The death penalty needs to be abolished, plain and simple. It crazy to think that in this day and age there are still people attempting to argue that it is right to murder people. 

During the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement over the summer, Apple TV offered some free movies that talked about Black history. One of the movies that I watched was a movie called “Just Mercy.” It is based on a true story about a black man named Walter McMillan, who was wrongly placed on death row for the murder of a white woman. One of the inmates that McMillan meets in prison is named Herbert Richardson. Richardson was a veteran with severe PTSD who was also on death row, except his punishment was carried out via electric chair. Herbert was sick; his PTSD made him crazy and caused him to do some atrocious things. Herbert needed help. He needed to go to a mental institution and work through his trauma and be rehabilitated. He did not deserve to die. The scene of him being led to the execution chamber absolutely broke me. I could barely look at the screen because I was so disgusted by what was happening on my TV. They were taking the life of a person that was suffering from traumatic events.

I would like to think that this problem is long gone and in the past, but unfortunately it is still a problem in the United States. The death penalty is still legal in over half of the states.

  The death penalty does absolutely nothing but take the life of a living person. It does not provide justice, it does not deter anyone from committing a crime and it does not—-. If someone is in the state of mind to commit a crime that is deemed worthy of the death penalty, they are not thinking about their consequences. These people do not care if they die or not. They are going to do whatever they want to do regardless of what happens after. Our responsibility as people with healthy minds, is to help those sick minded individuals get better. I am in no way saying that those criminals should be let off without a punishment. I am saying death should not be the answer. If a individual commits mass murder they deserve to sit in jail and be reminded of what they did, as well as receive help from a counselor and really dig into the roots of why they committed the crime. I am a firm believer that anybody can be rehabilitated with love and compassion.

Who are we as nothing but humans to decide if  a person should live or die? It is not our decision to make. No person deserves to have their life taken from them, it does not matter if it is Mother Teresa or Jeffery Dahmer. But ultimately, a lot of people are self centered individuals who refuse to think that it is our job to help others.