The Death Penalty: A Controversial Issue that May Cost You Your Life
...taken from her as her killer forced his manhood in and out of her fragile body. I envision her screaming for help, yelling for her mother so loudly that she exhausted her vocal chords. I can see the tears running down her face and the fear in her eyes during her last minutes of her life, right before he stabbed her and slit her throat. Now imagine this had happened to your daughter, your sister, your friend; would you feel safe knowing that the man who did this may walk the streets again someday? Kristen’s killer and countless numbers of other murderers are given an opportunity that their victims are not. They are given the chance to live. Our judicial system calls it the right to repent and rehabilitate. If during their incarceration these murderers show repeated acts of good behaviour and sorrow for what they have done, they may one day be released from prison and walk the streets again. They may be free to rape and kill other people, they may move to your neighborhood and you would never even know it. Many people claim there are alternatives to the death penalty. They feel life in prison without parole is justification for their crime. I suppose that is true if you ignore the guards and other inmates they kill while inside. What if these murderers escape? I doubt they are going to move to a town somewhere and start an honest life as a reformed person. The majority of the time they will kill again whether it is for money, food or just simply pleasure. “Dawud Mu'Min who was serving a 48-year sentence for the 1973 murder of a cab driver when he escaped from a road work gang and stabbed to death a storekeeper named Gadys Nopwasky in a 1988 robbery that netted $4.00. Fortunately, there is now no chance of Mu'Min committing murder again. He was executed by the state of Virginia on November 14, 1997.” (Pro death penalty website) If the state of Virginia had executed this man the first time he committed murder, than Gadys Nopwasky’s family wouldn’t have to visit her grave every year. They wouldn’t have to wonder what she’d be doing today. They wouldn’t have to look at a picture to once again see her face. Another downside to life imprisonment is that it tends to deteriorate after time. For example in New York, in 1962 a man by the name of James Moore raped and strangled a fourteen year old girl named Pamela Moss. Pamela’s parents who were against the death penalty asked the judge if Moore could serve a life sentence instead of being put to death. The judge granted their wishes and James Moore was sentenced to life in prison. In 1982 the state of New York’s sentencing laws changed, allowing Moore to be eligible for parole every two years. Had the Moss’s known the state would betray them; maybe the death sentence would have been carried out. Instead they spend every second year wondering if their daughter’ killer will be set free. According to the U.S department of justice, the average prison sentence served by a convicted murderer is five years and eleven months. These people take away a life and all their punishment is, is to sit in a jail cell with the same luxuries offered at the Hilton for nearly six years. These sentences are often cut short because as time passes the severity of the crime, often becomes obsolete or forgotten, laws change and so do parole boards (pro death penalty). As long as a murderer is still alive, no matter how reformed and sorrowful he or she may seem, they are still a murderer, and they may kill again. It is the individuals in charge of our criminal justice system, the people who run our jails, the people on the parole boards, and the people who oppose the death penalty that are naïve enough to let them live and set them free to repeat and commit more crimes. In Texas in 1966 a man named Kenneth McDuff was convicted of shooting and killing two boys and raping and strangling their female friend. A verdict by a jury sentenced him to death by electrocution. This sentence was changed to a sentence of life imprisonment, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as then imposed. In 1989, prisons in Texas were overflowing with prisoners and McDuff was quietly released to the outside world to mingle in with the rest of society. No notice was given to the public. A prostitute was found naked, beaten and strangled in the same fashion as the young girl he previously murdered a few short days after his release. He was not charged with the crime, but he found himself back in jail on a minimal time sentence in 1989 after an incident occurred relating to racial matters. He was released again in 1990. Since his release in 1990, he killed four other prostitutes in the same malicious fashion and was finally caught, convicted and again sentenced to death. He was executed on November 17, 1998 by lethal injection after taking the lives of eight known victims and perhaps more. If McDuff’s initial sentence had been carried out and he was executed, all of those people would still be alive today. “The U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 struck down state death penalty laws, a ruling that also brought federal executions to a halt. In 1976, the court reinstated the death penalty after the adoption of new procedures. From 1982 to 1999, 250 to 350 persons were annually sentenced to death, but in the last three years the number of death sentences has dropped dramatically.” (newsbatch.com) According to a 2002 report, 13 U.S states have outright banned the death penalty and an additional five have not executed anyone in over a decade. Fiv...