A few of my friends and I once saw a bumper sticker that questioned, "Why do
             we kill people who kill people, to show that killing people is wrong?" Suddenly there
             was a wild riot of arguments between us. Even though on that day I was out numbered
             two to three, I was and today still am against the death penalty as a deterrent to crime.
             The death penalty is not an effective way to punish a criminal. Even states that use the
             death penalty seem to have a higher number of homicides than states that do not use it. It
             does not seem to show its effectiveness since states that have the death penalty present no
             long-term differences in the murder in comparison of the murder rate of their adjacent
             states. So, if capital punishment isn't lowering the murder rate, why waste the extra
             Since dollar signs seem to rule America's minds, most tax payers feel that too
             much of their taxes are going towards maintaining prisons and feeding inmates. A recent
             study found that it costs more to put a prisoner to death, with any method than it does to
             Also, in the U.S., the chief objection to capital punishment is that it was always
             used unfairly. First, women are rarely sentenced to death and executed, even though 20%
             of all homicides in recent years have been committed by women. Second, a study
             conducted by U.S. News and a World Report showed that a disproportionate number of
             nonwhites are sentenced to death and executed.
             Yet many people, especially family members of murder victims, want to see the
             offender(s) dead. I have no objection to the emotions families have when a loved one is
             killed and the family wants their satisfaction of knowing that the killer is dead as well,
             but death is too quick. The mother of a murdered son has to suffer over him for a
             lifetime. So why shouldn't the murderer suffer, too? The death penalty needs to go and
             ...