Advocating the Death Penalty
Advocating the Death PenaltyBy: Stacy Jayne
Advocating the Death Penalty Thousands of people will attack the death penalty. They will give emotional speeches about the one innocent man or woman who might accidentally get an execution sentence. However, all of these people are forgetting one crucial element. They are forgetting the thousands of victims who die every year by the hands of heartless murderers. There are more murderers out there than people who are wrongly convicted, and that is what we must remember. I, as well as many others, have total confidence in the death penalty. It is a very beneficial component of our justice system. The death penalty saves lives. It saves lives because it stops those who murder from ever murdering again. It also deters potential murderers from ever committing the crime. Unfortunately, the death penalty is currently used so rarely that it isn�t nearly as effective as it could be. In order for it to work, we must put it into practice more often. In recent years, crime in America has been on the rise, in particular, violent crime. This has led not only to an overcrowding of prisons in our country, but also to an increase in the number of death sentences handed down by the courts. Despite the fact that the number of inmates on death row is climbing, the number of death sentences actually carried out in any given year lags far behind. People simply aren�t fearful of the death penalty when it isn�t used the way it should be (Stewart 50). If the death penalty has been declared legal, then the federal and state governments must employ it to its fullest as a means of stopping previous murderers from recommitting their crimes. Since most of the prisoners on death row are there for murder, executing them would ensure that they would never kill again. Obsessive murderers, who know no alternative to killing, need to be executed to protect both prison guards and society. This view is perhaps best illustrated through the words of Judge Alfred J. Talley of New York who explained �If I as an individual have the right to kill in self defense, why has not the state, which is nothing more than an aggregation of individuals, the same right to defend itself against unjust aggression and unjust attack?� (Kaplan 28) About two and a half years ago, my dear cousin, Jaime, became the first victim of a serial killer named Brian Duffy. Jaime, a beautiful twenty-year-old college student at SUNY Binghamton, had been walking back to her dorm after class when she was abducted by Duffy at gunpoint. Wearing a black ski mask and gloves, Jaime�s friends were unable to identify him. Having no idea who this man was, they watched in horror as Jaime was grabbed, threatened, and taken away. Jaime was thrown into the front seat of a red Nissan Sentra with no license plates. Later that day, the police located the vehicle, which had been reported...
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