The Champion’s Blog (You already know who dis is)

            The death penalty doesn’t serve anyone any justice. It is just a pricey, easy and nonproductive way to get rid of someone who has committed a horrible crime. Execution is quick and painless, but living in prison your whole life can drive someone nuts. Sure the person may deserve to die for the crimes they have committed but it is more just to make the person sit in a cell their whole life thinking about what they did. That makes more sense than just killing the person for what they have done, that serves no justice, the person is not having to live with what they did, they are getting an easy way out of the crime they have committed.

            The death penalty does not serve its main purpose, which is to lower murder rate. The murder rate in U.S. states with the death penalty is surprisingly higher than that of non-death penalty states. In 1999 data showed that the average of murder rates per 100,000 population in death penalty states is 5.5, when on the other side non-death penalty states have an average of 3.6 (DeathPenaltyInfo). Although in the past ten years it is evident that as the number of executions in the U.S. goes up the murder rate goes down, it still shows as whole that death penalty states have a higher murder rate than the non-death penalty states. As you read you must remember I am not arguing that the death penalty is unjust, my argument is that it is more painful for the criminal on death row to sit in a cell there whole life having to be reminded of what they have done rather than to let them off easy by killing them.

            Based on this, is it necessary to spend two to three million dollars extra on sentencing a criminal to death compared to the cost of imprisoning someone for life (AMIUSA). That comes out of the taxpayers money as well, it was estimated that the death penalty cost Maryland’s taxpayers 186 million dollars between 1978 and 1999. In California the system costs $137 million a year, it would cost around $11.5 million for a system that doesn’t incorporate the death penalty (AMIUSA). Spending taxpayer’s money on the death penalty takes money that could be used for necessary issues such as medical care, education, helping keep people off the streets. There are much more important things to focus our money on rather than an easy way to get rid of killers or rapists.

            Lain Murray, a writer for The American Enterprise,  said, “Overall, 67% of people support for the death penalty in the U.S., according to one poll (not the latest, for which it would be lower– I’m taking this from my 2003 post). The opposing side would say it should be up to the people of the individual states to decide if the death penalty should be enforced. Over the past decade public opinion polls have generally shown that a majority of Americans spread across the U.S. favor capital punishment over no capital punishment (CollegiateTimes). As of April 27^th, the United States, there are 16 states that have banned the death penalty and 34 states that remain to keep capital punishment (GaleNet). With this is it obvious that there are more people in the U.S. that agree with the death penalty than people that don’t. This may be true, but data shows the number of states that use the death penalty has also been decreasing since 2004. In the last 5 years two states have stopped using the death penalty.  (JusticeUAA). More states will eventually stop using the penalty as they see the increase in the money they save and justice they serve by not using the death penalty.

            As you have seen justice is not being served by using the death penalty as a punishment for heinous crimes. The statistics have proven that in states that use the death penalty the murder rate is higher than the murder rate in states that don’t use capital punishment. Finally after learning the ineffectiveness of the death penalty, reflect back on the thought of is it necessary to spend extra money on the use of capital punishment, or should we invest the taxpayer’s money in things more important. The decided that I will send a message to the governor of Washington state, Christine Gregiore and I will present the same facts in my letter. Facts are facts and they can tell a lot about what is right and what is be wrong.