Persuasive Essay: It's Time To Stop The Death Penalty

Horrific crimes are committed across the United States every year and deciding on the correct punishment can be difficult. There are no perfect guidelines for how to lawfully punish someone and this is where the conflict of capital punishment, otherwise referred to as the death penalty arises. Capital punishment is a government-sanctioned practice where a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime (Capital Punishment). If there are humans on Earth there surely will be people doing evil things and we need to have consequences to keep order in our complex society. We are one country, united and through compromise we can find a solution that will aim to satisfy all parties involved to make the death penalty a truthful, seamless …show more content…
The possibility that a mix up of DNA or not having a verifiable alibi can result with you being apprehended, possibly found guilty and even sentenced to death is unspeakable. However, the bigger problem with capital punishment is that its ethically controversial. Do we kill a person to punish them for killing a person or do we let them live out their days in some variation of a jailed sentence? This can seem bizarre as it is a long drawn out, stagnant process of killing murderers. It is sometimes compared to the eye for an eye principle which is seen by many as barbaric and uncivilized for the society we project ourselves to be. Gary Ridgway, also known as The Green River Killer, was the most notorious serial killer in American history who openly confessed to killing seventy-one women and did not receive the death penalty. The Lineup’s rendition of The Green River Killer’s story states that “in order to avoid the death penalty, Ridgway agreed to a plea bargain…helping police find the missing bodies of several of his victims” (Gary Ridgway). That trivial information he offered is nothing in comparison to the damage he did over his killing spree. Ridgway