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Jonah Zuniga

Instructor McCann

English 1302.203

20 April 2022

Death Penalty and Why it is Wrong

The death penalty is one of the most contentious issues in the United States, and many

people support it. On the other hand, the death penalty is absolutely unjust. The expenditure of

tax dollars and unnecessarily large quantities of resources to execute someone all hurt the general

public. Why is the death penalty so bad and why does it hurt the general public? It hurts the

general public in many different ways and it is also hurting the economy. In the end, the death

penalty is wrong in many different ways and it hurts people in so many different ways. So should

the death penalty in the United States be supported? Or should it be one of those topics that

should not be a topic at all? Research shows that the death penalty should not be supported and

should not be real.

First of all, one of the reasons that the death penalty is wrong is because it uses tax

money. It uses a lot of tax money and especially the tax money of the common people. What is

meant by common people is that of the people of low-income families and middle-class families.

One argument for someone's opposition to the death sentence is the high cost of carrying it out.

States lose thousands of dollars each year on court expenses, doctors, and injections as a result of

the death sentence. The cost of the death penalty can be ten times more than the cost of not

carrying it out. States can spend up to twice as much money on someone facing the death penalty

as they can on someone serving a life sentence. People who support the death penalty argue that

those who commit heinous crimes deserve to be put to death. Supporters of the death penalty
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argue that we should endeavor to simplify the death penalty's processes so that it can be carried

out more quickly and cheaply. Inmates on death row might be detained for decades before being

charged with capital murder. Offenders who support the death penalty agree that while keeping

people on death row for longer reduces the number of innocent people killed, a few years should

suffice rather than decades.

Another reason why people may oppose the death penalty is that innocent people may be killed

inadvertently. There have been a number of people who have been executed and then found to be

guilty after their death. There is nothing you can possibly do or say to undo such a monumental

error. People who oppose the death penalty argue that instead of wasting money on murdering

another person, the state should spend it on something more beneficial, such as counseling for

grieving families.

You need people to do the "killing" of people. Opponents of the death penalty argue that forcing

corrections officers and doctors to euthanize prisoners will cause them trauma. They bring up

how soldiers returning from war suffer from PTSD as a result of killing others, and then you go

and do the same thing to other innocent people.

When it comes to people who oppose the death penalty, religion plays a significant role. "You

shall not kill," according to the Bible, is one of the ten commandments. People also like to

emphasize the ideology that "the guilty do not deserve to die." Some Christians believe that the

death penalty, regardless of the crime, can never be justified. People who support the death

penalty agree with those who oppose it that the death penalty is not humane in any way, but

people who have committed heinous crimes against humanity deserve to be punished. People

who have murdered innocent people and children do not deserve a second chance.The best thing

we can do as a society is to remove people like that from our society and prisons.
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Another reason people may oppose the death penalty is that not all crimes are treated equally.

There have been numerous cases where two people commit the same crime but only one receives

the death penalty. Discrimination is a significant factor in this.Discrimination can take the form

of a male perpetrator versus a female perpetrator. More than 90% of death row inmates are men.

If you kill white people, you are more likely to end up on death row than if you kill a black

person. When a white man is murdered, you are five times more likely to face the death penalty.

Many of those sentenced to death row are impoverished and illiterate.

According to Smith, sixty-five percent of those sentenced to death are black or Hispanic. When

the poor and uneducated are sent through the many trials and courts, they are more likely to

receive a subpar public defense team from the state. There have even been cases where underage

and/or mentally ill prisoners were sentenced to death even though they were under the age of

eighteen. According to the Dallas Morning News, black people make up only 3% of jurors in

death penalty cases, despite accounting for 20% of the population.

Work Cited

Cattani, Kent E., and Paul J. McMurdie. “Death Penalty 101: The Death Penalty Charging

Decision in Arizona. Is There a Better Way?” Arizona State Law Journal, vol. 53, no. 3, Fall
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2021, pp. 793–803. EBSCOhost,

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lgh&AN=155174311&scope=site.

Mangum, Maruice. “Testing the Influence of Social Capital on Support for the Death Penalty.”

Social Justice Research, vol. 32, no. 4, Dec. 2019, pp. 431–44. EBSCOhost,

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-019-00341-9.

GROSS, SAMUEL R. “The Death Penalty, Public Opinion, and Politics in the United States.” St.

Louis University Law Journal, vol. 62, no. 4, Summer 2018, pp. 763–79. EBSCOhost,

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lgh&AN=136685001&scope=site.

Lee, Jason, and Ryan Hall. “The Death Penalty and Mental Illness: An Evolving Standard?”

Psychiatric Times, vol. 34, no. 6, June 2017, pp. 1–4. EBSCOhost,

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=123799948&scope=site.

Gerwig-Moore, Sarah. “Death Penalty.” Mercer Law Review, vol. 70, no. 1, Fall 2018, pp.

73–80. EBSCOhost,

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=134567440&scope=site.

Hulpke, John F. “If All Else Fails, A Corporate Death Penalty?” Journal of Management Inquiry,

vol. 26, no. 4, Oct. 2017, pp. 433–39. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492617706545.

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Mere, Winibaldus Stefanus. “Dignity, Biblical Justice, Forgiveness, and the Death Penalty.”

Japan Mission Journal, vol. 74, no. 4, Winter 2020, pp. 259–67. EBSCOhost,

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=149003583&scope=site.

Thompson, Rebecca R., et al. “National Opinions on Death Penalty Punishment for the Boston

Marathon Bomber before versus after Sentencing.” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, vol. 26,

no. 4, Nov. 2020, pp. 455–62. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000244.