In 1989, Christina Gail Pike smashed the head of Colleen Slemmer with a chunk of asphalt, carved a pentagram in the victim's chest, and then removed a piece of her skull and placed it in her pocket for a souvenir. Pike faces a fate of life in prison. In April of 1996, Martin Bryant went on a killing spree that resulted in the deaths of 35 innocent men, women, and children. At Bryant's trial, he broke into uncontrollable bouts of laughter as he muttered "guilty" to every charge. These kinds of murderers shouldn't be allowed to spend their lives comfortably packed away in a federal prison, but instead, should be given the full execution of justice.

Many people claim that a proper form of justice is for convicted killers to spend the rest of their lives in jail. I argue that this is a petty and pointless punishment. In a recent study conducted by the United States Supreme Court, researchers discovered that it would take a minimum of $500,000 dollars per inmate to keep convicted murderers in jail for life. It was also stated that there are more than 3300 inmates on death row. Do the math and that totals up to more than $1,650,000,000 that the decent people of our country would have to shell out, and that's presuming that no one else will ever be convicted of murder again. In short, prolonged life for heartless killers is an economic impracticality.

Many anti-capital punishment people like to assert that "pro-capital punishment people have no respect for the sacredness of human life." I believe the truth lies in the opposite of that statement. ItŐs because capital punishment advocates have so much regard for human life that they favor capital punishment. Murder is the most terrible crime there is. Anything less than the death penalty is an insult to the victim and society.

If the death penalty was a real possibility in the minds of murderers, they might think twice before ending someone's life. Consider the tragic death of Rosa Velez, who happened to be home when a man named Luis Vera burglarized her apartment in Brooklyn. "Yeah, I shot her," Vera admitted. "...and I knew I wouldn't go to the chair."

To conclude, I'd like to offer a quote from novelist Robert A. Heinlien: "The idea that 'violence doesn't solve anything' is a historically untrue and immoral doctrine. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. People that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms."