The death penalty is something I have considered doing a commentary on but I didn’t believe it was relevant at the time it came across my thoughts. However, I believe this relaxation of major issues discussed is a perfect opportunity to discuss my viewpoint on the death penalty in America. This is a pretty straight forward concept and it requires a straight forward answer, I believe that the death penalty is a waste of time and absolutely pointless. If you are wondering why, let me explain.

The preparation for a death penalty case alone is more expensive than a case that does not include the consequence. Time before the trial would be extended to prepare. This meaning that death penalty cases typically take a year of preparation before a trial and more motions before the trial will be filed. More experts have to be hired to see if the case warrants the death penalty as the outcome. Twice as many defense attorneys will be brought on and a similar sized group of prosecutors. Jurors will have to be individually questioned on their views about the death penalty just as any trial, however they will be in a single room with the attorneys and they are far more likely to be sequestered in a death penalty trial. Two trials will be carried out: one to establish guilt and one to decide the form of death that the convicted will undergo as punishment.

I am guessing you see the price rising and rising with all of these preparations and we haven’t even gotten to the fucking trial yet. When we get to the trial itself, after much drama and many months of building a case and stalling the proceedings it is understood that most of death penalty trials are, in fact longer than ordinary trials. In fact, a study at Duke University estimated that death penalty trials take 3 to 5 times longer than typical trials. So while the trial is going on, there is even more money being spent on something that might end with a person dying, being set free, or having their sentence renegotiated.

Let’s say that a trial has concluded and the accused was found guilty and sentenced to lethal injection, this is when the appeals process can begin. This process can take years, and all the while, this person is sitting on death row, the most overpriced block in any prison.

Now you may see the death penalty as a means for which politicians to get a little more carnage of a different sorts added to their list of sorted achievements, but it is the small towns and counties of the state enacting the sentencing that are paying for this trivial activity. Statistics have shown that money taken from taxes in a county that carry out death penalties are put into killing one person and out of such monetary systems as sanitation and construction.

Think about how much money you pay for taxes (if you pay taxes) each month. Taxes go into a lot of different programs: education, health, social services, environmental programs and so on. States that actively participate in the execution of felons take the majority of funding from your taxes that have been turned in to execute a person. The current rate of death penalty cases a year reaches, on average 20 sentences per year. This would require 40 death penalty trials per year. Estimated cost for all of these trials equals over $20,000,000 per year, paid via your taxes.

I think that is fucking greedy and it costs way more than it is worth. However, this is just issues about the cost of death penalty cases, nothing else. I will not hide behind a disguise of morality because I am morally indifferent toward the death penalty and toward prisons in general. The death penalty is only around because of this self righteous need for people to exact revenge, even if it might be the wrong person. It’s this religious idea that has been imprinted in us to follow the saying “eye for an eye”. However, this idea actually means that if you take someone’s eye in a fight, you must take your own eye as well. We have changed it into a form of retribution.

It is true I am a pacifist, and I usually abhor most violence (video games are still cool though). However, if someone killed, mimed or raped a family member and I knew who they were, I will not hesitate to exact my pound of flesh. But the government controlled, people funded practice of killing people is outdated and illogical. This activity is only acted out of rash and emotional reactions. There is no rationality involved in the execution of a person because life in prison costs much cheaper.

Think about the numbers. It costs 20 million dollars every year for 40 trials of 20 people. It would cost 20 million dollars over the course of 50 years to keep these people contained behind walls and barbed wire. Yes it is true. Estimated cost for a life in prison for 50 years is around $1,000,000 a person.

The people who are against the death penalty will usually try to throw morality and the value of life into the mix to prevent a sentence from being carried out. While this is happening, they are prolonging a person’s punishment, thus causing the state to spend more of the taxpayers’ money, and they are being hypocritical in their reasoning. There is no moral reason for the opposition. The killing of another human being has been around since we were all spawned; it’s in human nature to be aggressive and animalistic in response to a challenge of power or a threat of intimidation. We kill animals. We kill plants. We kill each other. People like to kill things because it gives us a sense of power over another human being. This is the reason people oppose this system because it grants them power over a life. Nothing a person has is greater than the sickening ecstasy someone can experience by having the fate of a life in your hands.

No matter if god created man or if man created god, man always strives to be god because of the self indignation we hold that we are better than any other living thing on this planet.

The death penalty is just how man likes to play god on their own scale. Nothing makes you more powerful than being the one who pulls the switch on another person’s life.

I understand that people would want vengeance for a loved one killed or brutalized, etc. however, the death of the supposed perpetrator will not make your fucking loved one come back, it just follows the Biblical form of revenge.

People also will try to drive this argument toward social status and race. I agree that I believe the US prison system is a racist and classist center of punishment. There are very few rich fucks inhabiting the places of punishment in our country, they buy their way to relaxing in their time served. However, the majority, if not all of the people sitting on death row are low to middle class people of mixed ethnicity. There are very few white people stewing in cells on death row, it usually underprivileged people of color. That is something I believe is a fact. I do not believe just because these people might be underprivileged and from different and sometimes unfair social settings that they had no real choice. Ben Carson came from an unfair and rough social setting and look at him.

I will not say that someone on death row didn’t do it. He/She might have killed someone or whatever they did to get on death row, but I am saying that rich white people, especially if they are big givers in political contributions will never reach death row because they are rich, they are white, and they have connections up the ass in legislature.

The death penalty debate is shrouded in bullshit claims of morality, religious involvement and social differences; however it’s all a runaround. It is a pointless system that either has to dissolve or get really serious. Yes I am saying it must go away completely or conclude that anyone who is convicted of murder (or any other crime worthy of capital punishment) gets killed themselves as part of normal sentencing. There is no half way with this, the whole thing or fucking forget about it. That might sound weird coming from a pacifist, but I try to be a person with a level head and I can only see one of those two outcomes. The debate will continue to rage, as it should, but they should talk about the real issues surrounding it, not hiding, as they so often do with other topics, behind the guise of morality. That is it. Until next time.