According to an Essay written by Mayor Ed Koch in 1985, the death penalty is the correct solution to punish a murderer. Mayor Koch compared abolishing the death penalty to lowering the penalty for rape. He asked if that would show greater or lesser respect for woman. Using that same thought process Koch said, "Life is indeed precious and I believe the death penalty helps to affirm that fact." "When we lower the penalty for murder," Koch wrote, "it signals a lessened regard for the value of the victim's life." Koch's essay reflected what most Americans, then as now, have thought, as opinion polls have consistently shown a substantial majority in favor of the death penalty. Koch said that supreme court laws have been put in place so that capital punishment is meted out more fairly and mistakes are avoided. When sentences are handed down and executions are carried out according to the guidelines meant to provide greater consistency and eliminate racial discrimination in…show more content… Such special pleading suggests the condemned killer is as much, if not more, sinned against than sinning. He may have killed someone in a fit of passion or desperate need for a quick financial gain. The state, on the other hand, will calmly and coolly throw the switch or inject the needle as a matter of simple retribution. An individual made a rash and foolish judgment. The state should know better. Koch had a problem with the life sentence alternative is that killers sometimes escape prison. Or they murder guards or other prisoners with impunity. Already sentenced to life, with the death penalty not available to the state, what do they have to lose? Then there is the question of proportionality. Are there not some crimes so heinous that the execution of the perpetrators is the only punishment that even remotely fits the
