Christa Pike has recently survived lethal injection. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years. It eventually became super painful for Pike and this incident led me to wanting to write about why the United States should ban the death penalty.
For starters, your financial background can hugely impact who gets the death penalty and who doesn’t. Roughly 95% of people who get sentenced to death come from disadvantaged economic backgrounds.
This is because it is harder to post bail or pay fees; it is harder to get a good lawyer compared to someone who has more resources, and one huge factor is a lack of political power.
I would also argue that right now, the United States has a problem with money and political ties affecting the outcome of whether you go to prison or not.
To list a few examples, I’m going to start with Trevor Milton. Milton was convicted of securities fraud. But he donated $2 million dollars to pro-Trump political committees. After that, he got a presidential pardon in March of 2025.
Another example is Julio Herrera Velutini. He was a foreign banker charged in a bribery scheme. But his associates channeled multi-million-dollar donations to a Trump super PAC and paid lobbying firms. He then received a pardon in January of 2026.
I know that neither of those cases had to do with the death penalty itself. But think about it this way; if we still have that much corruption in the United States justice system, I don’t know why that same corrupt system should get to decide who lives and who dies.
Another factor I would like to bring up is how expensive it is to put someone to death. The death penalty is 2.5-5 times more expensive than putting someone in life imprisonment, and costs between $1.5 million and $3 million.
For all these reasons and more, I personally believe that the United States should ban the death penalty. The main exception I would say is if the person would prefer the death penalty over life imprisonment.
In conclusion, I think that it is not fair for the current justice system to decide who lives and who dies.
