Throughout our life time, most people will hear the sayings "don't fight fire with fire" and "two wrongs don't make a right". Being a good example for those who look up to you is crucial, especially for those in position of power. Using the death penalty as a form of punishment is not setting a good example. Now I am not saying that murder is okay and that murderers shouldn't be punished; in fact I'm saying just the opposite. Murder is not okay and the death penalty is murder. The death penalty should be completely abolished in the United States just like it is in so many other countries around the world. 

The death penalty first came about in the United States in the 1600s but in the mid-1800s the number started to increase. There are multiple ways of carrying out the death penalty- hanging, firing squad and electric chair- but the most common now is lethal injection. The first use was in 1982 when Texas executed Charles Brooks Jr. Lethal injection is when you inject someone with a lethal amount of drugs to stop their heart. There are two different types of lethal injection used today. One is using one large dose of a barbiturate, which is a sleep-inducing drug. The second way is using a three-drug protocol which is when the prisoner is given a drug to make them unconscious, then two drugs to freeze the muscles and then stop the heart. (DPIC, 1) 

Some states in the United States have already abolished the death penalty. So far 19 of the 50 states have death penalty abolished, but out of the 31 states remaining only 7 had executions in 2014. In 2014 The United States was ranked 5 in having the most confirmed executions. We were ranked behind China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and then Iraq. The United States has also been ranked in the top 5 for most executions per year for the past ten years (DPIC, 2).

A court case that had a lot of influence on capital punishment was Furman vs. Georgia in 1972. This case was about a man named Henry Furman who broke into a family's home attempting to rob them. The homeowner woke up and as Furman tried to run away he dropped his gun and it went off, killing the homeowner. Furman told the police that the shooting was completely accidental but it was decided that since the murder happened during a robbery, that if Furman was found guilty of the murder, he could be sentenced to the death penalty. He was found guilty of murder and the court sentenced him to death. The case was heard by the United States Supreme Court who overturned the execution and they stated that "unless a uniform policy of determining who is eligible for capital punishment exists, the death penalty will be regarded as 'cruel and unusual punishment.'". This case is important in regards to capital punishment because it established some rules, like probable evidence against the defendant that the murder was intentional, that were needed.  (KidsLaw, 2)  

One of the main arguments against the death penalty is that is in fact more costly to carry out than life in prison is. The process that the state has to go through in order to finally get to the death takes years and cost so much more than holding a prisoner in prison for life. There are several different legal actions that have to take place, medical examiners have to check and recheck all the equipment and medicine to make sure it all works properly. On average it takes about 9 years for a prisoner to get to the execution. During those years the state has to keep paying for the criminal, it doesn't just stop. In death penalty cases that involve lethal injection, highly accredited doctors are not allowed to administer the lethal drugs because this falls under malpractice. Cases without the death penalty involved cost roughly $700,000 while those with the death penalty cost about $1.26 million; but executing someone can cost up to 10 times more than keeping them in prison in for life (DPIC, 5). The more humane thing to do with that money would be to give it to the family of the victim. They are going to have tons of bills and expenses to pay and instead of using that money to take another person's life, it should be used to help the grieving family. Also a lot of tax money goes into the administration of capital punishment, so if it were abolished that is more money that wouldn't be taken from the citizens. 

Besides the fact that the death penalty doesn't save any money, it is extremely barbaric and completely unnecessary. The Constitution says that no cruel or unusual punishment should be used and the act of killing someone with an overdose of drugs, a firing squad or by hanging certainly falls under cruel punishment. Lethal injection is thought of to be a quick and easy pain-free way out, when actually it isn't that at all. It can take up 20 minutes for the poison to run through the person's body and it is not pain-free. It depends how the convicts body reacts as to how long and how painful it is. Medical doctors are prohibited from administering the drugs in lethal injections because it goes against the Hippocratic Oath and some think that it would ruin the public's trust in them. Since medical personal cannot be the ones to give the drugs, technicians who are less experienced and do not have the knowledge required have to do the administering. This leads to the process being longer, the possibility of more mistakes and sometimes causes it to be more painful. Half the time the drugs are given properly which can lead to a clogged tubes or veins. (DPIC, 6). If the drugs for lethal injection aren't available, the court system may result to hanging. If the rope used in a hanging is too long or too short, it can decapitate the person or cause strangulation to take up to 45 minutes. Prolonging suffering by using an unnecessary form of punishment counts as cruel and unusual punishment. In some states, they still use the electric chair which is even more painful. In 1990 Jesse Tafero was sentenced to death by the electric chair. When the time came for him to die, the chair malfunctioned and Tafero suffered in the chair for 13 minutes before dying. The process took longer than expected and he didn't die immediately. This is so easily avoided; don't use capital punishment. Tafero suffered because the proper precautions weren't followed through. While I understand that he committed a crime and needs to be punished, but suffering for more than 10 minutes in the electric chair is beyond inhumane (Listverse Staff, 3).  

The color of someone's skin plays a huge role in many death penalty cases. The race of the victim and the accused really has a determining factor if the accused gets the death penalty or not. Studies show that "As of October 2002, 12 people have been executed where the defendant was white and the murder victim black, compared with 178 black defendants executed for murders with white victims." (ACLU, 2). Studies taken in Maryland, North Carolina and8 New Jersey showed that the likelihood of the death penalty is significantly increased if the victim is white (ACLU, 3). Minorities are much more likely to be punished with the death penalty and about 50% of the people on death row from 2002 to 2006 were African American (ACLU, 3).

Capital punishment goes against almost all religions. In Christianity, the Bible says that God is the only judge and all sin is equal in His eyes. That means that no one should get to play God's role and decide who lives and who dies. Buddhist believe all living things deserve to live and you are supposed to avoid killing or hurting living things. They say that everything wishes to live just like you do. Hindus practice non-violence and try and abstain from hurting or causing harm to anything. The list can go on and on but those are just a few. The majority of religions are against harming or killing anything that is living, which includes killing in the sense of the death penalty.

Capital punishment is costly, racist and inhumane but it also is unfair. There isn't a set system for determining who gets the death penalty and who doesn't. There aren't specific crimes that are punished with capital punishment. It is all circumstantial which makes it very biased and unfair to all. If the people are going to punish one murderer with death penalty and not the next then the death penalty should not be implemented at all. It isn't fair for two people to commit the same crime and only one be sentenced to death and the other gets life in prison. For example, not all murder cases are punished with death penalty but some are. The point of prison is to pay for the crimes that person has committed and if some criminals are punished to the death penalty they miss out on having to pay for what they did.

If the goal of the death penalty is the punish people who have committed heinous crimes, life in prison without the possibility of parole achieves the same effect but in a more humane manor. The one who committed the crime would be locked away for the rest of his or her life and would never be able to hurt anyone ever again. They would be forced to sit in their cell with nothing to do except think about the horrible things they did in their lifetime. If you think about it, the death penalty is the easy way out. That person commits this horrible crime and then is killed and doesn't have to pay the price for it. They wouldn't have to suffer the consequences and pay for what they did. The point of prison is giving up your time and paying your debts back to society. If the accused never has to give the rest of his life back to society then he isn't learning anything, basically getting the easy way out. Most people would rather die than spend their life in prison so giving the rapists and murderers the opportunity to skip out on taking responsibility is unjust.

Death is permanent and there is no going back once you have taken someone's life. If you are going to give someone the death penalty, you need to be one hundred percent certain that the person is guilty of the crime presented. If not, then an innocent person could be killed and when that happens innocent lives are taken. That is a risk our criminal justice system should not be willing to take because then not only have you killed someone who was innocent, the real criminal is still out there. As of a new study done in 2014, about 4% of all people sentenced to the death penalty are innocent (Lopatto, 3). This may seem like a very small percentage, but if the judicial system is going implement something as serious as the death penalty, they need to be sure that everyone killed is guilty. Innocent people don't need to be dying; not 4% not 2% not even 1 person of all people killed with capital punishment. 

There have been multiple instances where someone is executed and then afterward the justice system discovers that they were innocent the whole time. In 1980 in St. Louis Missouri a man named Quinton Moss was killed in a drive by shooting. The alleged killer was Larry Griffin who was incarcerated because a white career criminal, someone convicted of a new crime after being convicted of one or more crimes previously, named Robert Fitzgerald states that he was at the crime scene. Fitzgerald says he saw Griffin shoot Moss with his right hand, although Griffin was left-handed. Because Griffin's attorney had never defended a man accused of murder, he failed to bring in an alibi and question the hand the gun was shot with. All the evidence against Griffin was circumstantial and his fingerprints weren't on the car or the weapon. There were also two witnesses who said that Griffin wasn't the murderer and they also said that they knew who the murderer was but the prosecutor didn't address the witnesses. Griffin was executed in June of 1995 and said he was innocent up until his death. In 2005 a professor at University of Michigan Law School reopened the case and investigated, concluding that Griffin was innocent the whole time (Listverse Staff, 1).

Another example of an innocent person being executed was in 1983 when Carlos De Luna was convicted for the murder of Wanda Lopez. De Luna had just been released from prison and was violating his parole by drinking in public but told the police he didn't kill Lopez and told them who did. The crime scene was covered in blood but De Luna had no blood on him. He was taken into custody too quickly to have been able to clean himself up. The only evidence the police had against De Luna was an eyewitness who told the police that De Luna was the right guy. This witness said that after he had been told by the police that De Luna was the killer. Having prior knowledge of the case or being told information about it makes any statement immiscible. During the trial, De Luna told the court that Carlos Hernandez was the man he saw inside of the gas station with Lopez. Both De Luna and Hernandez looked very similar and it was later discovered that Hernandez and Lopez had a romantic relationship. It is possible that Hernandez and Lopez had gotten into a fight that night that would have led to the attack. Hernandez also had a long history of knife attacks similar to this one and even told his friends and family that he had committed this murder. De Luna's lawyers knew about Hernandez's previous record but never even looked into it. De Luna was executed in 198 9 in Texas as an innocent man (Listverse Staff, 2).  

Death penalty advocates argue that it is necessary because the punishment should fit the crime, so that means murderers should be punished with death. Punishing horrible crimes with death just shows that it is okay to fight violence with more violence. Taking someone's life because they took one doesn't make either murder okay and it doesn't bring the victim back. Nothing good comes from capital punishment. All that comes from it is that another life was lost and now someone has to carry that with them for their whole life. No one has the right to take someone's life, not even the government. Each life is precious and should be treated as such. 

It is commonly thought that using capital punishment will make people less likely to commit these horrendous crimes but that isn't the case. First of all, not that many states actually enforce the death penalty so it isn't guaranteed across the nation; and the states who do implement the death penalty don't have a lower crime rate. Secondly, there is not a regulation with what kinds of crimes are punished with the death penalty; that instability causes there to be a lack of association between death penalty and crimes. Lastly criminals can be on death row for decades which causes it to seem like a less immediate punishment. 

There are so many negatives surrounding the death penalty with very little benefits that can be given up. The death penalty should be abolished and the serious crimes should be punished with life in prison without parole. There are so many states and countries that have already abolished the death penalty. The rest of The United States needs to follow suit and abolish it as well

. The death penalty no longer serves a purpose and because of the irregularities in the process it is very unfair to the defendants. Hate and crime are a huge issue in the world and especially our country. By abolishing the death penalty we would set a better example for the people in our country. 

Growing up people are taught kindness, to treat each person with respect and to do no harm. We learned that fighting fire with fire is never the solution. Our country is built on a set of amendments and the eighth amendment prohibits the government from imposing cruel and unusual punishment. Capital punishment is outdated and no longer a needed source of punishment. The use of a firing squad, lethal injection, or electric chair definitely fall under cruel and unusual punishment. There are no strict regulations for how it is determined and it can cost up to 10 times more than life in prison. We as a country need to follow the other 19 states and abolish the death penalty completely. Hopefully, by doing so we can focus on trying to better our country and find more positive and helpful ways to lower the crime rate. It is ironic that we punish murder with more murder. Fighting fire with fire doesn't do anything but cause more damage. 

