it had ideals that people envisioned for our nation and out of those ideals,we the people, made amendments to structure our government system. Moreover, one of those amendments was the 8th amendment which said that we would not inflict a cruel and unusual punishment on people, but, consequently, we have broken that with each sentence to death, we have done as a nation and so if we break the amendment, then, we break our very nation’s founding ideals, and if we do that then how can we continue as a nation?
Now this problem, has occurred due to us humans because we commit the crimes and the judge next decides either to not or to conceive the punishment the Death Penalty so we are to blame for this. But there are states that have legalized the death penalty since, “Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the United States, currently used by 31 states and the federal government” (WIkipedia).However there are also states that have not legalized the Death Penalty like such as Connecticut and countless others. Also since this problem started there has been a great deal of trends to this problem such as, gender bias and the ongoing battle of racism are some trends.
Consequently, the Death Penalty has created a few trends like Gender Bias, now gender bias, is that people may favor a gender over another, such a problem would be troublesome to have in existence when deciding who deserves the Death Penalty. This is a not only big dilemma, but it has been a long problem too, because according to the Huffington Post “even death row shows a gender bias, where of the 3,035 people on death row, only 54 of them are women” (Oliver). This means that there have been, executed 3,305 people, and only 54 of them were women, so more men have died than women, so there is clearly a preference and that is not a satisfying thing to have when you are a judge, who is also going to give the punishment of death to someone. Also according to, The Huffington Post “It’s just easier to convince a jury that women suffer from emotional distress or other emotional problems more than men.” (Oliver).So this is basically saying that it is really easy to make a women look like they are suffering some sort of emotional problem that made them do a bad felony, furthermore, most judges would believe them because in large amounts of minds of men it is easier to picture a weak,fragile woman than it is for them to picture that from men. An example of this from the Huffington Post is “Take Susan Smith. She killed her two sons by backing her car into a lake while they sat in the backseat. But when the jury heard about her abusive childhood, they took pity on her, Dieter said.” (Oliver). This shows how women, can stay pictured as weak and fragile and in need of help because she killed her two sons but when the judge heard about her abusive childhood he took pity and only gave her a life sentence with chance of parole so that shows clearly the gender bias in the death penalty.
Also, another sizable problem is the ongoing battle with racism. Now, racism influences how you observe the world and the people around you, so it would be undoubtedly upsetting if a judge is influenced by, if a man is whiter than he should be treated well while a African American should be treated poorly because of his skin color. Furthermore, to have this effect our judicial system still does not show promising things, and there have been studies that say,“Such focused attention by law enforcement has resulted in 60% of our prison population being comprised of people of color who receive longer sentences than their white counterparts”(National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty). So having 60% of our prisons with people of color, says that, ordinarily, people of color only commit most crimes which is not true, so the other answer to why is there such an abounding amount of people of color in prison than their white counterparts is that there is some bias or racism involved with the process of choosing if you go to jail or not. Moreover, another study also say’s that, “The rate at which eligible black defendants were sentenced to death was nearly 40% higher than the rate for other eligible” (Dieter) This shows clearly also that the amount of black defendants sentenced to death is nearly 40% higher than any other person eligible,so that means that black defendants are consequently higher to receive a death sentence than anybody else which shows that our judicial branch has some racism in its roots when it come to the death penalty.
Now, there has been talk about another alternative solution to the Death Penalty, which is life without parole. Now life without parole means, that prisoners are sentenced to life in prison for their whole life without a chance of ever getting out. Now life without parole to some it’s a good alternative but it is ineffective to solve the problem of the Death Penalty. Moreover, the death penalty is ineffective because according to a lawyer he said that ”Sending a prisoner to die behind bars with no hope of release is a sentence that denies the possibility of redemption every bit as much as strapping a murderer to the gurney and filling him with poison.”(Row). This means that if the alternative is life in prison than it is not an alternative because life in prison is as every bit as the Death Penalty it is just consequently a different way of doing it, because life in prison just takes a lot longer for you to die so for some life in prison is worse than the Death Penalty.
Therefore, life imprisonment is not the most effective solution, but a solution that I can propose is that instead of the death penalty we should give prisoners 15 years of life in prison with a chance of parole but with rehabilitation. Moreover, rehabilitation is needed because according to an expert “This is not to suggest that criminal behaviour shouldn’t be punished – only that we should not rely on punishment by itself to change behaviour” (Day). He is basically saying that if we want a change in behavior than we need more that just punish them and hope for the best, but we also need to try and rehabilitate them to increase the chances of criminals changing their ways. Now, some rehabilitation techniques are with dogs and some of the benefits of dog rehabilitation are “In a canine program for depressed inmates at an Oklahoma medium security prison, Not only did the program decrease depression among those inmates, but the rates of aggression decreased among the inmates as well.” (Neeson) This shows that giving dogs does help because it helped the inmates reduce their aggression, which is a big step in the right direction if you are trying to rehabilitate them. But not only can you rehabilitate inmates with dog’s but you can also use cats because according to a inmate he said that “It takes a lot of stress away. It keeps my mind on good things, positive things, rather than just sitting in a cell for the majority of the time . . . Love will change characteristics from anybody’s tortured past. That goes for animals and humans, really.” (Hanson) This means that to that inmate having a cat gave him something to think of rather than sitting in his cell for the majority of the time and for him having a cat kept his mind on good things and took his stress away so for him having a cat helped him rehabilitate himself. We do not need the death penalty because it does not help anybody and in the words of Martin Luther King “returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars…”.

Works Cited Page
"Capital Punishment in the United States." Wikipedia.

Wikimedia Foundation, 30 Mar. 2017. Web. 31 Mar. 2017.

Day Professor of Psychology; Member of the Strategic Research Centre for Social and Early Emotional Development, Deakin University, Andrew. "Crime and Punishment and Rehabilitation: A Smarter Approach." The Conversation. N.p., 23 Mar. 2017. Web. 31 Mar. 2017.

Dieter, Richard C. "The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides." The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides | Death Penalty Information Center. Death Penalty Information Center, n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2017.

Dow, David R. "Life Without Parole: A Different Death Penalty." The Nation. N.p., 29 June 2015. Web. 31 Mar. 2017.

Hanson, Hilary. "Rescued Cats Transform Inmates' Lives With Love At Pendleton Correctional Facility." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 13 Apr. 2015. Web. 31 Mar. 2017.

Neeson, Brian. "Man's Best Friend: How Dog Training Is Affecting Prison Rehabilitation."CorrectionsOne. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2017.

Oliver, Amanda. "The Death Penalty Has a Gender Bias." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 01 Oct. 2015. Web. 31 Mar. 2017.

"Racial Bias." Racial Bias | National Coalition to. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar.

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Reggio, Michael H. "History of the Death Penalty." PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, 1995. Web. 31 Mar. 2017.