Death Penalty Essays: The Arguments Against Capital Punishment

Jesus Hernandez

Is it acceptable in any case to kill a possible innocent human? Capital Punishment is the sentencing of a man or woman to death instead of him or her serving time in a penitentiary for committing a serious crime like murder. This is an issue everyone should be concerned about because taking away someone’s life is serious and cannot be undone. This issue cannot be focused on by only the government because the citizens need to know how it is affecting them as well. Families could lose loved ones due to a death sentence, and the taxpayers have to pay out of their own pockets for the cost of the execution. People should be concerned about capital punishment because deciding to keep it or abolish it can “decide whether crime rates …show more content…
Also, citizens should decide whether the death penalty is being used justly or being unfairly used against certain people. The pro side for capital punishment believes that it should be allowed. People on the pro side believe that a person should pay for what act of violence they committed by taking away his or her life since that person took another life. These people believe that the death penalty would be used as a form of deterrence meaning that the thought of dying for a crime would keep people from committing crime. A result from that, they believe, is that it would lower crime. An attorney, Steven D. Stewart had stated, “The inevitability of a mistake should not serve as grounds to eliminate the death penalty any more than the risk of having a fatal wreck should make automobiles illegal” (ProCon). He is referring to if the judicial system makes a mistake by sentencing an innocent person to death. Everyone makes mistakes so in his mind, the death penalty cannot be taken away or else many other things that could possibly cause mistakes should be taken away. On the other hand, the con side believes that the death penalty should be removed from the judicial system. People on the con side believe that a person …show more content…
Adherents of this position favor that there should be a law that allows for capital punishment, but it should be rarely used. Those in favor of this qualified position propose that the death penalty should only be used if the victim’s family wants the murderer to be sentenced to death, if the murderer has escaped prison before, or if the murderer is a serial killer. The reasons a proponent of this position has is that listening to the victim’s family might keep them at ease a little more knowing that they got some type of closure. Another reason someone with the beliefs of this position has is that if someone has already escaped prison before, then he or she should be given the death penalty because that person might be able to escape again. It would give the citizens a feeling of safety knowing a potential threat will not be on the loose again. Also, a serial killer should be sentenced to death because serial killers have committed the act of murder multiple times. After the first time someone might regret killing a human being but a serial killer feels no remorse for the victims he has hurt, and therefore, should just die. An adherent of this position may believe that it would be fair for the victim’s family to decide the fate of the criminal since the criminal decided the fate of the victim. Another belief held would be that it is the job of the