Death_Penalty

Jessica Keoviphone Keoviphone 1 Mrs. Petronelli Law & Society March 20, 2010 Death Penalty Issues Dear Senator, I’ve heard about your recent proposal about bringing the death penalty back to Rhode Island. I’m not completely sure about which side the state is going for, but maybe an input from the younger generation might help make an impact on the decision made. Personally, I don’t think that we should bring the death penalty back for three main reasons: 1. An innocent life might be taken away by mistake, 2. Some criminals wouldn’t even care if they died, and then we would just be doing them a favor, and 3. The stereotypical assumptions and racism against minorities. Its sad to say that yes we do have a well enough justice system, but its also consisted of many flaws. Back when we did have the death penalty, there wasn’t enough ways to figure out if the criminal even did the crime in the first place. We took the words of so called “witnesses” that could have been lying or were put under pressure on the spot to just give an answer. Rhode Island first abolished the death penalty because of mistakenly putting an innocent person to death, and then we feared it could happen again, so we never used it since then. Isn’t this a good enough reason already' Do the people who support the death penalty even care of mistakes that could happen' What if it was their own family members and they couldn’t do anything to stop it' For example, in the Carlos DeLuna case when he was put to death because he “kind of” looked like the actual Keoviphone 2 murderer and no one even wanted to hear him out when he said he knew he did it. It just made me change my mind about our justice system. Yeah, its understandable that he could have been lying about it but he had just gotten out of jail and I’m pretty sure he didn’t want to cause anymore trouble. It took them 15 years to figure out that he was actually innocent, 15 years previous Carlos DeLuna could have still been alive if someone could have said something. Are you willing to risk the lives of more innocent people that may have been at the wrong place, at the wrong time' Some people do the most horrendous crimes out there, murdering their own children, raping and cutting up young girls they find, and just killing anybody they find. The reasons they do this is unknown but some can’t seem to help it… Half of them may have a mental illness but the other half are just sick. The death penalty for them seems like too easy of a punishment. They deserve to rot in jail and think of the horrid things they did to be there in the first place. For example, there was a case about a mother drowning her children and ended up killing them. I believe that type of person deserves to stay in jail and think of what they did each and everyday until their very own death. Studies show that the main race that are put to death are minorities. They think that oh since their African American or Hispanic, that they aren’t up to any good. This makes the people of that race feel like a bad person and discriminated upon for doing nothing wrong. Many people are still racist til’ this day and I don’t think that problem is ever going to stop. Police officers are supposed to be looked upon as good people for our community, but some of them of course aren’t all that great. They might follow a group of minority teenagers because their all together so of course, they would be thinking of Keoviphone 3 robbing someone or something. Then again, if they saw a few white kids walking around they wouldn’t think that they’d do anything wrong. I can just honestly say, our society is all messed up economically and socially. Bringing back the death penalty would only create the same problems plus more. We would have angry citizens fighting against other angry citizens all the time. It’s a risky choice to make of course, its life or death for a person, and the state chooses their own fate. I’m not sure if my opinion matters, but I hope its an eye opener to those who are for the death penalty. I appreciate the time and effort you took to read this senator, and I certainly hope that the decision you make is the right one.