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Hello, I'm a female 17 years old and a JR. in High school. Also I'm from Pennsylvania,& that will help with my question.
Sometime last week I was assigned to write a Persuasive Essay, since I have one of the higher grades in class the teacher thought it would be appropriate that I tackle a harder issue to discuss, which lead her to assign me the Death Penalty.
I need some reasons why people support the death penalty and the reasons why they support it. I have a few reasons picked out but I would like to see if there are better reasons out there and see what other people's thoughts are.
Also, please don't answer this if you disagree with it. (link)
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Here are the two best arguments I know against the death penalty
1) The government doesn't deserve to be entrusted with such an absolute power. We know that police, prosecutors, judges, and juries are human beings; as such, they can make mistakes and be corrupted.
A number of people on death row have been exonerated, fortunately before being executed, by DNA evidence, so there's absolute proof that innocent people have been sentenced to death in this country.
Life without the possibility of parole has been made available in a number of states as an alternative to the death penalty for that very reason - if they do find that someone turns out to be innocent, they can release them.
But not if they're dead.
2) Life without parole is actually a harsher punishment than death, in most cases. With the death penalty, whatever the prisoner experiences is over in less than an hour. But life in prison means years of suffering.
It could also be argued that virtually no other industrialized democracy executes, and that the general standard of international morality condemns the idea of execution.
As for arguments FOR the death penalty...I never saw one that didn't basically turn out to be a desire for revenge. There's absolutely no evidence to back up the idea that the death penalty deters people from committing murder or any other crime. The USA actually has a much higher crime rate than any country which DOESN'T have the death penalty, in fact.
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