Aliyah-De’Ja Gordon
Dr. Moore
ENGL-1301 SY1
5 December 2017
A Life for a Life: Just or Unjust ?
Thomas Jefferson once said, “The care for human life and happiness, and not their destruction is the first and only object of good government. Did you know there has been 1,465 executions through the death penalty. Much controversy surrounds the death penalty. The idea of killing someone in punishment of a crime seems just to many, but others are against it. In fact, the death penalty is wrong and should be made illegal in America.
Studies show that the death penalty is not deterrent to crime. Despite this, many feel that capital punishment is a good idea. It’s obvious that mistakes are made and innocent people have been sentenced to death. More than 155 death row inmates have been exonerated since 1973. That being said, Professor Brandon L. Garrett at the University of Virginia Law published a book analyzing the steep decline in capital punishment from 1990 to 2016. In his studies he proved that growing public awareness of exonerations and the risk of wrongly sentencing innocent defendants to death, citizens became less appealed to the idea of the death penalty and became more interested in life without parole.
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As citizens become more aware of the alternative of the death penalty, more support has shifted to life without parole. Further proof can be found on The Death Penalty Information Center website, where Lake Research Partners discovered in a 2010 poll that 61% of voters would choose a punishment other than the death penalty for murder. Former governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico once said, “ Life without parole is often said to be a living death sentence, the prison is their cemetery, a cell is their