Death Penalty

I am against the death penalty because it is a very cruel and an unusual act which violates the 8th amendment. The 8th amendment is simply "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." I believe the death penalty should be illegal and banned as a form of punishment.

The death penalty sends the wrong message to people, the message being why kill people who kill people to show that killing is wrong. If a man has committed a crime he should do his time behind bars. A killer behind bars has his whole life to think about what he has done and after a while his conscience would weight on him, making it impossible for that person to live with themselves. If you just kill the person, all one is really doing is just putting them out of their misery. But what about the person who's life was taken away? There always lays a chance that the person on death row could be innocent and is put o the death penalty and killed. What then? What can one even say to their loved ones? "Sorry and here's some money?" Well guess what America sometimes sorry just doesn't cut it or the green. Most people say that if the death penalty was used for every single murder others would think twice before commenting a crime, yes true, but then again most murders are done on the "heat of the moment" so no one is thinking.

Over the years they have made drastic changes to the death penalty. It began with the crucifixion, to the stoning, leading to the hanging, to the gas chambers, to the eclectic chairs and has stopped at the Lethal Injection. The Lethal Injection is a "faster" way of killing a person but sometimes using the Lethal Injection, it can take up to 30 minutes for that one person to die instead of seconds. Those 30 minutes seems like a life time because you're gasping for air which isn't there. The Lethal Injection is basically two shots in which the first one paralyzes your body making you feel no pain while the other one slowly stops your lungs and heart from working.

On November 5, 1977 a man named Elmo Patrick Sonnier raped and killed a girl named Loretta Ann Bourque, 18, and killed her boyfriend named David LeBlanc, 17. He was arrested and sentenced to death row. He was found guilty and put on the electric chair, while his accomplis was charged with the same but was in jail for life instead of having the same consequences as Patrick. I feel that if you have money and can afford a good lawyer your punishment won't be that severe which isn't fair. Isn't this an equal country?

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