believe a person can change their bad ways to good ways.The death penalty is unfair to the mentally retarded and mentally ill people as well. People who are legally classified as mentally retarded or ill should not be executed or even be held criminally responsible for their actions. These people do not know what they are doing and the court system should not take their life away because of their handicap. Amnesty International says that, "At least 45 people diagnosed as mentally ill or with mental retardation have been executed in the US since 1983". I cant see executing someone who does not know what they have done. That is like killing a baby. Instead of killing these people we need to help them get themselves together.The cost of executing a person is shameful. In Florida alone, "they spend about $3.2 million on each death row inmate compared to about $535,000 for an average of 40 years for each prisoner sentenced to life". It costs more for a person to be executed than to spend life in prison, so why do we have the death penalty? Now that the judicial system wants to add more crimes to the list of capital offenses, more people will be executed and the cost will rise higher than its current cost.I believe that if you exchange the death penalty for life in prison with no parole as the sentence for capital offenders we would have a more just nation. I think that it would solve some problems arising from groups and organizations that do not agree with judicial actions towards the death penalty. This way there will be no people wrongfully murdered and people the real murders will be locked up for life. Also, for those who are found guilty and are truly innocent, this gives them a chance to prove their innocence without being killed first. There is no reason why people have to be executed anyway. Instead, they should be helped to become more suitable to handle the society and the problems they will face....
