Gaughan 1

Peter J. Gaughan V
10/17/16
Rogers 4
The Death Penalty: (not even) Legal Murder
George Stinney Jr was accused and convicted of murdering two young women at the age
of 14, he was sentenced to death row and was executed by your government. He is the youngest
person ever to be executed by your government, since the beginning of the twentieth century,
and seventy years after his execution modern science and technology proved he was completely
innocent. Before that tragedy he had no criminal record, he was described as a happy loving soul,
and he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong skin colour at the wrong
period in our nation's history; he should be alive today. The Death Penalty has been a staple in
western justice since the Greeks and while our methods have changed the concept hasn't
despite considerable cultural and societal evolution, the Death Penalty remains the legally
sanctioned murder of citizens by their own government just because that same government says
they are guilty of a heinous crime. I am advocating for abolishing the Death Penalty not because
I'm soft on crime or a bleeding heart pacifist but because it's fiscally ridiculous, unconstitutional,
and finally it is government overreach that kills innocents.
First the Death Penalty is unbelievably expensive making it fiscally ludicrous and
irresponsible to continue it. This is because the legal battle that must be fought preceding and
following a Death Penalty ruling is wrought with expenses along with the cost of housing and
then finally executing the victim in a way we have deemed un-cruel or in-unusual exceed that of
the average lifetime inmate. In fact a case ending in life in prison costs about 740,00 while on

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ending in death row costs 1.2 million (Ryan) and that's just the legal fight. These cases cost so
much more because there are understandably an array of of safeguards one must go through
before they can be executed, and even then they are almost always guaranteed an appeal as final
assurance of their guilt. After the victim has been placed on Death Row it can cost up to fifteen
times more to house them and take care of them than a typical high risk lifetime convict with no
chance of parole (Shantz). This is because their health must be maintained at the highest
standards to meet our constitutional obligation just as their legal team must meet the highest
standards to meet our constitutional obligation and these lawyers can often fight for years so this
expensive standard of living can be extended to considerable time. And then finally it ends in
oftentimes lethal injection, this is the most popular form of legally sanctioned murder because it
theoretically best aligns with our Bill of Rights expectations, it's also the most expensive
(Ryan). What's worse is even as we spend more to try and uphold the constitution we fail to do
so.
The Death Penalty is unconstitutional, we have as the supreme law of this land the
fundamental belief that we shall have no cruel or unusual punishment (Constitution of the United
States of America), the Death Penalty can never uphold such an ideal. I'm not the only one who
thinks so either in 1972 a Supreme Court case the Supreme Court ruled the Death Penalty to be
cruel and unusual. This was not even the first time nor the last time the Death Penalty was
restricted but it was the most sweeping and it forced states to change methods and legal systems
to maintain Death Row (Court Opinion). This means that the Death Penalty is not inherent in the
constitution and instead our leading authority on the constitution admits that the Death Penalty to
some extent stands in opposition to our most fundamental values. The Death Penalty fails to

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uphold the constitution because there is simply no non-cruel to kill someone. The best evidence
to this point is the fact that lethal injection is the most high tech way to kill someone ever and
theoretically is the nicest but there is plenty of evidence from botched executions, scientific
research, and eyewitness testimony that suggest lethal injection is horribly painful (Shantz). This
means it's cruel in more way than one, we not only are killing people which is inherently cruel
and just perpetuates a culture where our solution to problems is violence and giving up, but we
are claiming to do so humanely even though execution just isn't. The Death Penalty is also
unusual, meaning the punishment is not consistently handed down for the sake crimes. There are
racial and gender biases in the Death Penalty, and even those biases won't stay consistent as in
the twentieth century people of color were at greater risk of Death Row and now in the twenty
first century whites get it disproportionately, both centuries saw dramatically more men than
women receive Death Row (Cornell). This means that we fail to uphold both halves of the eighth
amendment and should immediately abolish the Death Penalty. Still even worse than its
unconstitutionality is the fact that the Death Penalty is our most horrid form of government
overreach.
The government has gotten unbelievably bigger than its creators had ever intended, for
better or for worse, but with this expansion came the expansion of the death penalty which was
definitely for the worse. Historically we used the Death Penalty to punish treason but has our
government expanded so did our usage of Death Penalty to now there is an entire classification
of crimes that could possibly result in Death Row (Sarat). This means that there isn't a historical
precedence to our use of the death penalty and that sense it can be expanded it can also be
restricted. This overreach of our governments power has given it the power to do the worst thing

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imaginable, kill its own innocent citizens, which is something it has done and a horrifyingly
consistent basis. A terrifying 156 people have been found innocent on death row since 1973
(Wallace). That's 156 people that we almost murdered for doing nothing wrong but looking
guilty. Still that's not even the worst of it because while these people were exonerated while on
Death Row for about every ten guilty people executed one innocent person has been killed
(Zimming). This is where this stops being a large abstract problem and starts being the biggest
violation of human rights and the Geneva Convention we are presently committing and I say
presently because currently there could be as many as 3,000 innocent people on Death Row,
that's 3,000 people our government is prepared to murder in cold blood for the sake of our
safety, they are willing to do it, are you?
Now those in favor of the Death Penalty generally have two key arguments in support,
they claim it deters crime and that it gives solace to the family of victims. The idea behind these
arguments is that if you know the you might receive the Death Penalty you are less likely to take
the risk and that the only way for a victims loved ones to truly feel justice is if the life of the
person who killed their loved one was equally destroyed. The first argument that claims it deters
crime is easier to refute because it quantifiable is just wrong. States that have the Death Penalty
also have higher crime rates and murder rates meanwhile states that spend more on better
education and rehabilitation and public services have a lower crime and murder rate (North
Carolina). This is because crime and murder are not acts of a population not appropriately
scared, they are acts of a population that is appropriately desperate. Crime isn't associated with
weak on crime politics it's associated with poverty and the inability to get back on your feet
after falling down. Now the second argument is harder to refute because while families have

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forgiven murders or asked prosecutors not to push for the Death Penalty a fair amount of people
have reasonably been upset enough to demand the Death Penalty (Steffen). My response is
simply, that's why the families of murder victims don't make laws. Our justice system is meant to
be blind and can't take what makes you feel better into consideration instead it must take what's
right into consideration and it just proven the Death Penalty is far from right.
I've examined the Death Penalty closely and I've found expensive, unconstitutional, and
horrifyingly dangerous. The Death Penalty is the epitome of our clutter that vilifies the criminal
as opposed to rehabilitating the most troubled of us we have taken to killing them which is
wrong in of itself but also has lead us down the road to killing George Stinney Jr and many more
like him, and who knows who is next, maybe it's you? So don't let this embarrassment be apart of
our Justice systems anymore, instead pass my bill to start the process to abolish the death
penalty.

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Work Cited
The Constitution of the United States of America
Ryan, Meghan J. "Death and Rehabilitation." Social Service Review 17.3 (1943): 362-67. Law
Review.
UC Davis. Web. 8 Sept. 2016
Zimring, Franklin E. The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. New York: Oxford
UP,
2003. Print.
Sarat, Austin. The Killing State: Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture. New York:
Oxford
UP, 1999. Print.
Shantz, Jeff. Protest and Punishment: The Repression of Resistance in the Era of Neoliberal
Globalization. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic, 2012. Print.
Wallace, Henry A., and Russell Lord. Democracy Reborn. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock,
1944.
Print.
"Failure to Deter Crime." Crime Archives. NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty,
n.d.
Web. 09 Sept. 2016.

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Court Opinion. "Furman v. Georgia." LII / Legal Information Institute. Cornell College, n.d.
Web. 18
Oct. 2016.
"Death Penalty." LII / Legal Information Institute. Cornell, n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2016.
Steffen, Lloyd H. Executing Justice: The Moral Meaning of the Death Penalty. Cleveland, OH:
Pilgrim,
1998. Print.