There are two sayings that come to mind when I think of the death penalty. One being “Only God can judge me” and second being, “Condemn not and you will not be condemned.” Society has seemed to totally disregard these two sayings these days. Instead we judge, condemn, and literally take someone’s life into our own hands. We take someone’s life and try to decide whether we deem it worthy or not.

I support justice. I do not support putting someone to death because we say it is justified. One of my most major arguments against the death penalty is this. Normally when we punish someone, we do it to teach them a lesson. We do it, to tell them and society, that what they have done is unacceptable and wrong. So I’ve never quite understood the thought process behind the death penalty. Usually the punishment of the death penalty is given for murder. So, how can we as a society say that murder is wrong, by punishing the offender by murdering him or her. It is complete contradictory nonsense.

In the movie At Death House Door, It hurt me seeing Carlos’s families’ pain in dealing with losing their poor innocent and essentially helpless child. In society child abuse is extremely looked down upon. We say that hurting someone so innocent and helpless is extremely evil. But many people have been executed who have been innocent and that is the exact same thing we are doing to them. Many things about the death penalty contradict themselves.

A lot of people argue that the death penalty brings much needed peace to the victims family. I highly disagree. My aunt was brutally murdered in May of 2005. I have reflected upon that experience a lot when writing this paper. I remember constantly hearing mainly non family members saying that they really hope he gets death. But I remember thinking to myself, what will that prove? What will it prove to my family, him and society? Nothing. The man that killed my aunt did not get death but two life sentences without parole and let me tell you I was deeply relieved. I wanted the man who did that to her, to learn his lesson. To me, death would have been the easy way out. I wanted that man to have to sit in jail until he passed. I wanted him to have to wake up every day knowing what his actions had done and the amount of pain and grief he brought into someone’s family. I wanted him to have to live with that, and learn. Because if they would have killed that man, it would have taught him nothing.


Lastly the death penalty to me is basically completely inhumane. It honestly brings my thoughts back to the holocaust. Life isn’t being valued or appreciated for what it is. Life is a gift that no human being has the right to take away. No one. As a human race who do we think we are to so nonchalantly, so simply, take someone’s life. We not only are taking someone’s life, we are taking someone’s daughter, son, mother, father, aunt, uncle, niece of nephew. We are destroying families for our own self assurance. I feel as though we are trying to the play the role of God which we are far from. As a society we need to put more of a value on life, Realizing that every single person’s life is precious, and we need to treat it that way. Could you live with yourself knowing that you had personally taken someone’s life? Neither could I.