Death Penalty is it Necessary?
Have you ever thought about how many criminals escape punishment, and yet, the victims never have a chance to do that?
- J.
Edgar Hoover, late director of Federal Bureau of Investigations


Imagine you are a news reporter with the opportunity to watch the death of a committed felon. A felon that brutally murdered, raped and committed other gruesome crimes and everyone knows he’s guilty. You have to write a report on this execution to get a higher paying job. You take the opportunity. You sit in a dark room looking into a small square room complete with a gurney and some medical equipment including the three different drugs that are going to be used. The convicted killer walks into the room and is strapped down onto the gurney. The Warden inserts the I.V. needle into the arm of the man. The warden gives a signal and the first drug goes down the tube, 5.0 grams of sodium pentothal is administered. It is followed by 50 cc of pancuronium bromide, a saline flush, and finally, 50 cc of potassium chloride (Methods of Execution). After an hour and a half of sitting in the dark chamber, the doctor standing by pronounces the man dead. A peaceful death has just been witnessed, a death that should have been reserved for a nice old woman who lived a full life and not for a man who brutally murdered innocent people for the fun of it. The Death Penalty should not be abolished it was put in place thousands of years ago and has worked for our society as well as many society’s as a whole.
Take a look at any form of history text that has the first written laws and you will see Hammurabi’s code. In which the main idea in all of his laws or codes is “an eye for an eye”. The concept being that if a man was to poke another man’s eye out and the offender would have his eye poked out as well, even if by an unfortunate accident. This code worked wonders for Hammurabi’s kingdom and worked well, by establishing order and a way to make a fair society, even in the Roman Empire embraced this idea, although of course it was more refined and trials were given to the offender to prove his innocence. Why would we want to get rid of a thousands years old idea that has strengthened justice for thousands of years?
Common arguments against the death penalty are that it’s cruel and unusual. Think back to the opening example. The man brutally was committed of having murdered and raped his victims, did the felon think about the seventh amendment which states that no person shall be subject to cruel and unusual punishment? No, he did not otherwise he would not have done those terrible things to his victims. The Constitution was designed for everybody to follow, not just the government of America. The man is lucky to be given this painless way of dying after what he did. The other common argument that goes with this one is some people, like Nobel peace prize winners and Mother Teresa say that it’s not a mortal man’s decision whether or not a person should live or die. Well, murders do not think that this is a valid point and often have a reason for killing people, especially serial killers. According to Evan Sycamnias, (Sycamnias) “Rarely do thesekillers kill people for money, instead they do it for the thrill, sexual satisfaction and/or dominance they achieve.” And so people believe that serial killers believe that it is their responsibility to eliminate the evil in this world and rarely kill for profit but for a psychological gain. If they firmly believe they should eliminate all evil, the justice system should not be cruel and unusual and give a condemned killer what he want most in this world.
The way the executions performed in modern times are more human. Executioners no longer relay just on the hangman’s noose or a shooting range as we have done since before World War 2. Now the justice system has the Lethal Injection that lets the killer go die peacefully on a gurney, using an overdose of three different drugs that make the man go to sleep first, slow his heart rate down and finally shut down vital organs. Forty six states allow for the felons to choose this way to die. Yes, convicts get to choose the way they want to go out of this world. Otherwise the felon has to go through the more classic ways of dying which are the electric chair or shooting range. The only reason why it costs more of the federal governments money is because the trial goes on longer.
People that want to get rid of the death penalty say it costs way to much of the tax payers dollars. Well, what use is this life convicted murder living a semi-easy life in jail. He doesn’t have to pay taxes; he has free television, free guaranteed dinners, a smoke free living area, and even health care. Yes, a murder gets guaranteed health care because if he was on death row, he couldn’t be executed while having a cold or the flu. The prisoner does absolutely nothing to help the economy, if anything it is cheaper to society and our economy to kill them as soon as possible, if the crime they committed calls for it.
The death penalty is a necessary evil for our society, not only here in America but in the world. We should not let murdering mad men that cannot be helped rot in our jails. They have had their chance to create a good life for themselves and be law abiding citizens but they gave up their chance when they first had an inkling kill a person not when they were committed in court because if it wasn’t in the oust side world, they wouldn’t have been in the courtroom to begin with. We should not be ignorant servants to felons, by paying their taxes and life style, society should just have them die, a fate that in some cases is to kind and fair for them. An example of a case in which the man deserves to die is a case from Indiana. State of Indiana vs. Zachariah Melcher,
“On April 22, 2005, the decomposing bodies of 23 year old Christian Melcher and 11 month old Jaiden Melcher were discovered stuffed inside a plastic storage container in her home, located at 628 East Maple Street in Jeffersonville. A plastic bag covered the head of the small child. An autopsy later revealed that Christian Melcher died of strangulation or asphyxiation. The child died of suffocation or asphyxiation. In addition, Christian was found to be eight months pregnant, carrying a viable fetus able to live outside the mother's womb.
Zachariah Melcher, age 27, was the husband of Christian Melcher and the father of Jaiden Melcher, and lived at the home at 628 East Maple Street in Jeffersonville. He was previously convicted of Burglary (Class B Felony) on May 22, 1997 in the Floyd County Circuit Court, and was released on supervised probation on September 19, 2002. After being advised of his constitutional rights, Zachariah Melcher admitted that he had murdered his wife and child and stuffed them into a plastic storage container seven days earlier.
On August 3, 2006 Melcher pled guilty to 3 Counts of Murder pursuant to a "Statement of Plea Agreement to Ensure that the Defendant is Never Released from Prison." With the recommendation of the victim's family, he was sentenced by Judge Daniel F. Donahue to consecutive terms of Life Imprisonment with absolutely no possibility of parole on Count I, Life Imprisonment with absolutely no possibility of parole on Count II, and to a fixed term of 65 years imprisonment on Count III.”( Clark County Death Penalty Cases)
There have been worse cases than this, and this is actually pretty tame as far as some murders can go, like the Zodiac killer for example.

Is the death penalty an act of revenge? There has always been a very fine line between justice and revenge. In most cases in which you deal with the issue yourself, as an individual taking no outside opinion, that is revenge such as the story of the Count of Monte Cristo. However if there are outside opinions, like a courtroom and jury then that is impartial to the crime, then that is justice because it went through a court of law and was tried. The convicted had a chance to save him/her self. People against the Death Penalty say that it makes all Americans murders. That is not very valid, because it isn’t the entire countries decision, most of the time the country don’t even know that there is a trial going on, we as a society only hear the major crimes that go on in our lives.

The families of lost loved ones have to wait long enough for a convicted murder to pay for what he did. Families never get to see their lost family members again while a felon’s family can at least see him/her. The death penalty is not an act of revenge but a way to free up our jail system for convicts that can actually full be helped. Ways of killing people now are a lot more human, when in my opinion they should be harsher, but it really does not cost a lot more than life with no parole. The death penalty is a necessary evil in our society that cannot be abolished; it is something we all have to live with. Don’t let convicted murders wander free and make our society less safe than already is.







Bibliography

1.Clark County Death Penalty Cases. 18 Feburary 2010 <http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/dpclark.htm>.

2.Methods of Execution. 18 feburary 2010 <http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/methods.htm>.

3.Ornelles, Lori. Death Penalty Arguments. 3 June 2001. 18 Feburary 2010 <http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/OrnellasPaper.htm>.

4.Sycamnias, Evan. Evaluating a psychological profile of a serial killer (Updated). 18 Feburary 2010 <http://www.uplink.com.au/lawlibrary/Documents/Docs/Doc5.html>.