The Death Penalty: Should We Keep the Death Penalty or Dismiss It?
Terrorist, murders, the sum at the bottom of the barrel. That is what represents those sentenced to capital punishment. Although the people on death row are there for serious crimes, like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was charged with terrorism in the Boston Marathon, some people are put on death row for crimes they did not commit. Ray Krone was sentenced to death for the murder of a female bartender in Arizona. He was on death row for 32 months until DNA evidence was found and he was exonerated. He now works with the Witness to Innocence project to help others that were also falsely convicted of crimes. Krone was lucky to have been exonerated before he was called for his execution, but others are not as lucky as he was. ("Ray’s Story:
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We see it on TV shows how the inject one syringe into the arm and in a matter of seconds, the prisoner is dead. Well that, in fact, is false. Several states use a “three-drug cocktail” for its prisoners. (Kendall, 2015) The first drug “is supposed to be an anesthetic that knocks the prisoner out; the second is a paralytic that prevents all movement; the third causes searing pain and stops the heart.” (Kendall, 2015) If the sedative wears off before the dosage is completed the prisoner would receive a painful death, which is possible if the injections are not administered correctly. The death penalty consists of 273 number of botched executions since 1900 and 7% attempted lethal injection failure. (Kendall, 2015) The average cost of executing a prisoner is $3 million, whereas keeping an inmate for life is $1.1 million. (Kendall, 2015) There are clearly some costs to using the death penalty as an option today. It is costly to a system that is not as funded in jail/prison space. The money that is allocated to the drugs could easily be allocated to prison reform, new prisons, and keeping life-sentenced