Do Hyun Lee
Professor
Garrioch
English Writing
9 June 2012
Do
we really need a death penalty?
Death can be defined as the final
stage of one’s life. This ending stage can be natural, brutal or even decided
by other people. What we have to argue is whether human kinds have authority or
power to determine other humans’ end of lives. I believe that human kinds do
not have any rights to decide other people’s life. But in reality, there exists
a situation called “Death Penalty” which gives end to ones’ lives. I oppose to death
penalty, not only because human kinds do not have any rights but also the costs
and the fallacy of death penalty.
Death penalty is waste of the tax
revenue and the time. Until a man to be sentenced “Death,” there are many
trials until the person who was sentenced death exhausts all his appeals. Most
of the appeals are fruitless and those are just performed to delay and reduce the
penalty. The recent study by Professor James Liebman found
that over 2/3 of death penalty cases are overturned on appeal. And when these cases are retried, over 80% of the
defendants receive a sentence of less than death. There is DNA testing
which is needed to prove that the suspect is a definite criminal. According to the study form Duke University, it estimated that death
penalty trials take 3 to 5 times longer than typical murder trials.
“Time” is wasted due to fruitless trials.
Also the financial cost of the capital
trials which determines death penalty are six times costly than other murder
trials. In Kansas, for example, a capital trial costs $116,700 more than an
ordinary murder trial. This kind of problem is also existed in California. So the
California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice made a report to
show public that the death penalty is waste of money: “The report stated that
the state was spending $137 million per year on this failed system and that $95
million per year more was needed just to lessen the backlog of cases. That
would amount to spending $232 million per year where executions have averaged
less than one per year. The Commission estimated that a comparable system that
sentenced inmates to a maximum punishment of life without parole would cost
only $11.5 million per year.”
It is because of
complex pre-trial motions, lengthy jury selections, and expenses for the witnesses.
Like these there are financial costs for death penalty. According to Norman Kinne,
Dallas Country District Attorney, “I think maybe we
have to be satisfied with that as opposed to spending $1 million to try and get
them executed.”
Also the death penalty is irrevocable;
a dead person can’t revive again. So when juries or judges should be very
careful to decide death sentences. But, there are some innocent people who are “murdered”
because of this “death penalty.” There are, on
average, four entirely innocent people convicted of murder a year and most are
convicted of the death penalty. There are hundreds of places where a murder
trial can be erroneous. If innocent people die due to false charges, who and
how will compensate to the people who died? Not only the people who died, there
will be disadvantages to the families or relatives of the people. Who and how
will compensate to them? There are some cases that some people who were firstly
charged as “murder” were later found “innocent.” For example, Leonel Herrera in
1993 was charged for murdering and actually sentenced “death penalty.” But later
it was found that Leonel Herrera is actually “innocent.” According to Chief Judge
Rakoff, “Given the number of DNA exonerations in cases of wrongful convictions”,
and he admits that there are wrong convictions.
Some might
argue that death penalty is needed for social benefit, which reduce murdered or
harmed civilians by criminals. The logic of the people who agree with death
penalty is this: death penalty is 100% effective in preventing a murder from
killing again and criminals will fear death that will reduce crime. But it is
wrong. It is found from the research that the death penalty does not really
affect the crime rate: “These new
studies [that claim a new evidence supports the conclusion that capital
punishment has a positive deterrent effect] are fraught with technical and
conceptual errors: inappropriate methods of statistical analysis, failures to
consider all the relevant factors that drive murder rates, missing data on key
variables in key states, the tyranny of a few outlier states and years, and the
absence of any direct test of deterrence. These studies fail to reach the
demanding standards of social science to make such strong claims, standards
such as replication and basic comparisons with other scenarios. Some simple
examples and contrasts, including a careful analysis of the experience in New
York State compared to others, lead to a rejection of the idea that either
death sentences or executions deter murder.”
And there
are some researches that state higher execution rates may actually increase
violent crime rates. In California, the average rate of execution was 6 during a
year from 1952 to 1967. In this time era, the crime rate was twice than the period
from 1968 to 1991 when there were no executions. This kind of phenomenon is also
shown in New York from 1907 to 1964 when the execution was performed.
Death
penalty was prevalently performed in the past and now it has been decreased. It
is hard to find countries that still maintaining death penalty. There are many reasons—as
I listed above—that death penalty is unreasonable and inefficient. And the
arguments from the people who agree on death penalty are not logical or proved
false. So I oppose to death penalty that steal someone’s lives unfairly and
unjustly.
Work Cited
Richard
C. Dieter. “Nevada Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice”
Web. 7. July. 2008
Adam Liptak. “Does Death Penalty
Save Lives? A New Debate” NY Times. 18. Nov. 2007
Richard
C. Dieter. “What Politicians Don't Say About the High Costs of the Death Penalty”
Benjamin Weiser.
“A Legal Quest Against the Death Penalty; Chance of Error Is Too Great, Even
for a Murder Victim's Brother” NY
Times. 2. Jan. 2005
