Death to The Death Penalty

For this blog posting, I had a rather difficult time trying to decide the issue I should do it on. I almost went with one of the examples given, the ‘friends with benefits’ one, which definitely encompasses the whole sexuality part, but ultimately I’ve decided to go a different route. One that would just fall under the ‘Science and Culture’ umbrella. So perhaps the exact opposite of any sex or sexuality topic, I’m going to look a largely political one, the death penalty.

The death penalty is an issue that, like abortion, has support on both sides of it and is also politically divided. In general, both parties are for the death penalty, however, there is much more support against it with democrats. This is shown throughout the US and from state-to-state as a majority of states do have the death penalty, with the numbers being 34-16 (note that with the image, Illinois abolished their death penalty this year). For anyone wanting to see what some experts have to say in regards to this I included a link at the bottom.

Now getting away from those facts and into opinions, I am definitely against the death penalty. I understand others beliefs of it basically being like an eye-for-an-eye and if someone is going to rape or murder people then they deserve it, however I feel like having a death penalty is just the easy way out. I believe laws should be changed so that a person who previously would have received the death penalty would just receive life behind bars, or more technically life without parole (LWOP). I feel like LWOP would be such a worse punishment for someone than the death penalty could ever be. I’m not entirely sure if this actually occurs, but nowadays it seems like someone who receives LWOP probably still has too many luxuries while in prison. This would also need to be changed. In these circumstances LWOP would essentially mean solitary confinement in a cell until you die. They would be brought the minimal food necessary to survive and that would be the closest they get to human contact. They are not allowed to read, write, or talk to people anymore. That should be their punishment.

Now I know many people won’t agree with this as clearly the divide among US states shows and some people might say I just haven’t been personally affected by someone murdering someone close to me. You could make a point that I would have a completely different opinion under different circumstances. However, I do not believe so at all. If someone were to say murder my entire family I would not want them to just be put to death. I believe that would be too easy for them. I would want them to be punished and LWOP, being behind bars for the rest of their life seems like a good way for it to happen. Not being able to do anything would be torturous, and for crimes that warrant the death penalty that is what should they should receive. You cannot even make a case that something like this is unconstitutional, saying this would be cruel and unusual punishment, because those perpetrators forfeit there rights and freedoms when they commit such horrible crimes.

This is just my opinion though. I understand other people’s beliefs; however I just believe that this makes infinitely more sense. Also I could make the exact same case against pro-death penalty believers as I stated above. How is sentencing someone to death not cruel and unusual punishment??

http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002000