Should the Death Penalty be Abolished?
The argument on whether or not the Death Penalty should be abolished or continued has been questioned and spoken about for years. The information that I have accumulated states valid reasons as to why execution should not be allowed. These reasons include wrongful executions, cost, and harm to the prison workers. The Troy Davis Story is an great example of wrongful executions, he was an innocent person who was accused of a crime that he did not commit. He and a friend by name of Sylvester Coles went to the store that night, Sylvester got into an altercation with a homeless man. An off-duty cop Mark McPhail came to resolve the issue and ended up being shot and killed. Although there were witnesses who saw Cole commit the crime Troy Davis was still convicted; in the article it stated, “Coles admitted to carrying a .38 that night and several other witnesses implicated Coles as the shooter. Yet Coles was never treated as a suspect. Davis was convicted of murder based on scant physical evidence and the testimony of nine witnesses, seven of whom later recanted their testimony or admitted it was false” (Langley). Troy Davis was sadly executed years later, a great way to prevent any wrongful executions from happening would be to get rid of the death penalty all together. A man by the name of Freddie Lee Pitts was also accused of a crime he did not commit he stated, “You can release a man from jail but you can’t release him from the grave” (Pitts). Luckily for Freddie they actually caught the right person and released him from death row. Freddie Pitts was one of very few who have been accused of a crime they did not commit and exonerated from death row.
The next reason people wish for the death penalty to be abolish is because of the cost/expenses. The death penalty is indeed expensive and most people aren’t t too happy about the funds for it being taken out of their taxes. They believe that its unnecessary spending In the NCADP article it stated, “Funding for the death penalty could be redirected to support expanded services for victims and their families, including grief counseling, funeral costs, school tuition scholarships or grants for children of murdered parents, paid leave from work to attend court proceedings, crime scene cleanup, emergency funds, and medical treatment” (ncadp.org). Not only is it unnecessary money being spend but it’s also harmful to the employees at the prisons. These executions take awful tolls on the prison workers especially those that are in the room and directly hands on. One man by the name of Ron McAndrew who happens to be a retired Warden at Florida State Prison mentioned how sometimes at night he would wake up and envision executed inmates on the edge of his bed. Mr. McAndrew was not the only worker having nightmares and flashbacks of the execution, more workers confessed their experiences. Being a part of a job like this force you to realize that you are knowingly participating in killing another human being and most people cannot handle that kind of pressure. Mr. Jerry Givens who is a retired Executioner at the Virginia Department of Corrections quoted, “If you let the judge be the executioner, I think he would give a second thought about sending somebody to be executed” (Givens). I too believe that they would look at things a little different if the shoe was on the other foot, my judges probably couldn’t even imagine what these people have to live with.
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