Dear Future President,

The death penalty is a cruel form of punishment. In the Bill of Rights, the eighth amendment clearly states that, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The death penalty breaks this amendment, because it is a cruel and unusual punishment that is being imposed by our state governments.

Any crime a convict may have committed does not justify death. Common crimes that cause a person to face the death penalty are murder and rape. Though these are brutal crimes, the government should still not allow the death penalty as a form of punishment. By doing so, it only brings fear, and that is no way the government should justify crimes. There has been a total of seventeen executions in 2016. Though these convicts took lives, but the government should not stoop to their level. The death penalty is a brutal form of punishment, but it also costs a lot of money for each execution. Cases that do not involve the death penalty costs about 740,000 dollars, whereas cases that do involve the death penalty costs 1.26 million dollars. This is a substantial difference. Along with this, there is also the cost of maintaining each death row prisoner. A death row inmate costs taxpayers 90,000 dollars more per year than a regular convict. California, for example, has 714 inmates on its death row, so rather than using tax money for important needs, like investing in education and neighborhoods which could actually reduce crime in general, it is used to keep convicts behind bars.

Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are for the death penalty, but they have different ideas on this issue. Donald Trump's argument for the death penalty is that it will make sure that convicts can no longer harm another individual. Though it is important to make sure that criminals are in a position where they can no longer harm another citizen, the death penalty should not be how that is justified. Every criminal should not be sentenced to the death penalty, instead they should get a second chance.

Hillary Clinton believes that not having the death penalty would be favorable, but because of the terrorist attacks she says that there should be a limit as to how the death penalty should be used. She gave examples of terrorists that had killed mass amounts of innocent people. Those are the types of people that should face the death penalty. Though Hillary has a point, it still shouldn't be acceptable. If someone has killed another persons or many people, the government should be better than them, and it should not use taxes to pay for them to stay in a cell awaiting their death.

I understand that as the President you would not have complete control over this, but you do have influence, and with that influence I hope you will work to make the death penalty illegal by encouraging Congress to pass legislation outlawing the cruel punishment. In addition to being cruel, it costs a lot of tax money which could be spent on schooling, health and more important matters, not to mention the fact that the government has killed innocent people before. I hope you see how inhumane the death penalty is, and I hope that you can help bring an end to it.

Sincerely,

Juanzi R.