Death Penalty

A PENALTY WORSE THAN DEATH

Article by Amanda Rose DeStefano Graphic courtesy of Kelsey Wang

e families of the victims in the Parkland shooting held their breath on October 13 as they awaited the punishment for the assailant, Nikolas Cruz. When the judge announced that Cruz would live the rest of his life in a high security prison instead of being sent to death row, many members of the community shared their outrage over the sentencing.

Up until 2016, Florida juries could sentence convicts to death if a majority of the 12 agreed. In Hurst v. Florida, the Supreme Court viewed this law as giving judges too much power and jurors too little. After revisions were made by Florida legislators, the current sentencing law requires all 12 jurors to recommend the death penalty. As the jurors in Cruz’s case only voted 9-3 for capital punishment, this requirement for a unanimous decision led to him being sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Family members of the victims pleaded for the killer to be put on death row as punishment for the lives he had taken. Annika Dworet, the mother of 17-yearold victim Nicholas Dworet, asked the courtroom, “how much worse would the crime have to be to warrant the death penalty?”

While these families might feel as though capital punishment is what Cruz deserves, writings and drawings released by the Broward County Sheri ’s O ce suggest that death is what Cruz wanted. ese 30 violent pages ranged from drawings to notes describing that he wanted to go to death row or die of a heart attack. Having been responsible for the deaths of 17, Cruz did not deserve to get what he wanted.

Even beyond Cruz’s case, the death penalty is an unnecessary and violent punishment that should not be endorsed by the state. One reason for this is how the punishment has been inconsistently applied across America due to contrasting perspectives from lawmakers. Just 2% of US counties have imposed 52% of all executions from 1976 to 2015, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In order to curb implicit unfairness that di ering policy perspectives have, serious federal consideration is necessary.

“ ere is de nitely a level of unfairness that comes into that,” said Brandon Burmeister, a government teacher at Trinity. “It would be a good use of federal time to create some kind of threshold that would be a federally mandated kind of threshold in that response.”

Race is also a factor at play. Although only 13.6% of Americans are Black according to the U.S. Census, they make up 34% of those executed. Washington State reported in a 2014

study that in similar cases, jurors are three times more likely to reccomend the death penalty for Black defendants compared to their white counterparts. Racism also manifests on the victim’s side of the crime. e chances of getting capital punishment when the defendant is Black is higher than when the defendant is white. During the 1980s in Georgia, the death penalty was given for 70% of black defendants with white victims, as opposed to 15% for white defendants with Black victims.

e death penalty has been defended as long as it does not violate the 8th Amendment and concepts of cruel and unusual punishment. “Botched executions,” or executions that constitute a deviation from proper procedure and typically end in more agony for the prisoner, are a whole other issue. An estimated 3% of all US executions from 1890 to 2010 were botched, regardless of promises that the technology used to perform death sentences was safe and humane, as to not violate the Eighth Amendment. is risky aspect constitutes one of the most inhumane practices our judicial system could ever engage in. e permanence of the death penalty poses an especially grave threat for those who have been wrongly accused. Since 1973, more than 190 people who were sentenced to death have been proven innocent and exonerated, with the largest number of these exonerations occuring in Florida. Science. org reports that after analyzing more than three decades worth of death sentences across the US, 4.1% are likely to be innocent. While most people think that the death penalty is still a cheaper option, it’s actually incredibly expensive. e cost of the death penalty isn’t just the lives of those who receive it, but the tangible expenses that come along with it. Trials relating to the death penalty require more experts, lawyers, time in court, appeals and specialty incarceration. Trials involving the death penalty are reported to cost more than eight times what a murder case not seeking the death penalty would cost, according to the O ce of Defender Services of the Administrative O ce of the U.S. Courts. With a plethora of ways the death penalty negatively impacts communities, it’s easy to see why the United States is past the need for such a punishment. e sentence is hypocritical at best, using the death sentence for those who kill, and unfair at worst, given arbitrarily and even incorrectly. A civil society should not fall into the trap of the very thing it is trying to eliminate, especially not when it gives some, like Nikolas Cruz, what they view as the easy way out.

COX’S CROSS COUNTRY CAREER

Article by Victoria Berube Photo by Anna Miliotes After only three years of training, senior cross country runner Morgan Cox holds the title of the second fastest girl in Trinity Prep history. She is 0.08 seconds away from claiming the rst place spot. Prior to attending Trinity as a sophomore, Cox’s athleticism started with competitive gymnastics and Winter Park High School’s rowing team. “When I was a gymnast, I trained 20 to 25 hours a week,” Cox said. “One thing it taught me was commitment to a sport and really anything I do.” With Trinity’s lack of rowing team, Cox needed a way to stay active so she chose the cross country team. “Ineeded something to guide my energy towards,” Cox said. “So I chose running because I’ve never been a ball sport person.” Head cross country couch Sara Dowdy describes Cox as extremely hardworking. Additonally, her success did not happen overnight.

“She’s every coach’s dream,” Dowdy said. “She’s on time to every practice, she takes every workout seriously, but she still has fun and can joke with the other teammates.” During Cox’s junior year, she lowered her time each race and in total dropped three minutes over the course of the season.

“My favorite part about running is the personal satisfaction aspect,” Cox said. “Being able to get faster every single week and just pushing my body is something that I enjoy.”

After three years of hard work, Cox has decided to commit to running cross country in college. She spent a lot of time deciding where she would run, considering all aspects of college, and ultimately chose Emory University in Georgia.

“I didn’t want to go to a school just because they were D1 or because they had massive funding for their athletic programs,” Cox said. “I wanted to go to a school that I knew would challenge me and had a good reputation.”

Cox hopes to be able to be pushed more as a college athlete and is excited for her future at Emory. “[Im excited to compete] with a lot more people and a lot more people that are better than me because, I think that leaves a lot more opportunity for growth,” Cox said. Although, Cox’s time as a Trinity Prep cross country runner has concluded, her career has just started. Coach Dowdy shares this is only the beginning for Cox. “She’s gonna be great [in college] because she’s made such a jump from sophomore to junior year and this year, so I think she’s just starting to see what she can do,” Dowdy said.