Death Penalty

Death Penalty

Last Rites or No Right?
The death penalty exists in society today as the ultimate punishment handed down to murderers and others who commit such acts as espionage, treason, and rape.   In the United State of America, the men and women who carry out the most heinous of criminal acts are charged with a capital offense and, upon conviction, sentenced to capital punishment, which is death by execution.   Execution by way of lethal injection is the most common way for contemporary nations to terminate the lives of the worst criminals.   In decades past, and within the borders of states around the world, more primitive methods have been employed in an effort to achieve the same end.   The once widely-used forms of execution include death by hanging, death by stoning, death by electric shock, and death by way of firing squad.   This world, so overly-consumed in its need for safety, acknowledges the benefits of ending life but, all the while, ignores its drawbacks.   Capital punishment should doubtlessly be abolished, allowed only to become part of our growing history.   Some, though not all reasons, include extreme cost, international criticism, an equally severe, existing life sentence in prison, and many accidental executions.  
The legal expense of capital punishment is reason enough to do away with what is seemingly an unnecessary form of castigation.   Although American taxpayers dole out an immense sum of money for safety, and there is nothing to fear in an executed man, one must wonder how much money is needlessly being thrown away.   The money that the nation spends on such things as legal paperwork, hiring public defenders, and separating death row inmates could cover the costs of life imprisonment.   Citizens are spending excessive amounts of money on the executions of men who will never again contribute to society in any meaningful way.   In 1988, the New York Times ran an article about a study that found “the cost of death-penalty trials…appeals…[and] separate places...