Death Penalty

3 Pages 780 Words

To kill or not to kill is a extremely arguable question in society today. This question has been asked for years and will be asked for many years to come. Capital punishment has been in America since the early seventeenth century. The first recorded execution in America was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608.Tthe cost of keeping a 25-year-old inmate for 50 years at amounts to $805,000. Assuming 75 years as an average life span, the $805,000 figure would be the cost of life in prison. So roughly it is costing us $2 million more to execute someone than it would cost to keep them in jail for life. So why do we use capital punishment?
One reason why the death penalty is so controversial is because many people feel it is a cruel way of punishment and it is not necessary, even if the crime is a murder, they believe there are other ways of conviction besides execution. In the case of an accidental death, feelings are that the perpetrators should have the right to live, but have to face each day with the fact that they killed someone weighing on their conscience. On the other hand, such as with an intended murder, the ideas are somewhat similar. They believe the murderer doesn’t deserve the death penalty. Chances are if a person is insane enough to kill another human being in the first place, they aren’t going to care what happens to them. They realize that their execution, in most cases, is going to be short and painless. This is not a punishment for someone who has inflicted severe pain upon someone else’s life life. Our court system, after giving a life sentence without parole, should not let these killers have the comforts they have in jail. They should be treated more or less like animals in a way. Therefore, let the ones who institute a crime unwillingly live, but do not let the punishment be as severe as it would for a voluntary criminal.

There are a many people who believe that increasin...