Many people are for the death penalty, but many more are completely against it. Every year 50+ men and women are sentenced to death row throughout the United States. Is the death penalty really just and moral when there are other punishments that would be more just and moral?

1. Capital punishment charges taxpayers more money to put someone to death than to just have the convicted murderer put in prison for life without the possibility of parole. It is actually cheaper to house them in prison than to kill them.

2. Capital punishment is very unfair.
- People who are sentenced to death row are sentenced that because they are a serious threat to society. There are plenty of others who are serious threats to society and they end up serving less than life in prison. Child molesters, 2nd and 3rd degrees of murder, manslaughter, child abusers, rapists, "armed and dangerous," etc., are some examples. All of these people will more than likely serve less than 20 years in a federal penitentiary. How is sentencing one man to death for 1st degree murder and another man to 20 years in prison for 2nd degree murder, fair? Murder is murder.

3. Capital punishment is hypocritical on many different levels.
- Some of the most highly enforced laws in the United States are based around murderers. Murder is not tolerated in any way, shape, or form in our country; many other countries are the same way. Since it is illegal to murder someone in our country, why is it ok for the government to do it by lethal injection? Our country is "one nation under God;" God says, "turn the other cheek." This hypocrisy also falls under the appeal to tradition. The country doesn't want to change anything because it's just "how it is."
- The country says there is a difference between killing someone and murdering someone. Killing someone is to end the life of someone without intent. Murdering someone is to end the life of someone else with intent. When the government puts a man on death row, they are intentionally ending the life of someone else; thus making them, the government, murderers.

To kill a convicted murderer on death row you are giving them the easy way out. America is not an eye for an eye type of country and two wrongs don't make a right. The convicted murderer should sit in prison and take his punishment to the fullest extent; without all of the luxuries given in prison. Television, music, outdoor time, and other recreational activities are not a need to live. They are all wants and not necessities. A convicted murderer would suffer more every day without those things, but still living, than they would being put to death. To kill a convicted murder is taking the easy way out and running from the truth behind the matter.

Learn more about this author, Amber Goff.
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