: Barbaric or Justice? Julian Pta chin was only 14 years old in October 1997 when a drunk driver smashed into his parents van. His Dad, a physician, had to hold Julian while he died on the side of the road. The drunk driver was a three-timed convicted, repeat offender. He was convicted of second-degree murder and was ordered to serve eight years in jail. Doesn’t something seem wrong with this picture? Repeat crime convicts are running down the streets rapid: endangering our children, our loved ones, and even us. What can us, as citizens, do to stop these heinous crimes? The Death Penalty.
The Death Penalty has been around for several hundred years. One of the first people to first use the death penalty was the Babylonians who would use the system of “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” (Matthew 5: 38, KJV) Throughout this reign the Babylonians were very successful and were considered very strong when it came to war tactics. In ancient times there was no repeat offenders, no repeated crimes, and everybody knew what they had to do to stay alive. Today repeat offenders are walking our streets that we walk on everyday. Many newspapers put out names of sexual offenders who are let out on bail, but yet receive lots of negative feedback for the use of privacy. The American people should have a right to know who the sex offenders are and where in their own neighborhood these people are staying.
Having young children around these people is very scary and sometimes even harmful. Repeat offenders are one way of bringing back the death penalty to America. Right now Texas is practicing capital punishment and it has been working for many years. They are the only state in America that will take the life of another person for doings of wrong.
In the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing page 340, Edward I. Koch makes a strong statement, which compares the death penalty to cancer. In these paragraphs Koch talks about how people say that the death penalty is barbaric. He then makes the claim that giving up on cancer patients is also barbaric, due to the fact that it is not pushing the science field into finding a cure for cancer.
He then states that the death penalty is not a disease but that the disease is injustice. Even though many people do not accept the death penalty, it is the only way to punish “crimes of cold-blooded murder.” The amount of time that a person who has been sentenced for murder one serves is a maximum of 25 years in jail. A murderer can walk the streets that our kids play on in just a matter of 25 years. These murderers can have the feeling to go out and kill again anytime that they want to or even doing stupid stuff like driving drunk and end up killing a 14-year-old child.
That child did not have the choice to live and die, somebody else made the choice for him already. Julian was just barely entering high school, a whole new life for a young teenager. If I were President of the United States of America right now I definitely would be bringing up the death penalty to members of congress and constantly giving them my feedback. That is the only way that we can get these repeat offenders off the street, and making these streets safe for our children and grandchildren to play on the sidewalks without being scared off who is really out there and what can they do.
Consider bringing back the death penalty not just for my sake but my future generations sake. It reminds me of a saying I have always been told, “If you can save one child, you can save a whole future.”.