goodoleboy wrote:This is a piece I wrote at the end of my senior year in high school. It was supposed to be an editorial on the death penalty but I believe I start drifting around the middle a little. Amazing the stuff you find when you look through your documents folder.
The death penalty. Just mentioning this phrase in a crowd is sure to spark a debate on the ethics of killing another human being. Never mind that in this country, unlike others, to even be considered for the death penalty that person has to have already killed someone themselves. Now, in my logic at least, if you kill someone for any reason other than self defense there’s nothing to stop you from doing it again, so you should die as not just a punishment, but as a preventative measure as well, not in this day and age though. The liberal media has misconstrued the public so much that the old “eye for an eye” feeling that was so prevalent in this country from it’s beginning is starting to wane into non-existence, but there are those like me who believe in the “eye for an eye” way of thinking and that it should cover not just murder, but other harsh crimes that are just punished by the proverbial “slap on the wrist”, such as rape, child abuse, and multiple offenders who commit violent crimes. Another thing that makes no sense to many is the fact that even after convicted, those that do get the death penalty have five or six chances to get it overturned through appeals, all the while sitting on death row, wasting taxpayer money as they’re fed and clothed while spending more taxpayer money on their appeals process. I say we do away with the multiple appeals and drop the number down to two, add that to a limit on how long you can sit on death row, say two years, and that’s hundreds of thousands of dollars saved right there. While were at it though we could also bring back the old ways of the death penalty, firing squads, the electric chair, the gas chamber, even hangings. Lethal injection is a method of execution that, in my opinion, doesn’t actually punish the offender, because by the time they die, they’re already asleep. Let the families of the victims choose how the person dies, not the offender, there’s no closure when a family whose loved ones were killed in a violent act watches the person that did calmly die in their sleep. I say if you’re state doesn’t have the death penalty, work your hardest to get one, and if your state does have it, try to get it to cover a wider range of crimes, like rape and other violent crimes. The only way to curb criminal behavior is not to put them in jail or on death row for 15 years, but to set an example that if you kill or rape someone, we will kill you. Some people deserve a second chance, but then again there’s a small group who don’t.
Aside from the fact that you misconstrued what "eye for an eye" means, you go on to want a "life for an eye" doctrine.
You are right that executing a murderer is a deterrent of one.
If your 2 year limit for appeals from the time of conviction to execution was in place innocent people would die. Of course, you could say well we would never know they were innocent because we executed them before exonerating evidence was noted. However, knowing that innocent men have already been found beyond your 2 year limit, would that give pause to what you would like to see?
May I assume your philosophy is crime and retribution, rather than crime and punishment? We are supposedly a civilized society that's why families and loved ones don't get to decide the method of execution. But in your defense what if the loved ones wanted stoning, drawn and quartered, boiling oil, etc. Is this OK with you?
Your bottom line seems to be the harsher you are the greater the deterrence. That's fine, the problem is that position is not supported by the facts. Most police chiefs will tell you that the death penalty does nothing to deter crime, and that it's the least effective crime fighting tool. But it's the easiest one for politicians to show they are tough on crime. Murderers tend not to do a cost benefit analysis before killing someone.
Most research seems to show that the certainty of punishment is more of a deterrence than the severity of punishment.
Increasing the number of crimes for which the death penalty could be used could have a perverse effect to actually increase the murder rate.
Finally, I can tell you are not a criminal, but you did say you wrote it in high school. In your piece you put a criminal into your shoes instead of the other way around. Just a few thoughts.
Respectfully, Jim
