The Death Sentence Kills Us

Prompt #1                                                                                Bryan Barajas

The Death Sentence Kills Us

When a person commits a very serious crime, you’d expect them to be executed in a matter of days.  However, several years later after being sentenced, many are still locked up. In the article, Donald McCartin shares his experience with the death penalty. He was appointed as a judge by Jerry Brown in 1978. He served until 1993 and in that time sentenced ten criminals to the death penalty. On March 25, 2011 when the article was published, it mentioned that after many years, many of those criminals are still here, and not executed. One died of natural causes while the others are still alive. For me this isn’t really the way it’s supposed to work. When someone is committed to death, they are to be executed as quickly as possible, or might as well sentence them for life. These are reasons of why the death penalty is in fact ineffective, expensive, and emotionally costly.

        First of all, the death penalty is quite ineffective. Really what are we teaching people? It doesn’t take an expert to figure out that the death penalty is quite hypocritical. We’re technically saying, “Killing is wrong, and if you kill, we’ll kill you.” Death isn’t the answer, there are other ways to settle crimes. To me it’s unconstitutional, the death penalty is in fact a cruel and unusual punishment.

Secondly the death penalty is too expensive.  Judge McCartin explains very well that the death penalty is killing our other resources. He mentions the cuts that are being made to kindergarten, universities, and people with special needs. We’re killing our future because we fail to move on. The only thing that is needed is to be put in jail for life without parole. That would save a lot of money to the thousands of California residents.