Dear Next President,

I believe the death penalty should be abolished. There are many reasons why I believe the death penalty should be removed. Millions of dollars are spent on executing people for committing crimes, innocent people get convicted and executed, bad lawyers represent their client poorly, and race could determine who lives and who doesn’t.

According to “DealthPenalty.org” in California taxpayers spend about 4 billion dollars on executing people while putting people in prison for life without parole would save a lot more money. This money could be used to help the victims families, better prisons, better jails, and better systems. It costs 90,000 a year to keep someone imprisoned, while it costs 1.9 million to execute someone. That’s a lot of money for just one person. Taxpayers waste their money on this while it could be used to get better schools, and roads, but no it’s wasted on executing someone while they could save a lot of money by just sentencing them to life in prison.

If you’re executing someone there’s always a chance that the person that is going to get executed is innocent. According to “NewsWeek One in 25 Sentenced to Death in the U.S. Is Innocent, Study Claims by Pema Levy” “144 people on death row were killed that were innocent.” There’s always a possibility that an innocent person could get wrongfully executed.

A lot of people that are getting trialed often can’t afford to hire a good attorney and have to rely on the state to provide a lawyer for them. According to “Death Penalty Focus Inadequate Legal Representation” “Attorneys are underpaid, inexperienced and overwork” This makes it very unfair because their lives are depending on the lawyers.

According to “Study: Blacks who kill whites are most likely to get executed” it was found that African Americans were most likely to get convicted of the death penalty than any other race. This is a huge flaw in the system and is wrong to decide someone's life over their race. This is a huge reason why I think the death penalty should be abolished.

Thank you for reading my letter. I hope you take into consideration my thoughts and hopefully remove the death penalty once and for all. Good luck in the future, thank you.

Sincerely,

Joaquin