FREE ESSAY ON DEATH PENALTY

DEATH PENALTY

Once upon a time, there was a man who sacrificed for a country by going to a war. Years
later, when the war was over, luckily the man came home alive, but he wasn't mentally
well. Time past. He started getting confused between his real life and the life during
the war. Finally, he committed a murder, while thinking that he was still at war.
Unfortunately, a government wants to put the man on the death row for the crime that he
committed. Does this sound familiar to you? Yes, this tragedy story is not a fiction. It
really took place in Oakland. The man was put on death row, and finished his life in a
prison. After I heard this story, I started thinking, "Is this why we have a capital
punishment?" I strongly disagree with capital punishment, because of the statistics that
I'll state in next couple of paragraphs shows well that even though we execute the
criminals and put them on death row still does not reduce the numbers of crimes. In next
paragraphs, I'll even talk about how criminals were executed. It was very inhumane how
people were killed, and still do not do any good to reducing numbers of crimes.
First of all, let's take a look at the history of capital punishment. There are 38 states
that currently authorize the death penalty. According to Justice Center Web Site, Daniel
Frank was the first known execution in the United States of America. He was putted to
death in 1622 in the Colony of Virginia for committing a theft. Even though, there was a
capital punishment in 1622, the death penalty statistics weren't collected until 1930.
Also, the article states that during 1930 to 1967, 3,859 persons were executed, and 54
percent of those executed were black, 45 percent were white, and the one- percent was
American Indians, Filipino, Chinese, and Japanese. In addition to that, the majority of
them were men, and only 32 women were executed during those years. Even though thousands
of executions took place through out the nation in different way, still the crime rate
didn't go down. There were tremendous numbers of executions during 1930 to 1967 through
out the states, and three out of five executions were held in the southern U.S.
Especially the state of Georgia had the most executions during the period, and New York
as well. California was the third state who had the most executions with 292. The graph
that was in the article showed a big gap between 1967 and 1977, which meant there wasn't
any execution during this time period. Gary Gilmore who was convicted murdered; he was
executed by firing squad, which I will talk about in next paragraph. Anyhow, during 1977
to 1998, the Bureau of Justice Statistics stated that white men were more executed than
Black. 
For these hundreds and thousands of executions, there were five different methods of
executions, which were lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber, hanging, and firing
squad. The federal government, the military and 32 states including California use lethal
injection to execute prisoners, because this method is known as the most humane form of
execution out of all, but the bottom line of capital punishment was to prevent people
from committing a crimes. For lethal injection, they mix three different drugs and inject
them into prisoner's arm. Electrocution is where prisoner is strapped to an electric
chair and executed. During the execution, three or more executioners push buttons, but
only one is connected to the electric chair. Gas Chamber is another method of execution
that is being used in California. The prisoner is sealed in a chamber and either
potassium cyanide or sodium cyanide is dropped into a pan of hydrochloric acid, and it
starts make prisoners unconscious and choke to death. Hanging and firing squad is well
known method, because many movies have shown people these two methods. Special thing
about firing squad is that some shooters fire blanks. Also this firing squad was used for
the first capital punishment in the United States. 
All these numbers and methods of capital punishment were mainly to reduce the numbers of
crimes. The idea of capital punishment is to scare people so they won't commit any
crimes, but we have never achieved that idea as far as the statistics show. I understand
that they have to punish people who did not obey the law some how, but taking someone's
life away isn't right way to punish people. I believe that nobody has the right to take
someone's life away, and nobody deserves to finish his or her life by putting on a death
penalty. Also, I mentioned earlier in this essay, that the man who had a mentally problem
and ended up putting on a death penalty. I don't think that the law was fair for him,
because he sacrificed for the country when we needed him. That's how he became mentally
ill. It seemed to me that the law didn't care what was the source that made him murder
someone. If we have to blame someone for him murder, it should have been a government
that sent him to war. I think that justice should focus more why people commit crimes and
try to prevent it, instead of taking people's away after they commit crimes. After all,
it comes down deep inside of my mind that death penalty is an unnecessary punishment to
us when it does not bring numbers of crimes down. It's also inhumane and the cruelest act
is being ever done to people and shouldn't exist anymore around humane being.