Executions cost alot of money. And the people that are being executed don't have any since of pride. People are able to sit their and watch. WHo would want anyone watching them sit there and die. Thats just cruel.
And the ways that they are executing people is inhumane... Through the electric chair, hangings, lethal injections, etc. It just isn't right. People of people that sit on death role, could possible wrongly accused of something that people have said they were doing. Then, the innocfent people, die because of that. Also the death penalty basically states that killing people is an ok solution to a very very diffcult problem. It presents killing as Ok. So why are there death penalties still available in the United States?
Approx. number of Death Row inmates per state
AL 195 KY 40 OK 85
AZ 110 LA 85 OR 30
AR 35 MD 5 PA 220
CA 655 MS 70 SC 60
CO 2 MO 50 SD 5
CT 5 MT 2 TN 100
DE 15
NE 10 TX 390
FL 375 NH 0 UT 10
GA 100 NV 80 VA 20
ID 20 NJ 10 WA 10
IL 10 NM 2 WY 2
IN 20 NY 1 Feds 40
KS 5 NC 165
OH 185
Above are the number of inmates that are currently on death role. How do you know that are of them could be innocent. Some people just don't take the time to go through the files and help them.
And some cases that involve the death penalty are stated below:
JUAN MELENDEZ A farm worker who was wrongly convicted of murder and spending 17 1/2 years on Death Row in FL. Juan says "Lots of times I wanted to commit suicide [while in prison]. Beautiful dreams of my childhood took me out of those thoughts. That's God's work." There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime at his trial, only the testimony of questionable witnesses. The conviction was overturned when another man confessed to the crime.
ANIBAL JARRAMILLO Conviction overturned on appeal when evidence against him was deemed weak, "not legally sufficient to support a conviction." The evidence seems to instead point to the victim's roommate.
ANTHONY BROWN Acquitted during a retrial. His partner-in-crime, who got life in prison instead of the DP, admitted he had lied during the trial.
ANTHONY RAY PEEKAfter 9 years on Death Row, he was acquitted during his 3rd retrial (to be acquitted means you are found not guilty of a crime you were previously convicted of). Hair evidence as explained by an expert witness was found to be false.
JUAN RAMOSNo physical evidence linked Juan to the crime. The Florida Supreme Court granted him a new trial because of the prosecution's improper use of evidence. He was acquitted at retrial.
BRADLEY P. SCOTTArrested 10 years after the crime. The evidence supporting his alibi had been lost. His conviction was based on shaky eyewitness testimony. Released from Death Row by the Florida Supreme Court while his case was appealed. The court found that the evidence against him was "not sufficient to support a finding of guilt."
ROBERT HAYESAcquitted of murder after being granted a new trial by the Florida Supreme Court. DNA evidence proved the hairs found clutched in the victim's hands were from a white man and Hayes is black.
TROY LEE JONESReleased after 14 years in prison. After the California Supreme Court granted him a new trial, the state dropped the charges rather than retry him. The defense attorney in his original trial was found to have failed to interview witnesses, failed to obtain police reports, and while cross-examining a witness damaged his own client by getting the witness to reveal harmful testimony.
JUDY HANEY Her court-appointed defense attorney came to court drunk. The judge held the lawyer in contempt of court and ordered the lawyer to spend a night in jail. The very next day, the lawyer was allowed to continue representing Haney in her death penalty case. The Alabama Supreme Court has upheld her death sentence and she is still on Death Row.
WANDA JEAN ALLENExecuted by the state of Oklahoma in 2001. Her court-appointed lawyer had never tried a death penalty case before and wasn't confident in his abilities. He asked the public defender's office to either remove him from the case or to offer him assistance. It did neither. The lawyer was only paid $800 to represent Wanda. He did not tell the jury that Wanda was mentally retarded (prior to 2002, it was legal in the US to execute the mentally retarded).
EARL WASHINGTON A mentally retarded Virginia man, he was facing the death sentence prior to 2002 when the US stopped executing the mentally retarded. He wound up on Death Row after confessing to a murder in a series of confusing statements. At times he described the victim as white and at other times black. The governor commuted his sentence. He was cleared of the crime through DNA tests. In 2007, another man, Kenneth Tinsley, admitted he was the murderer.
DELMA BANKS, JR. The US Supreme Court has agreed to review this case. The only evidence against Banks was the testimony of a jailhouse informant whose arson charge was dismissed in exchange for his testimony. Also, the defense lawyer did not properly investigate his client's case in order to support Banks' alibi that he was out-of-state at the time of the murder.
