A Second Chance Essays

Valerie Sierra
Mrs. Ybarra
English III DC-2
January 22, 2015 A Second Chance Hopefully we can both find some common ground in order to find the right solution. I say it so because I believe that you, or someone you know, could also benefit from this information. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, there have been 325 post-convict exonerations to the 1,367 executions that have been carried out since 1989. Most of the exonerations carried out have been a result of DNA testing. With DNA testing, law enforcers can now use DNA as a blueprint, since it lives in a person’s cell so scientists can profile the individual. In 1983, a gas station clerk was brutally stabbed by Carlos Hernandez. The police arrested the wrong man. Carlos DeLuna spent six years on death row prior to being executed in 1989. Sixteen years after DeLuna’s execution, Columbia University decided to later further investigate the case and discovered that the eyewitness statements contradicted with each other. "Photos of a bloody footprint and blood spatter on the walls suggest the killer would have had blood on his shoes and pant legs, yet DeLuna's clothes were clean." The most shocking discovery was that the police failed to track down Hernandez, even after DeLuna confessed it was him who murdered the gas station clerk. In 1999, Hernandez finally confessed to stabbing the gas station clerk, confirming that Texas unjustly executed an innocent man. Most of the inmates exonerated spend an average of 9.8 years on death row before being released. Capital punishment is not proven to deter crime. According to City-Data.com, there were 53 murders in 2005 compared to 35 murders in 2011; two years after Albuquerque, New Mexico abolished the death penalty. As reported by, DeathPenaltyInfo.org and the FBI’s “Crime in the United States” report, there is an 18% difference in murder rate between non-death penalty states and death penalty states, with the latter having a higher murder rate. The southern states, which account for 80% of executions, also have a higher murder rate compared to the northeast, who account for only 1% of executions, which have a lower murder rate. It is highly unlikely that criminals will ask themselves, “If I kill this person, would I get executed?” seeing how the majority of the crimes are done in the heat of passion. For example, Kevin Cooper, an insane murderer, escaped from asylums and prisons multiple times. Cooper broke into a random house and murdered the whole family with a hatchet. Was the crime planned? Many argue no, because his sanity is questionable. The University of Southern California has done brain scans on 25 convicted murderers. Their results were that the majority of the killers had defects in the frontal lobes of the brain. According to Dr. Jonathan Pincus, a psychiatrist at Georgetown University, “The frontal lobes are the part of the brain that put a brake on impulses and drives.” These people have poor impulse control which can lead to being socially inept. It is doubtful that these people would question if the death penalty is carried out in their state before killing. It is highly probable that the majority of trials involving minorities are racially biased. 56% of death row convicts are African American, while they only make up 13.3% of the population of the United States. In Houston,Texas, Duane Buck was sentenced to death after a licensed psychologist testified that blacks were more prone to violence. District attorney Chuck Rosenthal resigned after sending an email titled “Fatal Overdose”, containing a picture of a African-American man lying on the grounded with buckets of fried chicken and watermelon surrounding him. A report by the American Bar Association titled Evaluating Fairness and Accuracy in in State Death

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