Prop 34: the Death Penalty

The Death Penalty, also known as Capital Punishment is a world wide controversial issue. Should the death penalty be repealed and replaced with life imprisonment without possibility of parole? California voters on Tuesday rejected a ballot measure that would have repealed the state's death penalty. Supporters against Prop 34 claim that California is broke and taxpayers would pay at least $50,000 annually, giving lifetime healthcare and housing to killers who tortured, raped, and murdered children, cops, mothers and fathers. A yes on Prop. 4 states that no offenders would be sentenced to death under state law. Offenders who are currently under a sentence of death would be resentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The state would provide a total of $100 million in grants to local law enforcement agencies over the next four years. I strongly agree with a vote yes on Prop. 34. The death penalty isn’t an effective way to prevent or reduce a crime. Not only does this not prevent future crimes and murders, but sometimes the death penalty is applied unfairly to innocent people.

Evidence has shown that more than 100 innocent people have been sentenced to death in the United States and some have been executed. Prop. 34 means that the state of California will never execute an innocent person. Franky Carrillo was 16 when he was arrested and wrongly convicted of murder in Los Angeles; it took 20 years to show his innocence. Judge LaDoris Cordell, from Santa Clara said “If someone’s executed and later found innocent, we can’t go back. ” I agree with this judge because what if later we find evidence that the offender is innocent there no way we can bring someone back to life.

So then again who has the right to take the life of a human, when God is the one who decides when our time on earth has come to an end. Life without parole would be less expensive than the death penalty. California’s death penalty is too costly and is hardly used. Only 13 people have been executed since 1967 and no one since 2006. Prisoners are put to death row but die of old age before they make it to there punishment. We waste millions of tax dollars on special housing for these inmates, when they just sit around doing nothing.

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To me it makes more sense to keep a killer in a prison for the rest of his/her life until they die. An impartial study found California will save nearly $1 billion in five years if we replace the death penalty with life in prison without possibility of parole. The savings would come from eliminating lawyers’ fees and special death row housing. California is broke and Prop. 34 will save us money. We all know that killing another person is the most evil crime that one can commit.

But it seems that our government is being hypocritical when it states that capital punishment is allowable because, after all, the criminal did murder an innocent victim, and therefore should be killed. This is known as the "eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth theory. " Of course, if we used this system all the time, there would be no need for laws. The majority of countries in Western Europe, North America and South have abandoned capital punishment. Why is it that the United States remains a user of capital punishment?

The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. It denies criminals their natural born right to life. The death penalty should be abolished because it has never been shown to lower crime rates or stop serial killers from killing. It costs far more to execute a person than to keep him or her in prison for life. Capital punishment is against the humanity, we can find other alternatives to it. As Voltaire once said, “It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one. ”

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