Dear Mr. President:  

     For the past 20 years, the death penalty is still continually being questioned. Whether to keep it in the law to sentence people to it or to just use life imprisonment for punishment. It all comes down to money; the cost of the death penalty can range from $1 million to $3 million per person. On the other hand cases resulting life imprisonment average around $500,000, including the cost of incarceration. The government would potentially be saving money, if they would replace the death penalty with life imprisonment. It’s basically doing the same good, but without taking someones life away. 

    The death of a family member forces families to overlook the awful details of the crime many times over, forcing it to be impossible to move on with their lives. The problem is whether the victim's needs are met effectively by murdering someone else and causing another family heartbreak and sorrow as well as adding to the cycle of violence.   

    In 1972 United States supreme court rules that all state death penalty statues were unconstitutional because they allowed for arbitrary and capricious application. The majority of inmates were executed for murder or crimes resulting in murder, but convictions for privacy, rape, rioting, kidnapping, and spying, and espionage also yield federal executions. Federal government has utilized hanging, electrocution, and gas chamber to execute over 340 prisoners. Today, over half the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty either by law or practice.

    I think the death penalty has certain standards. It is cruel to take someones life away by hanging them or putting them in a gas chamber, and i think there are possible better ways to handle it. I would say the victims family has a say in what or how the defendant is punished, its only fair. I don't believe in taking away another life in order to prove a point or to get back at someone.