Jonathan Douglas Richardson Death Penalty

Death Penalty

In April 2014, Jonathan Douglas Richardson, a 25 year old man, was facing death penalty in North Calorina. Before you decide whether or not this is right, consider what he did. On July 19, 2010, Jonathan tortured and sexually abused four years old Teghan Skiba ‘till the end’ while her mother was out of town. He strangled the child with a power cord, beat her with a wooden rod, bit and sexually abused her. Teghan died at hospital few days later from blunt force trauma to the head. Her body was covered with bite marks that tore off her flesh1 . Do you think that Jonathan deserves a second chance? How will Teghan’s mother find peace if her daughter’s murderer did get a second chance? How can justice be served if the killer’s life

As stated by Representative Steven T. Mikutel of the 45th Assembly District, State of Connecticut, “If human life is the ultimate value in our society, then murder must rank as the most heinous of crimes and those that commit it should receive the ultimate penalty.” That said, it is important to note that nowadays, the most common method of execution in the United States, lethal injection, allows the murderer to die peacefully unlike his victim who died in agony. According to Peter Sergo, a medical reporter at ScienceLine, during the procedure, a person shouldn’t be aware of or able to sense any pain. An initial drug is used to induce a state of unconsciousness where pain can no longer be registered. For the person being executed, subsequent injections that rapidly stop their breathing and heartbeat should occur without their sensing it. Lethal injection, therefore, leads to a painless death. Even the ultimate punishment is more merciful than the crime

One will search in vain through news stories and editorials for mention of a single case of an innocent execution.” Moreover, studies regarding the error rate in death sentences are sometimes misleading. Ann Coulter, a contributor in Jewish World Review, sheds light on the flaws found in anti-death penalty studies. Coulter gives the example of a study conducted in 1985, by Hugo A. Bedau of Tufts University and Michael L. Radelet of the University of Florida. The study claimed that 23 innocents had been put to death in the U.S in this century alone. It also claimed to prove that 350 "innocent" people had been convicted of capital or "potentially capital" crimes. According to Coulter, “the Bedau-Radelet Study cited such indicia of ‘innocence’ as the executed man's sustained protestations of his innocence,… confessions by others,” and “opening statements from defense counsel about what the defense intended to prove at trial.” And all of these do not constitute substantiating evidence of innocence. In addition, with today’s medical advances in DNA testing, there is very little room for error. DNA testing and other methods can now provide accurate and certain results that are irrefutable. For example, in the U.S., as of September 2011, 273 people including 17 death row inmates have been exonerated by use of DNA tests. The increasing use of DNA testing to help confirm the innocence or guilt in capital cases is