The death penalty is one of the most meaningless punishments that can be given to an inmate with capital offenses and a blatant violation of human rights.
According to the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, “Excessive bail shall not be required, … nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
With cruel and unusual punishments prohibited, the method of execution for the death penalty has had to be changed in the past 200 years, according to Justia US Law, from hanging to the electric chair, as it was “less painful and more humane than hanging,” to gas chambers and firing squads as it was also “less painful and more humane than electrocution” and finally to lethal injection as it was “less painful and more humane than gas chambers and firing squads.”
These changes are an artificial way to continue the administration of death under a humane disguise, and distract from the fact that capital punishment itself is simply death begetting more death.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, “growing numbers of family members of homicide victims oppose capital punishment or do not want it pursued in the deaths of their loved ones.”
179 murder victims families signed a letter to the legislators of Conneticut advocating the abolition of the death penalty. Representative Renny Cushing, State Senator Ruth Ward, John Wolfe, father of State Rep. Mary Wolfe, Beth Kissileff, Mark Heyer and many others who were affected by their family members being killed all did not want to kill the people responsible.
The death penalty is legalized murder and excused by using those affected in order to justify what this “punishment” does. It does not even kill the right person the entire time. Nearly 200 have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. alone, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Wesley Eugene Baker was executed on December 5, 2005 in Baltimore, Maryland for killing a teacher’s aide in front of her grandchildren during a robbery. He was the first black man to be executed since the state-sponsered study of the capital punishment in Maryland found disparities on how it was being used by race and geography, according to the Washington Post. He was also the last to be executed before the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that execution by lethal injections had to stop until the legislature approves of it or a law states that such rules are not required.
Then in 2009, Maryland instituted the tightest restrictions on the death penalty in the entire country, which limited capital cases to only those which require DNA or biological evidence of guilt, a video taped confession or a videotape linking the defendant to the crime. Former Governor Martin O’Malley signed a bill which abolished capital punishment in Maryland in 2013, replacing it with life sentance without parole, according to Death Penalty Information Center.
As O’Malley has stated in a report from CNN, “Maryland has effectively eliminated a policy that is proven not to work. Evidence shows that the death penalty is not a deterrent, it cannot be administered without racial bias, and it costs three times as much as life in prison without parole.”
So far, only 22 states in the U.S. have abolished the capital punishment, including the District of Columbia. The other 28 still use it up to this day.
The myth that the death penalty gives closure to those affected is becoming more and more of a myth everyday. The killing of innocent lives using capital punishment is even more of a danger now that even DNA and videotype evidence can be faked in the modern day.
The simple fact of the matter is that condemning a man to death does not solve crime anymore. This old mentality of an eye for an eye is over. According to Slate News, very few inmates escape prison anymore. Those that do are “walkaways” and from community correction facilities that have minimal supervision, and those who do escape are always recaptured. The need for killing inmates is not necessary anymore and it’s time that America figures this out.
Article by José Salinas-Morales of Watkins Mill High School