To the unimaginable eye, a decision can be made in nearly seconds, but it is the person who sees beyond what is in front of them to discover the truth. The truth is that most people make a decision, regarding a person’s innocence or guilt, within minutes of a person’s arrest. Consequently, this tends to cloud a person’s judgment, throughout the remainder of the case. Why should a person’s life be rendered simply as an open-and-shut case?
A man walks in the courtroom, opening the doors facing a jury who sits and waits to decide a person’s fate. We as a society think and decide, from days to weeks, if a man should spend the remainder of his life in jail or if he should die. However, many of the people put to death by the court pre-meditate their vicious acts upon another human being. If we believe that it is morally wrong to plan out another person’s murder, then how is it right for us to in turn commit the same wrongful crime?
In the movie “The Life of David Gale,” Gale sets out to prove that the majority of society, who agrees with the death penalty, are indeed wrong. The movie expresses that people are blind to the fact that innocent people can, in fact, be wrongfully sentenced to death. How far would you go to fight for what you believe? Gale offered his life, and in turn, proved that the system doesn’t always work.
In Kansas, a schizophrenic man was executed. His medical history never surfaced throughout the duration of his trial. How? Why? I don’t know, but I feel that his state of mind should have played part in his punishment. People don’t get to choose their family. It’s something you’re born into so why should we punish someone for something they had no control of?
You can believe one way or you can believe another. I believe that we should stop spending so much money to kill and use it to rehabilitate those who are in dire need of it.
Research shows that the death penalty costs more than life in prison. Overall about $2 million of taxpayers money is spent per execution, whereas about $600,000-$800,000 is spent per inmate for life depending upon their life expectancies. Texas, where our president is from, carries out far more executions per year than any other state.
Posted on the Web by: Rob Cain
