Essay on Death Penalty

Death Penalty ‘10
Dady Lafleur
City College
Ethics

The Death Penalty: The punishment of execution, administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime. (Oxford dictionary) The reason why I choose this person is because it was an old way for that person to die. The first inmate, name is Ronnie Gardner, who died on 06/18/2010 in Utah at the age of 49. Gardner is charge for murdering two people, one bartender and the other an attorney. Gardner was sentenced to death for the 1985 killing of attorney Michael Burdell during an attempted escape from a Salt Lake City courthouse. The weird thing is that Gardner decides a death that not so many inmates would have chosen, he preferred the firing squad, but never gave a reason as to why. After a quarter of a century on death row, Gardner, 49, became the first man to die by firing squad in Utah in 14 years. Gardner had the choice between the firing squad and lethal injection because he was sentenced to death before Utah eliminated the firing squad as an option in 2004. There was no complication other than the many people standing outside the jail cell opposition the firing squad. I think the way that he wanted was barbaric, and just wrong. I’m not saying that his crimes are ok, but a firing squad, it’s a bit too much. I think letting Gardner rot in prison for the rest of his life with no chance to see the light of day, is better than sending a man to his death like that, there are better options than this. They should have declined his wish and should have never given him a choice. Not only is it inhumane, but no one thought about the police men having to pull the trigger and wondering who had the final shoot and killed a human being, what those men had to deal with for the rest of their life. There are so many, many things wrong with this law and I think that after seeing a group of five police men shooting a man to death proves that; we as humans are losing the grip of what it means to be humane, and the difference between us and the wild animals.
The next inmate that I choose to write about is Paul Warner Powell who was a White supremacist, who raped two underage sisters, and killed one sister and attempted to kill the other. The reason he stated was the method behind the murders and rape was because the older sister at the age of 16, was dating a black boy, and he wanted her to stop, a fight broke out and he ended raping her and then killing her with a knife, then he waited for her sister to come home and repeated the same with her, but she survived and testified against him in court. The reason why I choose this inmate is also because of the way he was killed, which was by the electric chair in Virginia on March 18, 2010, which I thought it was strange that in the year 2010 that this state was still using that method in this century. Powell was incarcerated for 11 years before he was executed in March 2010. There was no complication in the death but a few in the trial, where he got acquired for the death and rape for the older sister. But then Powell wrote a letter to the judge admitting to the crime thinking that he had got away with the murder and that they couldn’t give him the death plenty. This was Powell convection to the death penalty. Even with this case and the fact that he had got “away” with murder, and rape two underage girls. I still don’t think that he should have lost his life, and I don’t see the point of putting him on the electric chair and letting him feel his life slipping away, or knowing the final hour that he was about to die. I know that the victim sister hated him and wanted his death she said “"I was totally against the death penalty before this happened, and I didn't know why people would want to do it. But those people haven't been through what we've been

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Death Penalty Essay

Death Penalty Essay

Death Penalty Essay

Death Penalty Essay

Death Penalty Essay