The Death Penalty: The Case of Carlos DeLuna

“Maybe one day the truth will come out. I’m hoping it will. If I end up getting executed for this, I don’t think it’s right. ” A man called Carlos DeLuna made his comment a couple years before his execution. In February 1983, Wanda Lopez was killed at a gas station in Texas. One witness argued that he saw a Spanish man, maybe Deluna, running out of the station. About 40 minutes later, Carlos Deluna was arrested near the gas station and sentenced to death in 1989. Deluna protested that he did not commit the crime, however, he was arrested. He even went further, he named the culprit, a violent criminal named Carlos Hernandez. However, the chief prosecutor believed that Hernandez did not exist; he was only a “figment of DeLuna's imagination.” About four years later the execution of Carlos Deluna, Hernandez admitted his crime of killing Lopez. Would everything be different if Deluna was not sentenced to death, but just imprisoned? About 40% of Americans are against capital punishment, and they believe that it is unnecessary and unreasonable because it does not provide space to go back or remedy, in case of occasional miscarriage. Throughout time and history, the topic of revenge had been debated intensely. The death penalty has been considered to be a necessary punishment to deter future crimes and beneficial for society. In the United States, for instance, there have been strong arguments about whether the absence or the presence of capital punishment brings positive and significant changes for the society. According to the recent issues in the US, however, the death penalty is particularly controversial regarding the possibility to deter future crime, its “convenience”, and justice system

One of the main purposes of the presence o...

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...the condemned criminal generally ends with its execution, and the practice of death penalty avoids any chance of remedy. In other words, with the execution, the truth might be taken with the inmate’s life forever. The miscarriage of justice might cause further crime, since the real criminal is still beyond the arm of the law. According to the research, 100 of the 195 independent states in the UN have abolished capital punishment, and about 40 states practice it. The existence or absence of capital punishment in the legal system does not bring any significant negative effect. Like the 48 states in the UN, they have not executed people for more than 10 years, but they maintain capital punishment as a symbol of deterrence. The recent conditions in the United States show that the existence of capital punishment in the legal system does not affect the homicide rate.