Nicholas Akin

5th Hour Government

March 25, 2019

There are a lot of people that are not for the death penalty. The death penalty is not

very effective for many reasons. Most of them think that is not morally right and that it is

basically murder. There are others who think that it is not very effective and not cost

efficient. There are also some who state that the effect of the death penalty cannot be

reversed. There are many good reasons for why the death penalty should not be continued.

These are only a few reasons why people think that it should be made illegal.

Most people do not think that the death penalty is very effective. They think that is does

not make a big difference in the crime rates, and that people are still doing the same thing.

“No empirical evidence anywhere [in the world] has suggested that the death penalty

deters crime, De Lima said in a statement”(“Pro and Con of Death Penalty”). This means

that the death penalty has made no significant change in the crime rate. There has not been

any reason for us to believe that the death penalty has changed the way criminals think.

There has not been a change in the number of serious crimes committed. The criminals are

not paying attention to the punishments that are being given. If they are going to commit

the crime the crime they usually do not care what the punishment is. They might even think

that they are going to die while committing the crime anyway. Some people suggest that

putting them behind bars for the rest of their lives will make a bigger impact than pursuing

the death penalty. “Putting individuals behind bars for life without parole is punishment

enough for those involved in the illegal drug trade, human trafficking, sex-related offenses,
serial killings and mass murders, she said” (“Pro and Con of Death Penalty”). People think

that they should not be killed for their actions, but they should be in jail for the rest of their

lives.

Not only is the death penalty not very effective against the rate of crime, it also is not very

cost efficient either. It takes more money for the government to enforce the death penalty

than to keep the person in jail for the rest of their life. “Olsen says the death penalty is

costly and ineffective, noting that the state public defender office spends about $750,000 a

year in taxpayer money on capital cases” (“Bill to Repeal”). The source then goes on to state

that they would save about this amount of money if they were to eliminate the death

penalty. The states could be using this money to take measures to make these crimes less

likely to happen. This amount of money could be used to make places safer so that these

crimes are harder to commit. So far it does not seem to be a very ineffective way to keep a

criminal from ever hurting someone ever again. There has to be a more effective and

efficient way to keep criminals from committing the same crimes.

Other people say that the effects from the death penalty are irreversible. If a mistake was

made and the wrong person was convicted then the person was basically killed for no

reason. There can be no mistakes when it come to sentencing someone to the death

penalty, and it is possible to have mistakes because everyone is human and we all make

them. Larry Peterson told New Jersey’s Death Penalty Study Commission that, "you can't

turn around and correct the wrong that has been done" (Bewley). If someone is going to be

killed for something that they did not do then that could be called murder. This is

something that cannot happen when it comes to the taking of someone’s life. There has to
be 100 percent certainty that the person being convicted committed the crime. This is one

thing in life that cannot have any mistakes in it. Most things can be worked around if there

is a mistake made, but it is not like the person could be brought back to life. These effects

can not only ruin the life of the person, but could ruin the lives of the family if they prove

that he was innocent. “Nationwide, 182 post-conviction exonerations have been based on

DNA testing, said Scheck, who worked on Peterson's case” (Bewley). These families will

never trust the justice system ever again. They cannot put faith in something that has

completely ruined the life of a person that they loved.

There are many more reasons that people are not for the death penalty. Although all of

the reasonings behind why people are against the death penalty these are some of the more

important ones. There are many reasons why the death penalty has not been effective. The

crimes rates have not changed at all and the amount of money being spent is just

ridiculous. These are just a few reasons why it has not been very effective. There are many

different ways that the crime rate could be effected. There does not have to be a death

sentence to teach people a lesson about the crimes that they commit. It may not seem that

there is a worse punishment than being killed, but some of the criminals that commit the

more serious crimes may want to die anyway and we are pretty much helping them.