ay, who escaped form Stringtown, OK prison on March 16. Both serving life terms for homicide, they stole a vehicle, robbed a womans house for guns and car-jacked a pick-up with two rifles. When found by the police they held an elderly couple hostage on March 24, but eventually Gray gave up, while Davis committed suicide . Proponents then draw on peoples fears by telling them that jailbreaks are frequent for murderers and that states dont report escapes nationally and categorize them differently (Murdock). The main force of this argument is not based on the fact that murderers are escaping punishment, but the cases brought up all involve civilian hostages and horrifying encounters between people and the murderers. The death penalty proponents are playing with peoples fear. They want people to see murderers escaping from jail and looking for cars, guns, and hostages. It is the fear of murderers killing even after they are sentenced to life that proponents want to latch onto. The only way to keep people safe, within this mindset, is to kill the murderer swiftly before they have a chance to escape and murder again.Prison escapes are fairly rare. In all fifty states, from 1995-1999, there were only 36 prison escapes. 33 escapes involved inmates assigned to minimum security or inmates with work-permits for outside the prison. Only 11 percent of the escapes in this period occurred at Maximum Security Prisons . The issue that proponents for the Death Penalty plague peoples mind with, is a non-issue. Escape from prison is rare. Escape for a murderer, is almost impossible. No murderer is housed in a minimum-security prison, or allowed work release. When the Death Penalty is sought in a case, it is usually because of the extreme brutality in a crime. The criminals who would be given life sentences instead of the Death Penalty have almost no chance of escaping from prison. Death Penalty proponents prey upon peoples fears by citing...
