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Back to Subjects - Government & Politics

ProDeath Penalty

ProDeath Penalty On April 9, 2001, police in Leitchfield, Kentucky were called to Bratcher's Flea Market to report the discovery of the body of an infant. A septic tank worker had been pumping out the women's outhouse when his vacuum hose became stuck. When the man pulled the hose out of the toilet, the body of a male human infant was attached to the hose by the buttocks. An autopsy showed that the baby was a newborn at the time of death, and there were no apparent abnormalities that should have caused the baby's death by natural causes. Police discovered that Kathie, a regular vendor at the flea market, had been seen with blood on her clothing at the previous flea market session. She also appeared to be extremely weak, weak enough that she had to have help breaking down her table and loading her merchandise back into her vehicle at the end of the day. When questioned, Harless denied being the mother of the child. However, subsequent DNA testing on blood samples from Harless and the baby proved with a 99.99% certainty that she was the mother. Within two hours of having her blood drawn for testing, Kathie and her husband Doug Harless fled from their home in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky (STORY COURTESY OF AMERICAS MOST WANTED) I hope this story disturbed you as much as it did me. Today, Im going to be taking about the death penalty and why we should make more use of it. Capital punishment has been a cause for debate for many years, and people continue to disagree on the topic. There are many reasons why the death penalty should be used, but the three most important are that it deters potential murderers from committing crimes, it saves our government money in the long run, and most importantly, it guarantees that these convicted murderers will not kill again. Why does the United States need capital punishment? The main purpose of the death penalty is to protect the rights of victims ! John McAdams, a professor of Political Science at Marquette University sums it up best: “If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and in so doing would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call”(Pro-death penalty.com). Imposition of the death penalty is extraordinarily rare. Since 1967, there has been one execution for every 1600 murders, or 0.06%. There have been approximately 560,000 murders and 358 executions from 1967-1996 FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) & Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Approximately 5900 persons have been sentenced to death and 358 executed (from 1973-96). An average of 0.2% of those were executed every year during that time. 56 murderers were executed in 1995, a record number for the modern death penalty. This represented 1.8% of those on death row. The average time on death row for those 56 executed - 11 years, 2 months ("Capital Punishment 1995", BJS, 1996), an all time record of longevity, breaking the 1994 record of 10 years, 2 months. The death penalty saves the government money in the long run. A trial for a capital case (which is a case of first-degree murder) is already time consuming and expensive. This type of case usually takes around six weeks and constitutes between 3,000 and 5,000 pages of court records. Life in prison means an average of only 8 years in prison before they become eligible for parole. Imagine your child being killed or friend, or parent and their murderer only serving 6 years! Sadly, it happens all the time in our society. I believe that if criminals knew they would die for taking someones life, that the murder rate would go down significantly. I believe this because people with the thought of killing someone are thinking oh I wont die, ill just serve life in prison, but with the way our court system works ill be out in 6 years maybe sooner for good time and I also get cable tv, so it’s no big deal if I kill someones child, parent etc. When a convicted killer is given life without parole, the appeals made by attorneys on both sides, as well as appeals by the court and the judges involved, add up to millions of dollars our government wastes every year, not to mention money for the convicted murderer’s food and clothing, etc.(Jacobs, Landes, and Siegel). Lastly, I feel that capital punishment is the only way of making sure that a murderer will not kill again. Many people refute this argument by saying, “Well, what about life in prison without parole? Doesn’t that do the same thing?” Sadly, most convicted murderers are not given life prison terms, especially with their first murder. The average prison sentence for murder is less than six years!(Jacobs, Landes, and Siegel) The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that in 1998, thirty-seven states and the federal prison system held 3,452 prisoners under sentence of death, all of which had committed murder. Among the inmates with available criminal histories, two out of three had a prior felony conviction, and even more abhorrent, one in two had a prior homicide conviction(Bureau)! The cold hard truth is that if a convicted murderer is allowed to go free, he/she will most likely murder again. At least six percent of murderers kill again within six years of their release(Sentencing Info.). When the lady from Kansas gets caught, I hope they decide to use capital punishment on her, because she has 5 other kids, what would stop her from killing any of her other kids? In conclusion, the death penalty seems to me to be the best course of action in a murder case. As I have said, it is the best deterrent America employs against murder, it saves our country money, and most importantly, it guarantees that a murderer will not have the chance to kill again. America works itself into a frenzy about a convicted murderer’s right to life, but seem to have forgotten the rights of the innocent victim who was killed, making their deaths mere numbers on a newspaper page. Would you want the lady from Kansas to live? Bibliography:

Word Count: 1061

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