Prisons exist to separate criminals who have
violated the laws of society from those who choose to abide by them. However,
there are flaws in the American justice system that can lead to the unjust
imprisonment and even the murder of innocent people. Due to corruption in the justice system
and the moral imperative to protect innocent people from being put to death,
America needs to abolish the death penalty.
The death penalty is not an effective
deterrent against criminals who seek to commit homicide. The unforgivable
nature of the death penalty is ostensibly there to scare would-be murderers
from going through with the act of killing another person, and yet murders
still happen all the time. The sad fact here is that people who do not have a
strong moral center or people who value material objects over life will always
find a reason and a way to kill. Ideally, these people should be incarcerated
for life, or even rehabilitated into becoming productive members of society.
There is nothing to gain from simply taking their lives away as revenge for the
life or lives that they took.
It costs more money to execute a
convicted criminal than it does to keep someone incarcerated for life without
parole or in isolation. This is due to the labyrinthine appeals process afforded
to a death penalty inmate in order to have his or her case re-tried in front of
a judge in order to have himself or herself removed from death row. This
process costs taxpayers inordinate amounts of money. Also, typically an inmate
who has been sentenced to the death penalty will spend decades in jail waiting
to be executed, which adds even more money to go along with the cost of the
appeals process. If the government were to abolish capital punishment, then
this money could go towards other things within the prison system that need to
be improved. For example, these additional funds could go toward more comprehensive
therapy and rehabilitation programs for inmates.
The concept of putting an innocent person to
death for a crime he or she did not commit is absolutely unthinkable. In the
case of Cameron Todd Willingham of Corsicana, Texas, a man was unjustly
sentenced to death for the murder of his three daughters. It was a combination
of an unenthusiastic defense attorney, a district attorney simply looking for a
death penalty conviction (rather than the justice and the truth) and an
investigation conducted by unqualified personnel that led an innocent man to be
put to death. This is an example of corruption in the judicial system causing
an irreversible tragedy. The arson investigators who examined the fire that
took the lives of Willingham’s daughters came to incorrect conclusions. These findings
were used by the Corsicana County district attorney to eventually murder an
innocent man. Instead of upholding the law in the name of justice, these
investigators and attorneys represented false evidence and played politics to try
to improve their own reputations and further their careers with no regard for
justice itself. From recent findings it is now known that Cameron Todd
Willingham was innocent and played no part in the house fire, but there is no
bringing him back.
The death penalty must be abolished, even
if it means those who commit truly heinous crimes are left in prison for life.
That is a better alternative than an innocent man possibly being put to death. America
needs to stand as a nation towering above all to show the rest of the world it
is civilized and does not rule through fear. This barbaric practice has no
place in the free world.
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