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Daniel Nave
Professor McElwee
IDIV 121-Q
4 November 2007
Op-Ed: Death Penalty
Capital punishment has been a significant issue in the United States since it was
reinstated in 1976. For years our government, and our judges, have been deciding who lives and
who dies. I believe that’s a choice that a human being should never have to make. Capital
punishment should be illegal because of moral issues, racial discrimination issues, and the reason
of innocence.
Some people say an eye for an eye serves justice, but Roberta Roper, a mother whose
daughter was brutally murdered states, “It lowers society to the level of the murderers. The
punishment should not imitate the crime” (Meehan). We as a society have no right to play God.
Only God can judge a man. So if we say an eye for an eye, then should the executioner of the
criminal be killed? Some people who work in the profession of executing people on death row
eventually quit because of the dreadfulness of the job.
Racial discrimination also portrays itself in the death penalty, just as it does in most
issues in our society. Mary Meehan states, “Studies have shown, that murderers of any race who
kill white people are more likely to receive the death sentence than those who kill African
Americans (pg 5). In other words, if a criminal kills a white man they have a far better chance of
being sentenced to death than if they kill a person of another race. That doesn’t seem fair;
because in our country everyone is suppose to be treated equal in the eyes of the law. Everyone
should get the same punishment.
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Another reason the death penalty should be eliminated is because more and more people
are being found innocent of the crimes they were accused of. There have been cases where a
man was executed and later proven innocent. Barry Latzer, a professor at John Jay College of
criminal justice says, “Capital trials are among the fairest in the world” (Jost), but Richard
Dieter, executive director of the Washington-Based Death Penalty Information Center says, “The
risk that innocent people will be caught up in the web of the death penalty is rising” (Jost). If
capital punishment trials are among the fairest in the world, then why is the number of innocent
people being executed beginning to rise? How would someone break the news to the family of
an innocent man who was executed?
A final reason why the death penalty should be eliminated is because of people who are
mentally handicapped. Some cases have shown, mentally handicapped people and legally insane
people that have killed someone and then were executed. These people don’t understand what
they have done. They don’t meet the same standards as a normal person. John F. Kennedy once
said, “Those who make a peaceful revolution impossible will make a violent revolution
inevitable” (Meehan).
Society should not lower itself to the level of the criminal. An adequate punishment
should be life in prison with no parole. We don’t have the right to decide who lives and dies. To
make sure the death penalty doesn’t racially discriminate, and to make sure innocent people
aren’t executed, is to abolish the death penalty altogether. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “An eye
for an eye makes the whole world blind” (The Quotations Page).
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Works Cited
Jost, Kenneth. “Rethinking the Death Penalty.” CQ Researcher 11.40 (2001): 945-968. CQ
Researcher Online. CQ Press. Funderburg Library, North Manchester, IN. 5 Nov. 2007
<http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2001111600>.
Meehan, Mary. “A Dozen Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty” Article The
following first appeared in America, November 20, 1982. It was thoroughly
revised and updated in 2001; additional revisio ns were made in 2004.
Copyright © 1982, 2001 & 2004 by Mary Meehan.
Gandhi, Mahatma. “The Quotations Page”
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/
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