The clog in our courts ultimately forces our government to pour millions of our taxpaying dollars into housing these inmates until they either acquitted of their charges or executed. Most importantly innocent human beings are killed due to the cracks in the criminal justice system. With that being said my mission is to prove how the death penalty corrupts the system and how our system would benefit from its eradication. .
Jumping right into it, the death penalty is believed to violate our Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. In the Bill of Rights the Eighth Amendment states " excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted" (U.S. Const. amend XIII sec. 1). This amendment is also known as the 'cruel and unusual clause' which protects US citizens from being treated inadequately by the US government. What is more cruel and unusual then being killed for committing a crime and how does it 'serve more justice'? In the case Gregg v. Georgia, Justice William J. Brennan of the US Supreme Court, agreed to this thought when he stated "Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and in its enormity, but it serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment"(Gregg v. Georgia). To sum up this statement, Supreme Justice Brennan believes that taking a criminal's life does not serve anymore justice then it would be to just provide the criminal with a lesser harsh punishment. Justice can still be served even if the criminal gets to live out his life because he is going to be locked in prison for the rest his life and is that not enough? Murdering someone for the crimes they have committed does not mean justice has been severed. By having the death penalty, a state creates sympathy for offenders and makes the US look bad because they are contradicting themselves when they punish a person for committing a crime by ending their live.