Innocents deserve right to live
by John Woelke, reporter

    The United States continues to share company with such countries as China, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Nigeria and Uganda on the issue of the death penalty.

    Most leaders of the world have stopped to realize the value of life for their citizens.

    A country executing its own citizens is in violation of the most basic human right—the right to live. People think this is an un-American and especially an un-Texan opinion, but no group of people anywhere should have the power to take a person’s life.

    This is not to say some people do not deserve to die for some of their actions. If a person harms a member of my family, I cannot say that I would not deal with such a person myself.

    The most intolerable fact concerning the death penalty in the United States is that innocent people have been put to death for crimes they did not commit. This means we are all at risk of being wrongfully accused of a crime, removed from our homes, imprisoned, then killed by the state we live in. Unless, of course, you’re rich and white—poor black men are more likely to receive a sentence of death than a white man convicted of the same crime.

    People don’t want their tax dollars wasted keeping vicious criminals alive; they want money saved by ending the lives of deserving criminals. In actuality, the money spent to send someone to the death chamber is more costly than keeping the same person alive in jail for the rest of his or her life.

    In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security prison for 40 years.

    People believe we must have a death penalty to deter would-be murders, so the government must kill its citizens as examples to teach us not to kill. Does this make sense?

    Studies show an increase in murder rates in the weeks following a high-profile execution. In the past, pickpocketing was a crime punishable by death, yet pickpockets would target public executions because of the high number of people and their lack of attention.

    People are going to commit crimes; the government should not kill them for it.

    In 1995 South Africa declared the death penalty unconstitutional for its citizens, trying to put an end to its repressive past.

    When the Nazis were removed from power after World War II, Germany adopted a constitution prohibiting the death penalty.

    I’ve known three murder victims during my life—a father of two, a mother of two and a young girl who never had a chance to do anything wrong to anyone. The father’s murderer was never convicted; the mother’s murderer (her husband) was given 10 years probation, and the girl’s murderer sits today on death row. These were three of the most innocent individuals I have ever known.

    Their killers deserve the most severe punishment possible, but that punishment should not include being killed by their government.