Death Penalty...Dying to Know About It

The Court takes steps to protect the rights of the accused by letting them have a trial in which a jury decides if they are guilty or not. In the trial they can make and opening statement, present their case, and give a closing statement. This gives them opportunity to be found innocent. They can use witnesses who could tell if the person was at the crime scene or not. The person accused can also motion for a new trial if they truly know they are innocent. They can appeal to the state's highest court, or to the Supreme Court. There is a pardon board who can pardon, or set free, someone who was wrongly accused of a crime. This doesn't happen all the time, sometimes people are guilty and they have to pay for their crimes. Those who are found guilty are sometimes executed by the state. I think that the system has its flaws just like anything, but it has come a long way from when it started. In the early years of the country, one person had to say you were innocent and you could be put to death, like in the Salem Witch Trials, women were burned alive because one person accused them of being a witch. Then as the country started to evolve we decided a trial by jury was a better way to convict people. This went on well until the Civil War when President Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus, the right a person has to a trial by jury. This was helpful to the war because so many trials were taking place when people would be captured that it wasn't helping the war end sooner. Now people have a right to a trial by jury and I believe that if enough evidence is presented than a jury will find someone innocent or guilty, if not enough evidence is presented they will hopefully say that there was not enough evidence to prove the person innocent of guilty, but that's in a perfect world.

I believe that lethal injection is the most humane way to execute a prisoner. I feel this way because the person looks as if they have gone to sleep, they don't thrash around and they don't try to stop from dying which is painful enough, they just look peaceful and they don't look in pain. I think the gas chamber should be considered "cruel and unusual" because prisoners try to hold their breath to stop from dying, and they are told to breath in deeply so they can die faster. That's just not okay, to have to tell someone they have to die faster than normal. It just seems creepy to die from gas. To me its as if this way of killing someone was taken from a dark twisted mind and that only a psychopath would kill someone this way. It's not a peaceful way to die, you're thrashing and kicking around struggling for air to enter your lungs, but all that enters is gas, it just shakes you to your core.

Women are not typically on death row, the state with the most women on death row is California. They have 721 people on death row, 16 of them are women. A lot of the Midwest sates don't have the death penalty. Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Minnesota don't have the death penalty. It was interesting to think that Midwest states don't use the death penalty.

It costs too much money to kill people, taxpayers in California had to pay more than $250 million every time someone dies. I don't think that the people who wrote the information like the death penalty, and they convinced me not to like it. Most Americans don't like the death penalty. Illinois abolished it because 20 people were set free because they were falsely accused of a crime they didn't do. More white people have been killed than any other race 42%, blacks follow behind with 42%. I think that killing people is bad and it creeped me out that 11 people were executed in gas chambers. I don't care what people have done, I don't think killing them does anything because they have no respect for human life, so they wouldn't value their own life. If people kill those who have killed than they are just as bas as the murder.