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Richard Ramirez Essay

793 Words4 Pages

Case 1: Nightstalker

Introduction: Richard Ramirez was well known in California as the nightstalker, an appropriate nickname due to his 13 counts of murders, 5 attempted murders and 11 sexual assaults. Ramirez was sentenced to death row in 1989 and remained there for 23 years until B-cell lymphoma took his life. I believe California should not have sentenced Richard Ramirez to the death penalty under the condition that he remains in prison for the remainder of his life. This course of action is morally justified because no matter the extent of the crime the risk of executing innocent people and cost of the process is not worth the outcome. My position is a better option than the alternative of being sentenced to the death penalty because my …show more content…

Richard Ramirez’s trials alone cost California 1.8 million dollars before coming to an end by his death. Ramirez was costing taxpayers millions for 23 years before he died ending the financial burden. Financial costs to taxpayers from the death penalty are several times that of keeping someone in prison for life (Messerli). The death penalty combines the costliest parts of both punishments, lengthy and complicated death penalty trials, followed by incarceration for life. Everything that is needed for an ordinary trial is needed for a death penalty case, only extra. More pre trial time, more experts, twice as many attorneys, two trials instead of one, and then comes a series of appeals allowing inmates to stay on death row for years costs the state more than imprisoning them for life. With all these extra needs for accompanying the death penalty is it really worth it? Execution costs nearly four times as much than life in prison. If we would have ignored pushing the death penalty charges on Ramirez, California would have saved millions due to the appeals of the prosecution if they had chosen life in prison …show more content…

Thus bringing in to account the principle of lex talionis. Which is the right to be paid back with similar harm and the equality of persons. Meaning an eye for an eye, they deserve it because they did it therefore intimidating people from murdering because they don’t want to die. It is also to be said through Kantian ethics that a rational individual who kills another authorizes his own execution. Executing murderers sets as a statement that murder is absolutely evil and will not be tolerated. Death is permanent in itself and letting murder and the death penalty coincides in that fact, neither is retractable. Making for allowing vengeance all the more

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