When the fire alarms stung the ears of the quiet halls of Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the students obediently began to file out. Suddenly, they were fired on as if they were targets at a shooting gallery. Four students and one teacher were killed. Ten others were injured. For hundreds of years, Americans have struggled with the debate about the death penalty. The death penalty should be administered for particularly heinous crimes.

Many Americans argue that it costs more money to execute a criminal instead of a lifetime in prison. However, on the website www.procon.org, Dudley Sharp, director of Death Penalty Recourses, states that it costs almost two million dollars to execute the criminal, but the cost of life in prison is more than one million dollars every fifty years. That amount is almost two million dollars per life!

In the United States Constitution, the Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive bail or fines, as well as cruel and unusual punishment. In this century, we now use lethal injection as our first priority, which in my defense is not cruel or unusual. In the book Capital Punishment, Anne Rooney states that execution is more humane than a life spent in prison with no hope of release.


Every community wants a safe and elated place for their citizens to live in. Capital punishment leaves societies safe and criminal-free. Many people say that the death penalty will not deter murder or crime. Ernest Van Den Haag, a late professor of Jurisprudence at Fordham University, argues that people fear nothing more than death. Life in prison is less feared. The murderer’s execution protects citizens from future murder and crime. The criminals deserve punishment. Someone who has taken a life should loose their own life in exchange.

This isn’t a fairytale where the day is still saved even though the dragon escaped from the iron prison. It’s not fair to let the criminal get away. Capital Punishment deserves to have its place here in America. Do not get rid of the death penalty.