The Death PEnalty | Teen Ink

The Death PEnalty

April 4, 2014
By Jenna Kremers SILVER, Cannon Falls, Minnesota
Jenna Kremers SILVER, Cannon Falls, Minnesota
5 articles 0 photos 0 comments

32 out of the 50 states are violating two of our Constitutional rights. One of them is to be free of cruel and unusual punishment the other is right to life. The death penalty should be abolished because it violates our constitutional rights, its inhumane, morality, and unfixable mistakes.



The death penalty violates your constitutional rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment and the right to life. The death penalty is considered cruel and unusual because of it’s the general idea of penology. It’s unusual because the U.S is the only country in the western industrialized nation to have the death penalty. One of the reasons they don’t have the death penalty is because it’s inhumane.



Some of the ways the kill people is for entertainment and sometimes make them suffer. John Evans of Alabama was sentenced to death by the electric chair and it took them three tries to kill him. Three thirty second jolts of 1900 volts of electricity coursed through him. He was finally pronounced dead after fourteen minutes. Don Cobanna who supervised several executions said this after watching an execution in the gas chambers “If the condemned prisoner was some awful monster deemed worthy of extermination, why did I feel so bad about it, I wondered. It has been said that men on death row are inhuman, cold-blooded killers. But as I stood and watched a grieving mother leave her son for the last time, I questioned how sordid the business of executions was supposed to be the great equalizer….The ‘last mile’ seemed an eternity, every step a painful reminder of what waited at the end of the walk. Where was the cold blooded murderer, I wondered, as we approached the door to the last –night cell. I had looked for that man before…and I still had not found him-I saw, in my grasp, only a frightened child. Minutes after the execution and before heading for the conference room and a waiting press corps, I… shook my head. ‘No more. I don’t want to do this anymore.” Morality is another issue about the death penalty.



According to procon.org the death penalty treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent which is immoral. It is a moral obligation to protect life but thirty two states are taking it. Sending them to prison for life has the same effect as killing them but without having to take another life. The death penalty is also reversible.



The death penalty is an unfix able mistake. Cameron Todd Willingham of Texas was sentenced to death for setting his house on fire to kill his three kids. After he was executed the found out that the fire was not arson but an accident. That was a mistake they could never fix. Several others have been executed than later found innocent.



32 out of 50 states are violating our constitutional rights. The death penalty should be abolished because it violates our constitutional rights,its inhumane, immoral, and unfix able mistakes.



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