Response to: The Death Penalty's Unlikely Opponents

(The article can be found at CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/23/justice/death-penalty-opponents/ )

If even the families of murder victims are against the Death penalty how can we possibly support capital punishment? If the families don't want "retribution" for the crime then how can we go against those that lost family member? The wish of these families is to be better than these criminals, not on their level. So, if everyone else in America is normally for capital punishment then they are being unsympathetic to these families. Recently support for the death penalty has been dropping drastically from an all time high of 80% to a recent all time low of 61%.



 Americans have begun to show sympathy towards the wishes of these families. I myself side similarly with the 50% of Americans that favor a life sentence over capital punishment.

All Americans do have a right to life. If they begin to take this right from other people then the government should not sponsor taking this right away from yet another person. A life sentence removes them from society and puts them in institutions that often have them work for a certain amount of time each week thereby aiding everyday Americans. However, a good portion of the time prisoners on life sentences are let out of jail. This fact is a result of reducing taxes. When they are in jail people are taxed to keep the institutions running so they have to let some people go to make room for more prisoners and reduce the tax load. So, on the other side of the argument, life sentences result in a bigger tax load while capital punishment results in a bigger moral burden. Considering 48% Americans would rather have many of prisoners die in exchange for perhaps one dollar of extra cash in their pockets each year, I sadly don't see an opening for the removal of capital punishment anytime soon. Perhaps if those 48% did know they were selling lives for a couple of bucks they might not think the same way.