is only a hope, not a plan of action, and hope is not enough to base a criminal justice system on (Kronenwetter, 63). “We punish [murderers] not for what they may or may not do in the future but for what they have done” (Kronenwetter, 63).“Life imprisonment also becomes underserved over time. A person who committed a murder when twenty years old and is executed within five years--far too long and cruel a delay in my opinion--is, when executed, still the person who committed the crime for which he is punished. His identity changes little in five years. However, a person who committed a murder when he was twenty years old and is kept in prison when sixty years old, is no longer the same person who committed the crime for which he is still being punished. The sexagenarian is unlikely to have much in common with the twenty-year-old for whose act he is being punished; his legal identity no longer reflects reality. Personality and actual identity are not that continuous. In effect, we punish an innocent sexagenarian who does not deserve punishment, instead of a guilty twenty-year-old who did. This spectacle should offend our moral sensibilities more than the deserved execution of the twenty-year-old. Those who deserve the death penalty should be executed while they deserve it, no kept in prison when thy no longer deserve any punishment” (van den Haag, 213).There is documented fact that, once out on parole, former inmates will commit crime again. In 1969, Stanton studied five hundred fourteen murderers convicted of second-degree murder. After parole, 115 of those studied violated parole, two by murdering again (Lester, 118). “Of those arrested for murder in New York City in 1975-76, 85 had previously been arrested for killing” (Gottfried, 35). In 1988, Willie Horton was serving a life sentence in a Massachusetts prison. Horton was released for short periods of time on a special program. Horto...
