Mick Marchan

Expository Writing P.3

1/26/2014

Death by State

Since 1976, the United States has killed 1,364 of its citizens through various methods
including lethal injection and electrocution. All of them are victims of capital punishment, or the
death sentence. Debate about whether or not states should be allowed to execute its convicted
criminals has lasted more than a century and will continue to persist for years to come. Some
may say that the death sentence is an integral part of Americas justice system, but others, such
as me, remained unconvinced of its necessity.
Proponents of the death sentence often insist that the death penalty is important because it
deters others from committing crimes, ergo reducing crime rates. This is pure conjecture. There
is yet to be research that conclusively supports this point of view. Crimes that are of the degree
where the death penalty is considered, i.e. murder and rape, will often occur regardless of the
threat of execution. For example, the people who commit these crimes generally lack the most
basic level of morality, the avoidance of punishment, in terms of Lawrence Kohlbergs stages of
moral development. This is demonstrated by the countless number of criminals who committed
crimes even though they knew that there will be some sort of legal consequence to their actions.
Therefore, if soon to be criminals are not afraid of punishment, the death penalty does not deter
them from committing severe crimes. This in turn, weakens the apparent necessity of the death
penalty.
Another attribute of the death sentence that negates its importance is that it has and will
continue to take the lives of the innocent. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 10
absolutely innocent inmates have been executed and at least 39 executions have been carried out
with utter disregard to the serious doubt of guilt in the U.S. alone. The actual numbers are most
likely much higher than whats reported due to the lack of interest in studying a case where the
defendant is already dead. If our judicial system cannot guarantee that only the truly guilty will
be sentenced to execution, as demonstrated by the numbers of wrongfully executed, then we
cannot rely on the death sentence to be a just method of punishment. As Voltaire put it, If there
really should be one instance in which the law permits a criminal to be put to death who has not
committed a capital offense, there will be a thousand instances in which humanity, which is
stronger than the law, should spare the life of those whom the law has sentenced to death.
Though the previous two explanations supply ample evidence to reject the idea of
execution, there is one more reason that I must stress: the state governments are given the power
to kill their citizens. This may seem blindingly obvious, but many people dont understand the
connotations that are embedded in that statement. Killing someone, as far as we know, brings the
absolute end to ones existence. Their already limited amount of time to experience the ups and
downs of life becomes curtailed; something that one being should never do to another. Yes, these
individuals may have done that themselves, but is eye for an eye justice truly just? Is it morally
right to imitate the actions of those which we condemn? Some may say that this is for the judicial
branch to decide, and not us, but they cannot be more wrong. Every tax paying U.S. citizen
helped make the executions of the 1,364 convicted criminals possible. This includes the number
of executed that were exonerated posthumously. Their blood is on our hands. That is, without a
doubt absolutely not necessary for the preservation of justice.
The evidence against capital punishment is overwhelming: the negative attributes of
execution, which includes killing hundreds of our own citizens, some possibly innocent, far
outweigh the hollow benefits, which consist purely of being a deterrent of crime. This raises
the question, why do the killings continue, who is responsible for the deaths of the innocent, and
are our state governments murderers?