Dear President,

For as long as there have been humans on Earth, the death penalty-also known as capital punishment- has been a part of nearly every civilization and society, dating back to as early as 18th Century B.C. during the rule of King Hammurabi of Babylon. The English American colonies used the death penalty starting from 1622. While not every crime that was committed was worthy of the death penalty, the civilizations, societies, and states all believed an “eye for an eye”, or retribution, was necessary with murder crimes. Currently the United States federal government applies the death penalty to crimes such as terrorism, espionage, federal murder, large scale drug trafficking, and attempting to kill anyone in part of a court case. While this applies to the federal government, it does not apply to all fifty states of America. The death penalty is legal in thirty-one states and illegal in nineteen states.

In my opinion, all fifty American states should automatically use capital punishment on those that have committed crimes in which more than five people were murdered. In addition to that, I also believe that prisoners with a sentence of life without parole should be given the option of capital punishment, even if their crimine did not involve the murder of more than five people.

Without the offer of choosing to die or without the automatic death penalty put in place, these criminals will stay in prison for the rest of their lives. Life without parole or life imprisonment can lead to the overcrowding of prisons. Shouldn’t America be more focused on helping those get back on track with their lives instead of using up space for those in jail for a lifetime? According to Adam Cohen in his article Will the Supreme Court Keep Prisons Overcrowded?, he talks about the overcrowding of a prison in Chino, California, “The facility was built to hold 3,160 inmates, but roughly twice that number has been crammed into it.” People being incarcerated with sentences of life without parole should be given the option to the death penalty. There are already 50,000 people serving life without parole. With the elimination of those prisoners, the imprisonment facilities will be able to focus more on the those who will be back in society than those who will never be released.

Legalizing the death penalty in all fifty states, along with the choice of capital punishment to those with life without parole, is a better alternative for some prisoners serving life without parole. Prisoners with life without parole sentences slowly begin to lose their sense of being, go insane, and have horrible health conditions. “Some prisoners who have spent longer amounts of time in isolation describe it as a condition that slowly degrades both their humanity and sanity, turning them into blind animals given to interminable pacing, smearing their cells with feces, or engaging in self-mutilation,” reports James Ridgeway and Jean Casella in What Death Penalty Opponents Don’t Get. The prisoners put with life without parole are confined to small rooms every day with minimum contact to other people. The prisoners tend to get sick due to poor sanitation and can have their mental health be destroyed. Ridgeway and Casella also discuss lifetime solitary confinement with prisoner William Blake, “...While he cannot bring himself to take his own life, he would have welcomed the death penalty 27 years ago had he known what a lifetime in solitary confinement would be like.” Being incarcerated for so long has made Blake feel as if his life is not worth living. Giving William Blake the capital punishment would be a better alternative for him, and those like him, than being stuck in prison the rest of his life and feeling as if he is being wasted away.

While capital punishment has been around for as long as the first civilization, arguments against capital punishment have been around for just as long. Critics of capital punishment argue that the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment. There have been cases in which ways people are killed are flawed in which they are first being tortured because the poisons used to kill the defendant were not strong enough or injected properly. The criminal would be seen writhing around like a dying animal. Those in favor of the death penalty will retort with this being retribution, an eye for an eye, justice. “Deserved punishment protects society morally by restoring this just order, making the wrongdoer pay a price equivalent to the harm he has done,” states J. Budziszewski in Capital Punishment: The Case for Justice. I am one of the many people in the world who believe that capital punishment is needed for those who have committed inhumane crimes. Serial killers are an example of people who have committed inhumane crimes, such as Jeffrey Dahmer. He killed more than ten people, giving him a sentence without parole is a waste due to him taking the place of someone who needs the rehabilitation prisons can offer.

As the leader of our beloved country, I ask you to take these opinions, facts, and statements into consideration when handling the political issue of capital punishment. Capital punishment should be legal in all fifty states of America because of the overcrowding in prisons, the slowly killing of those who are given sentences of life without parole, and it offers retribution. While the death penalty may seem inhumane, it is not nearly as inhumane as the crimes committed by those on death row.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Sincerely,

Riley Boomgaard