By: Rebecca Jordan
Jimmy Lee Gray of Mississippi died banging his head against a steel pole in the gas chamber where he was ordered to be asphyxiated, while reporters counted his screams and watched as he took his last breath. Jesse Joseph Tafero departed through the means of electrocution, after six-inch flames took over his head and three shocks of power were required to stop his breathing. These are a few of the countless botched executions ordered and carried out by the United States criminal justice system. The death penalty is a punishment reserved for the most heinous crimes committed, but it is ineffective in benefiting the country, expensive, and defies the Constitution that our nation was solely based on in 1791.
As previously mentioned, the death penalty itself can go horribly wrong and when it does go wrong, the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is questioned. The constitution states that no person shall be subject to cruel or unusual punishment under the criminal justice system, but that is exactly what is happening. The founding fathers of our country wrote this to ensure protection of citizens because the “eye for an eye” principal was determined to be out dated and immoral. So why is it that we still treat people today with such barbarity?
Michael L. Radelet, a professor at the University of Colorado, supplies 46 examples of botched executions, some of them well-known instances and others, simply forgotten. Some people may say that the people being subject to the torture of capital punishment deserve it, but one person’s actions, no matter how dreadful, doesn’t justify somebody to return the treatment. No human being deserves to leave this world in such horrid conditions, with their loved ones left to watch in despair, fully knowing they can do nothing to comfort the individual. Imagine if it was your aunt or uncle, or even your mom or dad being executed. Imagine the pain of knowing you can’t do anything to stop the torture they are about to endure. Imagine the pain of knowing that somebody, with so much life ahead of them is about to be killed in the most gruesome, insensitive way.Next, the death penalty has been proven to be erroneous in eliminating the right criminals. Amnesty International provides the information that from 1973 to 2012, there were one hundred and forty people who have been sentenced to death row, but taken off when they were found to be wrongfully convicted. The situation these people have been put in is unimaginable, atrocious, and honestly quite embarrassing for the U.S. However, the number of people who have been found innocent in time to save their lives is nothing compared to the 1,200 people that have been executed and then later proven innocent (Amnesty International). Imagine being in the position of a person accused for a crime they did not commit or one which they are not responsible for, yet still knowing that there is nothing they can do to prove their innocence.
The death penalty’s execution (no pun intended) is overall, too reliant on the trustiness of a system that is proven to be erroneous, and doesn’t allow room for adjustments or appeals once the sentence has been fulfilled. The capital punishment is too extreme, because as we know, it cannot be undone. Appeals in trial, pleas of innocence, and even evidence of innocence, mean nothing when an individual, wrongfully accused or not, has already been executed. Our justice system has been very publicly proven to be faulty in the past and this system doesn’t allow for opportunity to fix mistakes. The death penalty is simply too permanent of a solution to be right for this country’s justice system.
The people who believe the death penalty is an asset to the criminal justice system argue that executing criminals is less expensive than housing them in prison for the rest of their lives. This is false because the price of appeals compared to the execution itself is outrageously expensive. Take the state of California; for instance, from 1978 to 2012, the total of trial costs was $1.94 billion, $925 million for state appeals and petitions, $775 for federal appeals, and $1 billion in costs of the executions themselves. The comparative sentence of life without parole would save $170 million each year, which would save the state $5 billion in the 20 years following 2012. Imagine all the beneficial, Constitutional, practical things the state could do with that money… such as something to help the drought, which is becoming more and more of a problem for the state of California.
“The death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it”. This quote raises great controversy from people who support the death penalty because it questions the morality of our system and shows the obvious irony that is occurring. It makes a lot of sense, because why would the U.S. think that killing people in such horrid ways would make our country better and more peaceful? The death penalty is causing distress and violence, especially in the lives of people and families directly affected by it.
Both the idea of the death penalty and the system of which it is carried out by are wrong. Since this system of justice is active in countries all around the world, and there are strong supporters of it, the abolishment of the death penalty is not in the world or even the United States’ near future. This means that innocent people, and those not so innocent, will continue to be murdered under the power of government. However, changes to the way these people are executed can and need to be made in the near future because nobody can deny that the death penalty violates an individual’s rights by taking away the peace that each human is entitled to as they die. This system needs a serious adjustment to the courts that determine a person’s guilt, because it is defective. How many lives of innocent victims is the “justice” of capital punishment worth? And lastly, everybody can relate to having greed for money, so why are we spending money on expensive executions and appeals when it is wiser to simply house the criminals in prison?
