To Die Or Not To Die

2 Pages 567 Words

To Die or Not To Die


For as long as I can remember there has been much controversy surrounding the death penalty. Many feel that nobody should have the right to decide who lives, and who dies. I personally feel that when someone commits a heinous crime, they alone are choosing death, not the jury. Every once in a while when I hear about a murder, I think about how traumatized and forever changed the lives of those involved are. I also ponder why our tax dollars contribute to the well-being of criminals on death row. But most of all, I think about the fact that a person who takes away another person’s life does not deserve to live.
An obsessed ex-husband kills his ex-wife’s current husband, because he feels that if he cannot have her, then no one can. This woman’s life will never be the same. This woman will never get her husband back, not to mention her life. A parent whose child has been ruthlessly murdered as a result of a kidnapping gone wrong will never see his child grow old. The agony of that child’s death will be with them forever. Or how about a teller, who during a bank robbery, witnessed the bank’s security officer getting shot in the head because he could not find the safe key soon enough. Will she ever be able to walk into a bank again, without having a memory flash of that awful day? Probably not. These are all people, whose lives will forever be changed, unfortunately not for the better.
Another element that infuriates me is that our tax dollars contribute to keeping murderers alive in prison. There are incarcerated people who have better lives than hard-working, law-abiding, contributing citizens in our society. A woman, whose husband left her and her three children for another woman, is resorted to working two jobs. Even then, she and her three children can barely make ends meet each month. Where is the fairness in that? Think about how much more money would be going to schools and e...