The Death Penalty Must Be Abolished

The death penalty is legal in thirty-two states. I shall argue that capital punishment should be abolished in our country because it is never moral to kill a human being no matter what they have done, because it often costs more money to keep someone on death row than to keep someone in prison for life, because of the men and women who are wrongly accused of a crime they did not commit, and because death is the easy way out.

I believe that there is a standard when it comes to morality. The basics of that standard includes knowing that murder, rape, torture, treason, kidnapping, larceny, and perjury are wrong. What does it mean for something to be wrong? It means that the majority of human beings can argue that those crimes hurt rather than benefit individuals or a society as a whole. The death penalty can be implemented for any of the crimes listed above when a judge believes that the crime is serious enough. However, the death penalty uses one of the crimes itself; murder. If the government uses the death penalty as a punishment in order to show that murder is wrong, how can they murder and assume it is right? Opponents of this statement could argue that the government has a judicial system in order to uphold the moral code within our society, and that the death penalty honors human dignity by allowing the defendant to control his own destiny. However, I argue that the death penalty objectifies and takes away the humanity of the defendant.

The average time an inmate stays on death row between sentencing and execution rose between 1986 and 2006 from seven years to twelve years1. In 2013, the trend has only continued, making the period between trial and execution even longer. When the constitution was writ...

... middle of paper ...

...t they have done, however, when someone does murder, the government should not retaliate by doing the same thing, this would be hypocritical. It costs more money to keep someone on death row than to keep someone in prison for life, and our government is in debt. Men and women who are wrongly accused of a crime they did not commit are murdered for no reason. All together, our society would benefit rather than be hurt by the establishment of capital punishment, which is my definition of what is good.

Works Cited

"CLOSING DEATH ROW WOULD SAVE STATE $90 MILLION A YEAR", Sacramento Bee, Published on March 28, 1988, Page A1, 2589 words.

. Dieter, Richard C. “Cost of Death Penalty and Related Issues”. (2007) Page 4. PDF. Web. 11 November 2012.

. U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Capital Punishment 2005," appendix Table 4(2006)