Passion is at the heart of the argument for or against the death penalty. There are many people who ardently oppose the death penalty for valid and sound reasons. Considerations about the nature of the crime, the age of the offender, the type of crime committed, the childhood of the defendant, are just a few motivational factors weighed in their staunch support of abolishing the death penalty.
However, I do believe that death penalty to be an ultimate deterrent as the offended will never have the opportunity to commit another crime against society. It seems as though America’s smallest, most vulnerable citizen has many supporting their murder through abortion. However, there are those who deliberately murder while committing other crimes and they should pay the ultimate price for taking the life of another, especially a child, a woman, and elderly.
The death penalty could indeed be a deterrent if it was carried out efficiently after proving guilt with concrete evidence. For one thing, the person would never be able to hurt another soul, and others who may contemplate committing atrocious crimes would see that murder would be dealt with swiftly and severely.
On July 23, 2007 in Cheshire, Connecticut a family was decimated by the acts of two callous, criminal-minded men who planned on robbing their house, leaving the family of four bound as they fled the scene. Somewhere along the way, they changed their minds, kidnapped the family, committed sexual assaults on the young girls and mother, murdered the mother, bludgeoned the father, and set fire to the house killing the young girls. Only the father survived the deadly assault. Both Steven J. Hayes and Joshua A. Komisarjevsky were convicted on all counts and sentenced to death.
Sandra Cantu was an eight year old child who on March 27, 2009 was kidnapped, raped and, murdered by her playmate’s mother. It has been suggested that Sandra was killed in the church where Melissa Huckaby’s grandfather is a minister. Huckaby attempted suicide prior to her arrest on April 10, 2009. Melissa Huckaby pleads guilty to avoid the death penalty. It is my opinion that the option to plead out to avoid the death penalty should not have been offered. If the evidence was clear and beyond a shadow of a doubt, then Huckaby should have been tried, found guilty and sentenced to death.
Scott Peterson murdered his eight months pregnant wife, Laci Peterson on Christmas Eve in 2002. On April 23, 2003 the remains of a fetus washed ashore from the San Francisco Bay in California. The following day, a female torso washed up on shore on the same area. Peterson was arrested on April 18, 2003 carrying multitudes of items including fifteen thousand dollars in cash, suggesting that he planned on running away indefinitely. March 15, 2005 Scott Peterson was sentenced to death for the death of his wife. Eight years later, Peterson’s attorney filed a 423 page appeal of the death sentence. The result has yet to be determined.
These three cases show that some people can be cold-hearted, malevolent and dangerous without regard for anyone’s life. There is no misunderstanding that these people willingly engaged in the murder of innocent victims. By sentencing them to death, it will ensure that there will be no opportunity to ever hurt another person again. It may allow others to grasp that society does not condone murder and that murderer’s will be guaranteed a spot on death row.
Many people may argue that the people who killed others had a horrible childhood, or they are loved by their family, or perhaps had several disadvantages growing up. Rarely do people have a perfectly wonderful childhood. Nothing that anyone experiences warrants the excuse to murder another person, especially a child, during the commission of other crimes, or callously because they simply think they can get away with murder. Society doesn’t have to live by “an eye for an eye,” but sometimes certain crimes sanction the ultimate penalty of death.