“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

Tell me, Mark Twain, or rather Samuel Langhorne Clemens, what if the man does not deserve it? What if the man should not have died? What if the death of this man was a colossal blunder of the system?

My View:

The Death Penalty. Capital Punishment. Violation of the 8th Amendment. These are three ways to describe the most callous practice the Supreme Court has ever advocated, retribution for being merely a suspect in a murder case. Simply hearing the words “death penalty” is enough to make a shiver run down your spine, or even while reading the words in an article will cause you to automatically brace yourself for the catastrophic textual events that will ensue.

The keyboard shortcut ctrl + z, is a necessity for surviving high school, for example when that important paper due tomorrow disappears under mysterious circumstances. With a tranquil tap of two keys, everything is back to normal, and it seems as if nothing has ever happened.

If only that were possible in real life.

But it’s not and the death penalty cannot be reversed. The Supreme Court cannot simple stifle a giggle and say, “Oops!” while hitting the ctrl + z buttons when an error has occurred in the system.

How Does a Death Penalty Case Work?

A death penalty case is like a story with four chapters, except for the minute detail that it is not fiction. Every story begins the same way, and it is tragic: the murder of an innocent human being. Then, there’s a trial, where the murderer is convicted, sent to the death row, and given a death sentence. The second chapter is a convoluted legal proceeding known as a State Habeas Corpus Appeal followed by an even more tortuous procedure called a Federal Habeas Corpus Appeal. Now, is when the trunk of the tree is set, and each case splits into numerous branches. The lawyers can file a clemency petition, they could initiate even more complex litigation, or they could just hit the standby button and watch the events play out. Either ways, each and every story has the same ending, like a cliché fairy tale with a charming knight in shining armor saving a clueless, though gorgeous princess, yet the story ends with an execution.

FOUR CHAPTERS OF A DEATH PENALTY COURT CASE

Chapter 1
Murder
Trial
Sentence
Direct Appeal
Chapter 2
State Habeas Corpus
Chapter 3
Federal Habeas Corpus
Chapter 4
Clemency
Commutation
Return to Court
Execution

Gender Inequality Present in the Death Penalty!

Of the 3,035 people on the death row, only 54 are female. Many reasons support this, the first being that women commit fewer murders than men. Though 90% of murders occur due to men, compared to 10% for women, the facts are false, and women are still sentenced to death at a lower rate than men.

Additionally, in the chivalrous society that is the United States of America, women are still portrayed as those innocent kitchen-workers, child care-takers who could never possibly hurt a fly, let alone MURDER someone. And it is true, in the sense that women are more emotional (or good at faking) than men, and the jury can be more easily convinced of distress in a situation for a female rather than a male. It’s quite simple really: jurors just see women differently than men. Men were the ones that went out hunting for the mammoths and the deer, the women stayed at home, and tended the garden.

America still perceives the world through a flawed lens, where everything was the same as more than one thousand years ago. It’s not. Slowly, feminists are coming together, joining forces to obliterate the clouds from underneath that lens, and changing the view on women in society.

This belief of the sad, weak woman is being crushed by a massive boulder, and though it’s budging, it may never fully move.

The most practical reason is that men are sentenced to death more than women because of how the statutes are written and how the circumstances around the crimes are weighed. There was not a single woman involved in making the laws that bind our community together with tight stitches.

Solution?

The death penalty debate includes a wide array of individuals ranging from those who feel very strongly about America’s need for hypocritical vengeance will create order, to those who wonder why we kill people who kill people to show killing is wrong.

However, there’s one small corner, just a smidgen, like a stray mark on a piece of paper, where everyone can collectively agree on one thing. The best possible version for any death penalty case is a situation where no murder ever occurs.

Let’s talk problem-solving. A gnarly, gargantuan problem can be easily handled by slicing the churro into small, bite-sized pieces. Most problems are solved that way, and granted, it is generally a fool-proof method, but not in this case.

Sometimes, the best way to solve a problem is by making it bigger, and by making the death penalty a greater concern, we can eradicate it.

Clearly, there is no palpable solution to which anyone can act helpless and call for Cinderella’s fairy godmother to snap her fingers and cause immediate change.

Yet, the most practical solution is to start from the base of the problem, just how weeds must be pulled from the root, lest they grow back far too soon. The origin of this immense issue comes far before people turn into murderers – it’s when they’re simply children. Eighty percent of the individuals on the death row come from the same troubled past where they have been exposed to the juvenile justice system.

Childhood care for the economically disadvantaged and troubled kids could be provided for free and target kids who have had a past in the juvenile system. Special school just for these individuals could be created to help them. Despite all of this, kids could slip through the cracks of the sidewalk and end up in jail anyway. Yet, another solution exists. Teachers could come teach high school or college level students in prison, for free. The learning could have a great impact on them, and seriously change their outlook on life. This presents numerous problems. Not only do these teachers need to be found, those who WANT to teach inside a prison, a certain meeting place must be set up, liabilities addressed but also, this ordeal spells money.

Each death penalty case costs $1.26 million dollars. By changing this completely, and destroying the problem at its core, the money will return to help pay for America’s 18.3 trillion dollar debt, and only a fraction would need to be used for nudging kids on the right path in life.

By looking at the bigger picture and devoting attention to the earlier chapters, then nobody will ever have to write the first sentence that begins the death penalty story.