Ashely+Q’s+2015+OpEd+Article



He’s sitting in his cell, saying goodbye to his mother. An officer comes in and puts on the shackles. He is led out of his cell. He is taken to a room in which he is laid on a table. His arms stretched out on either side. He is strapped down by his chest, his arms, and his legs. His shirt is pulled up and he is connected to a heart monitor. He lays there, unable to move, gasping and panting because he knows that his life is about to end. Behind a plate of glass there is a room full of people there to watch him die. He proclaims his innocence one last time. A lethal injection enters his body. The heart monitor flat lines.

The death sentence has been the capital punishment for a long time. Since Robespierre, the Reign of Terror and the execution and murder of 40,000 people (and probably even before that) criminals have been put to death by the government. And it’s about time that it ends. Capital punishment is unfair, unjust, and inequitable.

I understand that these are people who have committed atrocities. They have killed. They have committed treason. They have kidnapped. They have tortured. They have terrorized. But many American heroes, or at least people who have been essential to the development of American, have killed too. Andrew Jackson was responsible for the death of something near 4,000 Native American lives when he forced them through the Trail of Tears. Christopher Columbus, the “discoverer” of our great nation, allowed for the murder of natives and the rape of their women. Some of those held in esteem in the history of our country are killers. They have tortured. They have terrorized. Yet, they are our heroes. It’s ironic that the people we look back at with high regards qualify for death row. Here is why it should go.

Often in the U.S., the death sentence is executed via a lethal injection into the body of the inmate. When executors are unable to render the inmate unconscious, he will experience excruciating pain, and, while in a state of paralysis, would be unable to express his pain, a pain that has lasted over an hour.

Since 1973, 140 people were wrongly convicted and sentenced to capital punishment. At least, 140 people were proven to be wrongly convicted and sentenced to capital punishment. In the same time period, another 1,200 people were executed of which we cannot be certain which were guilty and which were in fact innocent.

It is racially biased. Since 1987, a whopping 77% of death row defendants have been executed for killing white victims, while about half of homicide victims are actually African American. That also brings the point that African Americans are treated more harshly when they are the defendants, and their lives given little value when they are the victims. The American Bar Association reported that in 2007, one-third of African Americans on death row in Philadelphia would have been given life sentences were it not for their race

International law prohibits the execution of the mentally ill and insane. The decision of the defendant’s sanity is up to the state, and constitutional protections are minimal for those with other types of mental illnesses. Because of this, dozens of prisoners have been executed despite suffering from serious mental illness. The National Association of Mental Health has estimated that up to 10% of inmates on death row suffer some form of mental illness.

If that has yet to convince you the death penalty should be done away with, here is one more. We preach that murder is heinous. That murderers will rot in the lowest pits of hell. That criminals have no place walking around earth, tainting the glorious land with their wickedness. Why then, do we take murderers, and murder them? It doesn’t make sense that we show the public that murder is inexcusable by murdering. The death penalty makes all of us criminals. Maybe we aren’t the ones injecting the prisoner, but we aren’t stopping it. We are allowing our country and our planet to be full of murderers, who, in turn, have no punishment. We kill the killers for killing and there are no consequences.

Under no circumstance is it acceptable to take the life of another human being. Under no circumstance is it acceptable for anyone to decide who gets to live. Our glorious land is not so much tainted by the criminals as it is by each of us who allows more murder to fall upon the world.