Earlier this year, 50-year-old Christa Pike was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection. After two lethal injections were administered, Pike was found to have survived, prompting immediate medical attention at a local hospital.<\/p>\n
Pike has become the first person ever to survive two lethal injections. The notoriety of this \u201cachievement\u201d raises a larger question about the institution of the death penalty. Should we even sentence people to death?<\/p>\n
I\u2019d argue it should be abolished in the United States for multiple reasons.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It violates the inherent dignity of the sentenced person; our prisons have the resources to contain people who would otherwise be on death row, and we cannot claim to be a country at the forefront of scientific and moral progress and still harbor such a barbaric practice.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve met some people who would go so far as to argue that the death penalty should also extend to not just murderers but also rapists. Now, I am in no way defending these people; however, I do think it\u2019s too easy for people to see these criminals as less than human for committing these heinous crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What the people who are in favor of the death penalty fail to realize is that the only time it would be appropriate to put someone to death would be if they were an immediate threat to the life of someone else, and there was no other way to eliminate the threat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even then, in those cases, it isn\u2019t up to a jury to decide; it is up to someone who can stop the aggressor \u2014 someone like a police officer or maybe even a bystander. But it is more common that non-lethal force can be used in these cases, especially by members of law enforcement who have been trained to do so.<\/p>\n
Every human is entitled to a level of dignity. The aforementioned criminals have violated the dignity of another. However, the justice system should not sentence them to death because the dignity of the perpetrator isn\u2019t lost, even after committing such acts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I do understand it is also the responsibility of the justice system to protect law-abiding citizens; however, we can do so through containment rather than execution. Advancements in the penal system have allowed for containment to be a viable and less controversial alternative to capital punishment.<\/p>\n
Dennis Rader, the infamous BTK killer, who horrifically murdered 10 people, wasn\u2019t sentenced to death like Pike, who only murdered one person, was. Instead, he was given 10 consecutive life sentences that he is currently serving at the El Dorado Correctional Facility. By containing criminals like Rader, the justice system succeeds at protecting the general population and giving closure to those close to the victims without ending the life of the guilty.<\/p>\n
The state of Kansas has not sentenced anyone to death since 1965. Pike was convicted in the state of Tennessee, which has had more death penalty sentences than Kansas in recent years. Both states must have a unanimous vote from the jury to be able to sentence someone to death.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Twenty-three states, as well as Washington D.C.,\u00a0 have already abolished capital punishment, and I really don\u2019t see a reason to have it still be practiced in the other 27 states. Almost all countries in the Western world have abolished capital punishment, with the United States being the sole Western country that still permits it.<\/p>\n
I believe that the abolition of capital punishment would be a landmark achievement in the progression of morality in the U.S. This would ensure that the blood remains in the hands of the guilty and not in our justice system. It is up to us, the people of today, who hold the moral high ground, to act against this unnecessary penalty. In doing so, we reinforce the fact that we have that high ground, that we are better than the perpetrators. State-sanctioned executions should be a thing of the past; we should read about them not in the headlines, but in history books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this year, 50-year-old Christa Pike was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection. After two lethal injections…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-895600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}