The Truth About the Death Penalty

This evening we learned that the jury that convicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his part in the Boston Marathon bombings, has decided that he will be put to death for his crimes. This will doubtlessly bring about further discussion about the death penalty in this country. The death penalty is probably the most polarizing of discussions that we as citizens may have,

I have been against the death penalty since I was old enough to know what it was. In my mind, the harshest penalty a human being can be sentenced to is to spend the remainder of their life, sitting in a 6' X 6' bare room, day and night, thinking about what brought them to this end. A current example of the difficulty a person may feel faced with a sentence of 'life without parole', we need only to look at the case of Ariel Castro. Castro actually took a plea deal, by pleading guilty of kidnapping 3 young women, torturing them and holding them captive for a decade the City of Cleveland District Attorney Tim McGinty, took the death penalty off the table. Castro didn't last very long, alone in a bare cell, with nothing to think about but all that he had done to those young ladies. He hung himself.

In addition, with all of the judicial errors that have been found in recent years, it is very difficult at times to be 110% sure that the person on trial is, indeed, guilty of the charges against him/her. With the Innocence Project, DNA testing and, in several instances, the guilty consciences of the true perpetrator, many people have gone free after many years in prison. in many such cases, had the person incarcerated been sentenced to death, the new evidence would have been for naught. In fact, there have been cases where the innocent person was put to death for a crime he/she did not commit.

#deathpenalty #execution #crime #attorney #prison #judicial