Second Draft

In the article “Death Penalty Systems “Irreversibility broken” North Carolina Should abandon a permanently flawed process”, the author is encouraging the North Carolina natives to speak out on removing the death penalty from the state. Within this editorial, the author takes Adam Liptak’s, of the New York Times, views of the reason why the Capital Punishment is flawed in the United States. Adam Stated “The system doesn't work because it cannot be reconciled with competing goals - the ability of juries to make independent decisions about who is sentenced to death, and fairness in a system that executes some and spares others who have committed similar crimes”. The idea that Adam is trying to propose is that the reasons why Capital Punishment should be removed from the United State’s Justice system is because he feels Capital Punishment will not take into account how the juries’ feelings will affect the outcome of the final decision and that Capital punishment does not treat the same crimes fairly; in the sense that not all crimes will produce the same punishment.

I feel the exact opposite of what this editorial is trying to propose. I feel that Capital Punishment should be allowed in the United States. In a perfect world were greed and poverty aren’t major problems in our society, Capital Punishment would not be necessary and could be abandoned. But since we don’t live in a perfect world, I feel Capital punishment should still be kept in our justice system. Capital punishment can be successful when the people who are in control of Capital punishment take proper steps and ensure that everything was done correctly to properly give someone the verdict of the death penalty as a punishment. But the negatives surrounding the process of Capital Punishment are usually the ones that are well known, thus giving Capital punishment a negative conation that the government is just killing many criminals.

Capital punishment can be used as a threat to criminals. A criminal knowing that he/she could receive the death penalty after commit a crime could add a little risk into the head of the criminal, thus creating doubt and possibly preventing the crime of happening in the first place. This being a possibility, crime rates could fall in the states that still allow for the use of the death penalty. An editorial from the Washington Post titled “Why are violent crimes rates falling?” stated that the reason why crime rates are falling from the 2008 year to the 2009 year is because harsher sentencing to criminals have take many criminals off the streets(AUTHOR NEEDED). Also, the idea of harsher sentencing relates to the use of the Death Penalty on certain crimes. Keeping the Capital Punishment as an option for certain crimes could produce lower crime rates each year due to the fact criminals could realize that a crime committed could cost them their own life through the justice system, thus adding fear into the mind of the criminals.

One reason this editorial states why North Carolina should ban Capital Punishment is because of its “cost”. Quoted from the editorial

“Professor Philip Cook in the Sanford School of Public Policy concluded that the state could save nearly $11 million each year in extra costs if it dropped the death penalty. His study found the state spent $21.6 million extra in taxpayer money on death penalty trials from 2005-06.”

This quote is merely stating all of this money that was used or went to the use of the Death Penalty in North Carolina in the years of 2005 to 2006. Even though this quote didn’t state where this money could have gone to, we could assume that it would have gone to something that would have improved the society for the North Carolina natives. The problem which still would have existed is what would happen to all of the criminals that could have received the death penalty. Or even, what happens to all the crimes that could now occur in the state of North Carolina due to the fact that criminals now know that they cannot be given death for any crime, thus removing any real risk of a punishment from the state to the criminal.

What would happen in this case is that all of these criminals(new and old) would be placed into jail until their court date where they would be trialed and most likely be placed back into jail for a x amount of years. In this response, the state of North Carolina would have to build more jails to fit all of these new criminals. The funding for the production of most, if not all, of these jails would come from tax payers. That would only seem reasonable because if they didn’t, where would there criminals go? To South Carolina? Neighboring States? It would not seem logical for North Carolina to send its criminals to another state, due to the fact that crime rates have risen and they are unprepared for rise of criminals.

The other situation that could occur due to a rise of crime rates would be that the state would need to increase their authority and police forces to crack down on the increase crimes rates. Both creating more jails for an increase in criminals and giving more money for authorizes to crack down on higher crime rates would result in a lot of money being spent. This doesn’t include the jury and trial cost for all the new criminals. This being one possibility to the outcome of abandoning the Death penalty, it would result in a North Carolina paying for the creation of more jails, the installment of more authorizes, a society that would have to live with a high risk of crime in their neighborhood, and millions of dollars being dedicated to crime; all if North Carolina were to abandon the Death Penalty.

When a person is given the death penalty, it requires a lot of evidence to give a criminal the death penalty. Quoted from the web article Innocence and Death Penalty: The increasing danger of Executing the innocence”, Richard Dieter states “The danger that innocent people will be executed because of errors in the criminal justice system is getting worse. A total of 69 people have been released from death row since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged”. Richard, being the executive director the Death penalty information center, is stating that the possibility for recovering evidence to over turn the death penalty is possible, but rare. We hear the stories where some evidence was found at the last moment that released the criminal of the death penalty charge. This rarely happens and when it does happen, it sometimes can be evidence that could be controversial and can be questionable, but still allowed. Mistakes can happen throughout the long process. The end result of this process can mean the life of a human being, but we are all human beings and mistakes can be made. To say that since the Death Penalty process made a few mistakes throughout its long history of being used in the United States and that it should be abandoned because of these mistakes seems unfair.
The Capital punishment system was created for the people to ensure that every person who has a chance to receive the death penalty has a fair trial. The jury would hopefully be chosen to be unbiased towards race, economic status, etc. and each jury member would hopefully have the ability to understand the evidence to decide the verdict relating to the criminal. The evidence provided is assumed to be correct and complete. And if any of these credentials were not met or was flawed, the chance of someone receiving the death penalty would almost be zero. The problems that occur throughout the death penalty system are not caused by the system itself, but rather the people that are involved with it.

The reasons why this editorial stated to abandon the death penalty for the State of North Carolina would cause more harm than good for the natives of the state. The article addresses the idea of innocence people being convicted; bias juries or judges being a factor in the final verdict, and the total cost of having the death penalty as an option being the reasons why North Carolina should ban Capital Punishment. But the author does overlook the fact that if he were to ban the death penalty, the state could end up to be a place where no one would want to live due to the rise in crime rates and no money going to improve the public through schools, parks, etc. The idea of banning the Death penalty will be a conversional subject that will always be argued against, but in my opinion, keeping the death penalty as an option will produce a safer and more economical society for the North Carolina natives to live in.