English 120
April 8, 2014
Persuasive Essay
The Death Penalty
According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), there have been 1376 executions in the United States since 1976. These executions have been performed through electrocution, gas chamber, hanging, firing squad, and the most common lethal injection, which over 1000 people have been executed by this method. However, only eighteen out of the fifty states have abolished the death penalty. I believe the death penalty does not solve the crime, teach a lesson, or answer any problems that were caused by the crime. As a whole nation, the death penalty, also known as capital punishment, should be prohibited for many reasons.
Murdering a person, without no doubt, …show more content…
However, closure is not the result in many of the circumstances. “You will lose someone you cannot live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp”, Anne Lamott. She pretty much says no matter what you do to try to take the pain will never go away, and you have to learn to live with it. Even though, losing a loved one can be heart shattering, even when the criminal is executed the hurt will never go away. Many families believe that this harsh punishment will bring them relief, but the ache is unescapable, it’s a process of life everyone will someday go …show more content…
However, it is time to face that our judicial system is prejudiced. In many of southern states, eight percent of the black criminals and only one percent of white criminals who commit murder get the death penalty. Also, according to the DPIC, criminals have a seventy seven percent likely hood to get executed for murdering a white person than a black person. “A report sponsored by the American Bar Association in 2007 concluded that one-third of African-American death row inmates in Philadelphia would have received sentences of life imprisonment if they had not been African-American.” (Death by Discrimination - The Continuing Role of Race in Capital