ϻ� putting to death people judged to have committed certain extremely heinous crimes has been in practice for millennia, but in the united states in the latter half of the twentieth century, it has become a very controversial issue. Changing views on this difficult issue and many legal challenges to capital punishment working their way through the courts resulted in a halt to executions in the united states in 1967. The thought of something bad happening to her never even crosses your mind this is the same routine every day. He’s been watching the way your family lives, and waiting, and today is the day he’s planning to attack. Later on, you wonder what was going through her mind: if she felt something strange when she entered the house, maybe she did, maybe not.

Either way, she’s gone now and you know by the haunted look in the detectives eyes, that she didn’t go peacefully. You are watching her killer, you’re trying to figure out, why, why my baby? why did you pick my family to ruin? you watch him day after day. What is going on behind them? what is he thinking? how could a human being do something like this to another human being? you keep thinking about life in prison vs. You wonder if he had an accomplice who will continue to kill after he’s locked up or dead. While the medical examiner is giving his testimony and describing what he found, the killer turns and looks at you.

Knowing that another parent will not have to go through what you are going through because of him. Knowing that he can’t tell people the horrible things he did to your baby, or write a book about it or gain the fame that he so desperately craves or have your baby’s horrible demise turn into a made for tv movie. As of april 1, 2008, the death penalty was authorized by 37 states, the federal government, and the u.s. When the code of king hammaurabi of babylon established death as the penalty for 25 different crimes. I believe capital punishment is appropriate because it provides a strong deterrence against future crime, it protects the rights of victims, and because everyone benefits from it. My first reason for supporting capital punishment is that it is less expensive than life without parole.

Melting Pot Essay

Abolitionists claim that it’s more expensive, but, the annual cost of incarceration is $40,0 to $50,0 a year for each prisoner or more, and life without parole prisoners spend on average 30 or 40 years in prison. The up front costs of the death penalty are a lot higher than equivalent life without parole cases, but jfa: justice for all, a criminal justice reform organization, says that life without parole costs over time are from $1.2 to $3.6 million more expensive than death penalty cases. Time magazine found that, nationwide, the average cell cost is $24,0 a year, and the maximum security cell costs $75,0 a year as of 1995. Cost comparisons are only valid if you compare the costs of death penalty to life without parole cases. People claim it’s more expensive because they improperly compare the cost of all life without parole cases to death penalty cases, when only the death penalty equivalent life without parole cases are relevant.

People are comparing death penalty cases to life without parole cases that aren’t about murder. It’s over estimated that death penalty cases will cost twenty times more, on average, or $1.5 million. This exaggerated estimate says that the death penalty will have twenty times more investigation costs, defense and prosecution cost, including court time, guilt/innocence stage, sentencing stage and appellate review time and cost than death penalty equivalent life without parole cases.

Even though abolitionists have greatly exaggerated the cost of death penalty cases, death penalty cases still prove to be a lot less expensive over time than death penalty equivalent life without parole cases. Death penalty costs are mainly appeals costs, and life without parole prisoners get the same appeals and should be considered to bear the same costs. If we only allowed appeals that are relevant in proving someone’s innocence and eliminated the others that are pretty much just delaying tactics, we’d save taxpayers millions of dollars. Studies over the past dozen years have shown that capital punishment is a deterrent to murder. They say that between 3 and 18 lives would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.

Abolitionists claim that people are just as safe when murderers are in prison, but some of them recruit other people to kill while they are there. Charles manson, a man that led the manson family , a quasi commune in california in the late 1960s, plotted with one of his followers, lynette alice fromme, from his prison cell to kill president gerald ford in 1975. For example: in the philadelphia industrial correction center in 1994, a man was serving two life sentences, and was sentenced to three more after he was convicted of stabbing three prison guards. Or, in 19, when a beeville, texas prison guard was killed by an inmate already serving a sentence for murder. At the florida state prison in starke in 1995, two death row inmates were killed by their fellow inmates. Murderers end up getting out because of law changes, parole board changes, and because people forget the past. Her parents decided not to go with the death penalty as long as he got life without parole, but thanks to a change in sentencing laws in 1982, james moore is eligible for parole every two years.

A fort worth jury ruled that kenneth mcduff, a texas man, should die in the electric chair after he shot two boys and strangled and raped a girl friend of their’s. He was sentenced to life in prison after the u.s supreme court struck down the death penalty as then imposed. Within days, the naked body of a 31 year old prostitute named sarafia parker had shown up in a field near temple, beaten and strangled. Jailed after a minor racial incident, he got past the system and was out again in 1990. One, a 22 year old woman named valencia joshua was last seen alive february 24, 1991. Her body was discovered in a shallow grave decomposed in some woods behind the college. Regenia moore, another one of the missing women, was last seen kicking and screaming in the cab of mcduff’s pickup truck.

Colleen reed disappeared from a car wash in austin during the christmas holidays in 1991, and witnesses reported hearing a woman screaming that night and seeing two men speeding away in a yellow or tan thunderbird. Melissa northrup disappeared on march 1, 1992, a little more than two months later, from the waco convenience store where she worked. Mcduff’s thunderbird was found broken down a block from the store, and a fisherman found her body floating in a gravel pit in dallas county fifty seven days later. Days after melissa northrup’s funeral, kenneth mcduff was on america’s most wanted. He was arrested may 4th in kansas city, in 1993, a houston jury ordered him executed for the kidnap and killing of melissa northrup. In 1994, a seguin jury assessed him the death penalty for the abduction rape murder of colleen reed. The current sheriff of fall’s county appeared at mcduff’s houston trial for the 1992 abduction and murder of melissa northrup.

Conclusion to Pro Death Penalty Essay Text

Melting Pot Essay

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