The old saying, “What you don’t know, won’t hurt you” is the main reason the death penalty doesn’t equal justice. If you aren’t left to think about the consequences of your behavior, then justice can’t be served. Victims of crimes, including all those who love and care for them, are really the ones punished when an offender dies by lethal injection. They must try to go on living with the memory of loss, when the offender leaves this world without ever having to think about it again.
Isn’t that really giving the offender the easy way out?
Death doesn’t equal justice for another reason; cost to taxpayers. Although it certainly isn’t cheap to house a criminal for life; the cost to put someone on death row can run into millions of dollars that taxpayers are responsible for when indigent criminals are given state attorneys. Life in prison is a done deal; it’s over when you’ve been convicted and sent away for life. Your sentence is set, and you do the time.
When you’re sentenced to death – the appeal process is left open, and criminals utilize every single avenue to prevent their demise. This can result in years of appeals to courts and mounting attorney fees. By the time one is put to death, if in fact they are, the cost to house them in prison during their appeal process, along with the amount of money taxpayers have paid to help this criminal plead for their life, is staggering. In the end, if death is still immanent – we’ve paid for nothing but borrowed time. If the sentence has changed to life, then we’ve paid millions when we could have paid much less.
Why would anyone want to contribute to borrowed time for an offender who has left its victims with no time at all?
The death penalty doesn’t equal justice. In fact, most punishments don’t. To take life from someone because they took another’s, makes no sense. It’s a message that’s two sided.
Offenders who commit crimes that are heinous, need to spend their lives remembering that they’ve committed them. They can’t do that if they’re not here.
If the families have to suffer in the aftermath of crime, why would we want to take away that punishment from the very person who was responsible for it?
There’s no justice in doing that.
The only way we can somehow try to alleviate the suffering of those touched by vicious crimes, is to allow them to see that justice is served by punishments that fit the crime. Putting one to death is ending a criminal’s suffering – a selfish suffering they feel by having been caught and put in prison.
No, I say let them live, even without conscience or guilt for what they’ve done. Their life behind bars may cost us money, but I believe it to be much better spent by caging the animal then letting him loose by death to forget his crime.
The victim and their loved ones will never forget.
Why would we offer a criminal the option to?