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Persuassive Essay Against the Death Penalty

Decent Essays

Stop The Madness: Killing does not solve Killing

The sentence of capital punishment is an expensive barbaric alternative for punishing a criminal. Where does the hostility and ignorance stop once it begins? Murder is unaccepted by society, yet people seem to pacify themselves by killing criminals. Is that not considered to be murder? Sentencing a criminal to death does not solve the questions and problems that are left behind. Parents will still cry for a child that is never coming home. Mourning families will still carry a never-ending heartache, and the criminal no longer has to pay for the consequences of their actions. The only people left to pay are taxpayers. According to The International Debate Education Association (IDEA), …show more content…

On his way to the execution chamber, he told another inmate, “When I get back, I’m gonna show him how I can play basketball as good as he can.” Mason clearly did not understand his impending fate (NCADP). Another example of a criminal suffering from mental retardation was Jerome Bowden. Bowden did sign a statement confessing to murder, but only because the police told him it would be to his benefit. It was on the sole basis of this confession that he was convicted and executed by the state of Georgia. Jerome Bowden could not even read (NCADP).
Several children that have been labeled ‘adults’ by our government have also encountered horrifying death by execution. At least 160 children have been sentenced to death in the U.S. since 1973 (NCADP). The NCADP reports that the U.S. has executed more children than any other country; the youngest, a fourteen-year-old boy was so small his mask fell off while being electrocuted by the state of South Carolina. The Federal Government has imposed the death penalty against children for crimes they committed as young as ten years old (NCADP). How can a ten year old even be considered as an adult?
Many states have made incompetent decisions since the legalization of capital punishment. Judicial systems have created a mockery of themselves and others due to endless ignorance. IDEA accounts for twenty-three innocent people that were executed in the USA during the

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