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The Death Penalty: An Irreversible, Unlawful Tragedy

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McFarland High School

The Death Penalty:
An Irreversible, Unlawful Tragedy

Christopher Pahnke
Composition
Mr.Jenkins
10 November 2015
Christopher Pahnke
Mr. Jenkins
Composition
10 November 2015
The Death Penalty: An Irreversible, Unlawful Tragedy There are two choices when it comes to the death penalty; supporting capital punishment or preferring a life sentence. There are many sides that support both arguments for the issue. Some of those include morality, constitutionality, innocence, the cost of the death penalty, and other factors like attorney quality or an unfair trial. (Deathpenalty.procon.org) All of those factors affect the decision in different ways, but all have their own characteristics. Every factor needs to be included in …show more content…
There is a significant gap between the pricing of life in prison and the death penalty. To be punished by death there has to be more time for a pretrial and more attorneys are needed. In addition to that there is a requirement that says two trials are needed for the purpose of choosing the punishment and establishing the guilt. All of those things require time and money. The money does not just come from nowhere, it is directly coming from the taxpayers in the U.S. Deathpenaltyinfo.org also shows that defense costs for death penalty trials in Kansas averaged about $400,000 per case, compared to $100,000 per case when the death penalty was not sought. (Kansas Judicial Council, 2014). That is a 4:1 ratio and can easily be avoided by life imprisonment. Another outstanding statistic is that in Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, …show more content…
The way the world acts is based of of evil ideas and culture. The death penalty cannot be negotiated. It is immoral and does not follow any human rights. Killing a human is against natural rights and if there are no natural rights then there is nothing good to live for. As the innovator of natural law John Locke said “All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his, life, health, liberty, or possessions.” (John Locke) Morality and natural law fall right into the constitution. Constitutionality means following the constitution and Capital Punishment does not abide by those rules. The 8th and 14th amendments discuss cruel and unusual punishment and do not specifically specify what that is defined as. If it is not defined then it may be hard to follow, but that thought goes back to morals and values. If there are no morals or values then there is no right or wrong. That means nothing matters and we do not have a civil society anymore. Some things fall under conscious decisions like not following the constitution, but others are mistakes are made by accident or a bad trial. There is human error and that sometimes cannot be avoided by eliminating the opportunity for it is our choice. Every year there are innocent people on death row resulting from either a judgmental jury, a bad trial, or not having the money to afford a decent attorney. Money is needed for a good legal team, but where it is really

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