The Death Penalty

“The death penalty is a warning, just like a lighthouse throwing its beams out to sea. We hear about shipwrecks, but we do not hear about the ships the lighthouse guides safely on their way. We do not have proof of the number of ships it saves, but we do not tear the lighthouse down” (Barshay). For the good of humankind we must not only keep the death penalty, but we must make the death penalty a more effective and deterrent punishment for the crime of murder.



We can not morally or monetarily afford to keep murderers alive.   On the monetary side of things it cost a national average of $20,804 a year to keep a prisoner incarcerated (Boaz). That for a 50-year sentence would be well over 1 million dollars for one person. It is true that the legal fees involved in a execution are very high, but it seems that no two anti-death penalty sources can agree on the cost; one says it is $2,316,655 (Porter) yet another says 3.2 million (Poor). None of these sources take into account the money that could be saved because a potential murderer has been deterred from his dastardly deed. As Thomas R. Eddlem said when refuting questions about the cost of the death penalty “Justice isn’t up for sale to the lowest bidder” (Eddlem). With monetary reasons aside we must focus on the moral need for the death penalty. If one simply does not execute a murderer it is like saying to the victims that we don’t value their lives enough to put their murderer to death.



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We also must look at the other moral reasons that a murderer must be executed. When one takes somebody’s right to live away from them they must repay the debt owed to the victim. Is sitting in a jail cell eating free food, reading free books, or watching free television supplied to them in the interest of non-cruel punishment a fair way to pay off their debt to society? Of course it’s not, we must repay murderers with death! Opponents of the death penalty insist that huge numbers of...