Dead Man Walking: Taking a Side Against the Death Penalty with Helen Prejean
Summary:
Sister Helen Prejean wrote a book based on her own experiences serving a man who was sentenced to the death penalty. The following overview covers some of Prejean's main arguements against the death penalty.
Killing people is wrong, that is a widely acknowledged truth, but when a life is taken by the government, we do not call it wrong, we call in justice. Capitol Punishment is not justice. It endorses cruel and unusual punishment, causes economic problems, and is not an effective crime deterrent; therefore Capitol Punishment should be abolished.
There is no humane way to kill a person because death is not a humane thing. Death, when premeditated and/or purposely carried out, whether by a citizens or government, is cruel and unusual. Especially the way the government does it. For instance on April 22, 1983 the state of Alabama was executing Louis Evans. After the first shock one of the electrodes fell off. They stopped the execution, repaired the equipment and proceeded to kill him. Next, Evans=s temple and leg exploded; out came smoke and fire, but he was still alive. It took fourteen minutes to kill him. On May 5, 1990 Jesse Taffero was being executed when six inch flames shot off his head. This is barbaric. The electric chair is not the only form of execution though. Society wants a cleaner way of disposing their criminals and the answer for this came in lethal injections. But are lethal injections any less cruel? They strap you to a table, then the attendant swabs your arm (to prevent infection) before the needle is plunged in. Then you wait. You wait as the sodium pentothal makes you unconscious so you won=t feel the pancuronium bromide as it stops your diaphragm, then you wait as the assium chloride stops your heart (Helen Prejean, page 217). Just because you aren't being fried to death does not mean it is any more humane. You know you are going to die. There is nothing you can do, you=re helpless.
These forms of Ajustice@ are not only cruel and unusual they are damaging to our society. They are damaging to or society because of all the money we lose by killing one man. The usual price for an execution is $3.8 million. The cost for the death penalty is so high because the courts need expert witnesses, investigators, an extended jury selection process, appeals to the state court, appeals to the federal courts, and not to mention the cost of the death itself. Whereas the average cost of a life sentence is $516,000. Do the math. Keeping a person alive makes more sense financially. Also, when we kill an inmate we are using state money that should be going to pay for rehab centers, crime control and payroll for police officers. Helen Prejean asks this question, AHow many laid-off police officers is one execution worth (page 233),@ because that is what it comes down to. If the state is spending its money on killing our criminals then it does not have the money to employ many police officers, so they get fired.
Not only is the death penalty not working for us economically, it is not working at deterring criminals from committing capitol offenses. Texas is a shining example of this. ATexas... has more than three hundred persons on death row and executes more of its citizens each year than any other state, yet its murder rate remains one of the highest in the country (page 233).@ New York, on the other hand, stopped the death penalty in their state. In the four months that murders declined by 11 percent. The crime in New Orleans also decreased dramatically (by 21 percent) after the death penalty was stopped in Louisiana.
The death penalty does not detour men from killing others, so why inflict the pain of a cruel and unusual killing and why spend the money? No twisted form of logic, no pathetic argument is worth the price of a man=s life. No lengthy political burbling can prove the death penalty is necessary and since it is not necessary why have it?
This is the complete article, containing 652 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
