California Death Penalty

The Death Penalty Isn’t worth it; period. The death penalty has been a highly controversial issue in the past years in the United States. However, some states like California have taken an initiative and made the Capital Punishment law take action. An author for the Los Angeles Times, verbalizes about the California death penalty in her article “San Quentin plans psychiatric hospital for death row inmates.” Paula Mitchell states: “California has the largest death row in the country (741 inmates) and has not had an execution since 2006 because of problems with its lethal injection protocol” (Mitchell). What many citizens don’t take into consideration are the executioners which have to carry out these laws. Executions have an immense impact

Not only do executions have an impact on the executioners but on many people. For example, the jurors of the case have to make the excruciating decision of whether to keep someone alive or send them to death row. Another party that is affected are the justices’ that decide whether it is a fair conviction given by the jury in order to keep proceeding with the case. Similarly, governors are affected because after someone has been sentenced to death row, they still have an opportunity to live if he/she obtains a grant of clemency by the governor (“I Ordered Death in Georgia”). Either way this decision is nerve wrecking and stays in the governors heads the rest of their lives. The article on capital punishment points out that even, “Corrections officers undoubtedly have stressful jobs. One recent report indicates that 31 percent of correctional officers have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Comparing that to the rate of PTSD among returning Iraq war veterans, which is 20 percent, illustrates the enormity of the psychological toll exacted on prison staff” (Mitchell).This simple fact that prison staff have greater percentage of PTSD than war veterans is flabbergasting. The Death Penalty

“The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people(Quigley).” In a study that was observed in Texas, the probably was higher for defendants that were black men to be convicted to death sentence than a white man, and death was more likely to be a conviction for white victims than black victims (Phillips). The the same study we see that, “The multivariate models indicate that the odds of seeking death are 43 percent lower on behalf of black victims compared to white victims. The transformation occurred because black victims were twice as likely to be killed in murders that had multiple victims. So the DA sought death less on behalf of black victims than white victims. The bar was set higher for seeking death on behalf of black victims.” As we can observe there is prejudice in the justice system, and is a factor we must examine closely in capital punishment trials. Although we may not realize it, we all have stereotypes filed somewhere in our memory and we all hold prejudices, we are blind to facts and we must learn to overcome that. There are numerous convictions in which criminals are convicted unjustly because of the DA’s bias. In the same we need to establish a system of checks and balances in the Judicial system, so that we can achieve the least