By: Nate Wiesemann
On February
27th 2012 T.J. Lane a 17 year old went on a shooting rampage at his
school and killed three class mates. Over one year later on March 19, 2013 T.J
Lane was sentenced to life in jail. Before he was taken away he was given a
chance to apologize to the victims’ families. T.J. stood up wearing a shirt
that had “killer” written on it and said “This hand that pulled the trigger
that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory. F--- all of you” right
before he gave the middle finger to the victims’ families. I bring this up to
you because I believe that the Death Penalty is under used in the United States
because I believe that people who can take the lives of others and feel no
remorse should be killed rather than being sent to prison.
Although some people believe that it would be better if he
was sent to prison so he could eventually have to suffer from being in prison,
I think one of the important factors to consider is the cost to keep an inmate in
jail. All jails are supported by tax payers which mean some of your tax money
is used to keep murderers alive. It is estimated that it costs $22,000 a year
to an inmate in jail for a year. If you look at T.J. Lane’s situation he is
only 18 and if he lives to 80 which is around average life expectancy of a
human this would mean that it would cost $1,364,000 to keep him in jail. I
think that it is wrong to use this much money for someone who felt no remorse
after killing 3 people to keep him alive when we are in huge debt as a country.
T.J. is just one person but there are a lot of people just like him where if we
just used the death penalty we could save a lot of money.
If you look at the chart above it shows the most states in
the united states have the death penalty but this is not enough because in most
states they have done under 15 executions in the since 1976. I believe that any
time someone intentionally plans and murders someone that they should get the
death penalty because they don’t deserve the right to live if they think it’s
to take the life of someone else. 15 states on the graph such as Wisconsin do
not have the death penalty and that has to change because as a Wisconsin
resident I do not have to use my tax money to pay for murderers.
So in the
end the death penalty can be justified. It’s a simple concept; if someone is
willing to take someone else’s life then death is an appropriate punishment. If
T.J. Lane was heartless enough to insult the victims’ families rather than
apologies than why should the tax payers have to keep him alive for the rest of
his life. That’s why the states have to consider expanding the death penalty or
adding it to truly bring justice to thousands of criminals.
Works Cited
I agree. I think that it is ridiculous that we should have to pay for anyone who confesses to a murder and doesn't feel any remorse. It might be a different story if that person was to be clinically diagnosed with a mental disorder, but if they are declared legally sane? Why should we keep them alive when they killed innocents. TJ, I assume, was declared legally sane because he is going to prison and not the an institute. You never said if he was from Wisconsin, but if he is that means that some of the taxes I pay are keeping him alive. I'm sort of angry with this, he wasn't decent enough to apologize and instead of saying nothing he was a jerk. That is absolutely ridiculous!
ReplyDeleteThis was a very interesting blog post to read. I definitely agree with you on your views about the death penalty. There is no sense paying for an inmate to live is life in prison when there is an alternative. The idea of the death penalty has been around for a very long time. That is proof that the ideas of the death penalty have worked in the past and they will work in the future. I think that this 17 year old deserves the death penalty. He killed someone and why is it fair that he gets to live the rest of his life when he took the life of someone else?
ReplyDeleteIt's unbelievable to me that there are people who have absolutely no remorse for taking a human life. I was shocked by this extreme case that you brought up about TJ Lang, and even though his actions were severe and he had no regrets on the matter, I still do not support the death penalty. It should not be our responsibility to take a life of someone even if they are a murderer. If we feel no remorse for killing someone -- even if they are a murderer -- are we not essentially one in the same? For some people it seems like there is no hope, but I still do not believe it is within our jurisdiction to decide who is allowed to live and die.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Nate, There are a lot of people out there who don't feel guilty for their poor actions when they murder innocent people. I thought it was a good idea that you included the story about TJ, that story was ridiculous and i found it obsured about what he did. I don't see why we should pay for him to stay alive because he decided to do what he did and those actions were poor. I give him credit for apoligizing but he probably didn't feel any remorse in my opinion. Good article!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the other comments above-- it was a very interesting post to read. I heard about the shooting and I was sickened at the shooter's response to his crime. I agree wholeheartedly with your suggestion of the death penalty for someone like this. It's absolutely ludicrous that there is so much money put into incarcerating someone as it is, and I feel it's even crazier that this kid will live for many, many more years not paying a cent or contributing to society in any way, AND, on top of it all, not feeling any remorse for his actions. It's sickening. Nice job at providing evidence in this post, especially with the cost of prison.
ReplyDeleteI understand your point of view, and it definitely would help to have the death penalty in all states only for the cause of reducing the nation’s debt. Morally, though, I completely disagree with the idea of the death penalty. I think it is horrible for people to plan out a massacre and go through with it, but if we give the murderer the death penalty, then that makes the person who killed him a murderer as well, then shouldn’t that person be killed as well? It would just be an ongoing cycle then if we were to have the death penalty in the whole country. I understand that it takes a lot of money in order to keep someone in prison, but then that person has to think about what he/she has done and has to live with it for the rest of their lives. Logically, it would make sense to have the death penalty in the economic sense, but morally, it makes absolutely no sense to have a continual cycle of people being killed.
ReplyDeleteAt first I did not justify the death penalty at all, but this article has made me change my mind about the topic. Paying that much money for someone who doesn't care about anyone but themselves is stupid. I'm not saying you should kill every killer, but there are certain exceptions where the death penalty should be used.
ReplyDeleteMy belief at first was kind of in between. I thought that there are people out there who are just too insane to let live, they had their chance and they blew it. On the other hand however they have just as much of a right to live as the rest of us. I guess this one really just comes down to which side you agree with more. For certain cases I believe that there needs to be the death penalty. If a kid were to go on a rampage in their school and do exactly what Tj Lane did in the court room, something is obviously wrong with this kid and he obviously can’t live among the rest of us, and if you are going to throw him in jail for life then what is the point of costing everyone else tax dollars and keeping him in prison? I know it sounds terrible but it would save everyone a lot of money and would be able to give parents some sort of sense of safety knowing he wont be able to harm anyone ever again.
ReplyDeleteKevin Baumann
I agree with you Nate. I think that anyone who does something so evil and doesn't even have any remorse should be killed. This boy has some serious mental problems and shouldn't even be allowed to live. I think that they need to use the death penalty more often because we are paying to keep all of these bad people alive. Think about all the money that it takes just to keep one person alive, and to think that there are THOUSANDS more people like this rotting in jails. All these criminals don't deserve to live in a place that keeps them safe and feed until the day that they die. This guy should be shot just like he shot those other students.I think that anyone who has murdered another human should get the death penalty. It is not fair that they get to just kill people and go off to a prison for the rest of their lives.
ReplyDeleteLily Leist
The problem with the death penalty is not with this scenario. In this scenario, you can clearly see that all the evidence suggest that he is the killer and yes, he should be put on death row and executed. However, what about the cases where an innocent person is convicted of a crime they did not commit, do we just kill them off to later find out that "Whoops, we killed the wrong guy." There is a group called the Innocence Project that works to prove through DNA testing if someone is innocent or guilty. However, can we really expect 100% accuracy? Their webpage (http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/The_Death_Penalty.php) shows through DNA testing how 300 people convicted of capital crimes, about 25% of them were actual murders.But what if they made a mistake, they are bound to for they are only human, can we really risk the collateral damage. If we have 100% correct evidence proving that, yes, this is the person who committed the murder, I say go ahead, execute them, but only when we have 100% solid evidence, even if we only get 99.99% chance that they convicted the murder, then they are to be put in prison until more evidence arises.
ReplyDelete- Bradley Kern
I disagree with you. I don’t think that the death penalty should be used more often because everyone has the right to life. I think that the jails themselves should be changed. Instead of storing these people in these huge buildings they should educate the inmates so that when they are released they will be up to date on what has happened outside and they will be able to fit in. I also think that many of the people do not know why what they did was wrong. For the people such as T.J. I believe that they should be educated on why what they did was wrong. People such as T.J. may not have been raised to understand how wrong this is and so on. What he did is absolutely horrible, but I don’t think he should be killed for it. That won’t solve the problem. What he needs is to come to understand why what he did was wrong.
ReplyDeleteNate I completely agree with you. Its one thing to pay for an inmate who has learned his/her lesson and regrets what they did, that I could understand but to allow TJ to live after not only what he did but how he handled it is ridiculous. Clearly there is something wrong with our system if we are paying for murders to continue to live.
ReplyDelete