The Relevance of Capital Punishment in Today’s Society In the novel Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson states, “Capital punishment means those without the capital get the punishment.” (Stevenson 4). Unfortunately, this statement made by attorney Bryan Stevenson is one-hundred percent true. The unfavored in society are the one’s more likely to receive capital punishment. Sherman Alexie, author of Capital Punishment, displays various ways regarding the truth behind this statement; which correlates with the death penalty of today. In the poem Capital Punishment, Sherman Alexie shares the story of a cook who made the last meal for inmates on death row. The cook talks about the process of preparing the last meal, all …show more content…
The cook in the poem is mocking what people say about executing, “All the stories should be simple. 1 death + 1 death = 2 deaths. Let’s throw the killers in one grave and victims in the other, let's form sides and have two separate feasts. (Alexie 50-52). Alexie shows the results of executing a killer, and shows that the government is just taking more lives than it should be. He uses his mockery to display to the reader how foolish people are when they repay evil with evil. According to the article, The Death Penalty, Civilization, and Inhumaneness, Davis expresses, “However, the argument can be made only on an analysis of inhumaneness narrow enough to permit the strong moral criticism generally reserved for inhumane penalties & yet broad enough to include death among inhumane penalties.” (Davis 291). Davis brings up a great point, by claiming how it doesn't make sense that they kill someone through an inhumane execution, because they killed someone else inhumanely. People are being hypocrites by killing the killer, and this is exactly the opposite of what people are supposed to be doing. The poem shows that it is not right to repay the murder with murder, and this is still a problem in today’s