The Death Penalty

I am a believer in Mayor Ed Koch's statement "cheapen the value of human life," but rather "It is by exacting the highest penalty for the taking of human life that we affirm the highest value of human life." Human life is sacred, and deserves the highest respect. If a person murders multiple people in a brutal/premeditated way, the only true justice would be taking away that person's greatest privilege, their life. Now I certainly think that the death penalty needs to be used in a controlled and precise way. Cases need to be look over long and hard, and it needs to be decided with certainty that the perpetrator is guilty of a horrible crime. I think that the death penalty saves lives and as Mayor Koch put it, "When we protect guilty lives, we give up innocent lives in exchange." A statistic from 1977 and 1978 says that in New York City alone, a murder was committed by a person with a previous arrest for murder every eight and a half days. To me this statistic is unacceptable, and if the death penalty is the only way to stop a killer from killing, then by all means bring it on. There is also the issue of racial bias in capital punishment. This may not be as prevalent as many people think. Black's and Latino's are less likely than White's to be put to death for murder. And while Black's and Latino's are put to death more often than White's, this is most likely because of higher murder rates among those groups. The combination of all these factors leads me to believe the death penalty can be the right punishment in certain situations.