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Wolfgang Allred

Ms. Oberg

English

10 October 16

Is The Death Penalty Reasonable?

All societies have codes and customs that deal with wrongdoing within the society.

Usually, the severity of punishment or actions otherwise taken to discourage such behavior are

based upon the magnitude of the crime. Punishments vary from community service,

incarceration, public humiliation, fees or even torture depending on the culture. But often, the

most severe punishment possible is death. Sometimes a society’s justice system deems a crime

so heinous that the only solution is the execution of the perpetrator. However, I’m sure that it can

be agreed that sometimes there are mistakes made in conviction. The USA’s judicial system is

far from perfect, especially when it comes to lower level courts. Most western societies have

abandoned the death penalty, seeing it as a barbaric practice, yet the USA clings on. According

to the University of Michigan, at least an appalling 4% of those sentenced to death are innocent.

This begs the question: can a judicial system be trusted with the right to take away life if it is

imperfect enough to falsely convict a defendant? I argue that it is morally abhorrent that there is

even a possibility of an innocent individual getting executed. The USA’s judicial system cannot

be trusted with decisions of such magnitude if they are imperfect enough to falsely convict an

innocent. The alternative, life imprisonment, is much more viable because it is both more cost

effective and reversible.

In 1944, George Stinney Jr. became the youngest individual to be executed within the

United States during the 20th century. He was falsely accused of murdering two white girls,
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ages seven and eleven in the state of South Carolina. Stinney was convicted in less than 10

minutes by a racially biased and discriminatory trial with a jury composed entirely of white

males. A judge threw out the conviction in 2014 calling it a “great injustice”. Stinney is just one

of many instances where a convict was executed and then pardoned after death. More than 8,000

men and women have been put to death since the 1970’s and with an aforementioned 4%

predicted rate of innocence within death row, that puts the estimated number of innocent people

who’ve been killed unjustly within the the realm of some few hundred within the past 5 decades

alone. Many of those executed wrongly were victims of racial bias, much like Stinney. The

justice system in this country is clearly dysfunctional if it has that high of a false conviction rate

in capital punishment cases alone, and any system that displays bias is inherently flawed from

the beginning. Certainly not all courts are ineffective in this regard; however, the number of

instances where the outcome has been misguided is enough that the question of whether or not

the judicial system of this country can be allowed to carry out the death penalty must be asked.

It is certainly better to keep a most likely guilty person in a prison for life than to kill

someone who might be innocent. Even the remote possibility of a single execution of an innocent

cannot be tolerated, let alone hundreds. It violates the basic right to life set out in the

constitution, and all individuals should have a chance at being exonerated before the irrevocable

damage is done. If someone is executed then there is no compensation that can be made to repair

such damage, and the death of the innocent is simply another injustice linked to the true

perpetrator that escaped because someone else took the fall.

The alternative, keeping those to be executed in maximum security, is far more feasible. It costs

states several times more to keep prisoners on death row as well as carry out the execution than it

does to keep them incarcerated. In California, it costs $1.26 million dollars to carry out a death
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penalty case and each prisoner on death row costs about 90,000 dollars a year; furthermore, each

prisoner stays on death row for around at least 10 years. A case without the death penalty is

usually about $740,000 to carry out. Obviously, a death penalty is much more costly. This

further supports evidence that the death penalty is dangerous not only because it can kill innocent

individuals, but it is also grossly expensive compared to the alternative.

Some might contend that the death penalty is necessary to enact ‘appropriate retribution’

to someone who has committed an unforgivable crime. However, I would disagree with this

sentiment on the grounds that a life in prison is worse than death, especially in the brutal

American penal system. Being doomed to regimented life of solitude and misery is a punishment

that doesn’t seem as terrible as death at first, but after several decades of the same soul crushing

regiment that might be called ‘life’, most people would much prefer any means of escape no

matter the cost. In this regard, life imprisonment is infinitely worse than death, and it comes at a

much cheaper cost.

The power to take a human life is not a responsibility to be taken lightly, and giving it to

a court system that’s so blatantly and greatly flawed is simply ill advised and dangerous. It

would be much better to simply give indefinitely extended prison sentences to such convicts

because it is much more cost effective and if the defendant is found to be innocent at a later date,

they can be released and compensated. Some might argue that a death sentence is necessary

because it is ‘the only true retribution’ that can carry the magnitude of the most heinous crimes;

contrary to this, a life in prison is very possibly a worse sentence than death. Besides, is such a

vindication really necessary? I hope that we as a society can move past the archaic death penalty.
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Works Cited

Bever, Lindsey. "It Took 10 Minutes to Convict 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. It Took 70 Years

after His Execution to Exonerate Him." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 18 Dec.

2014. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/12/18/the-rush-job-

conviction-of-14-year-old-george-stinney-exonerated-70-years-after-execution

Pilkington, Ed. "US Death Row Study: 4% of Defendants Sentenced to Die Are Innocent." The

Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 28 Apr. 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/death-penalty-study-4-percent-

defendants-innocent

"Costs of the Death Penalty." Death Penalty Information Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty

ProCon.org. "Is the Death Penalty Immoral?" ProCon.org. 30 July 2008, 6:34 a.m.,

deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001038