World Day Against the Death Penalty 2024: “The Death Penalty protects no one!” – Part 3

My name is Efren Medina and I’m a death row inmate currently incarcerated here on Arizona’s death row.

I’m writing this essay to give people an honest insight into my own life experience. But more importantly, to explain why and how the death penalty does not protect anyone. Many people, especially here in the United States of America and elsewhere, believe that the death penalty is a deterrent to reduce the crime rate so that criminals don’t commit such cruel and heinous crimes. However, the stark reality is that this is misleading information because the states that have the death penalty tend to have a proven statistical fact that their crime rates are much higher than other states or countries that don’t have the death penalty.

Some people will go as far as to say that this person (me) is just a whiner because he finds himself in this situation. And that’s fine with me but if people in general, who really care about justice, knew the truth and the real reason why the death penalty does not protect anyone, it is very simple.

Simply because the justice system here in America is flawed and it costs the taxpayers more money to see such a sentence carried out. Sometimes the wait can be 40 years or more, and by the time an execution takes place, the victim’s family may have passed away. Or the prisoner may have died of old age, illness, health problems, etc.

Flaws in the Legal System

Many death row inmates also never receive adequate and proper legal representation during the trial. This is because most of these high-profile cases are handled by inexperienced lawyers provided by the court to indigent defendants who have never handled a death penalty case before. As a result, many errors are made and cases end up back in court on appeal for possible retrial or even re-sentencing years later due to ineffective assistance of counsel in the majority of all death penalty cases.

Just to start their appeals process all over again. Not to mention the pain and agony of the victim’s family. All at the taxpayer’s expense and the prosecutor’s thirst for blood. The duration of each retrial can also take anywhere from a few months to several years. This money could easily be better spent and invested in helping the less fortunate / homeless, schools, infrastructure, etc.

It also costs twice as much to incarcerate a death row inmate as it does to incarcerate an inmate serving a natural life sentence. Because death row inmates are considered the highest security risk in the prison population. For the death row inmate, the ones who really pay and suffer the consequences the most are our families, friends and loved ones.

Impact on Relatives and Wrongly Accused

From my own personal experience, I was placed in solitary confinement for the first 25 years of my incarceration. Not because of my behavior or attitude, but only because I was sentenced to death. Where I was not allowed to touch, hug or kiss my family as my visits were conducted through a reinforced glass partition window. When your own family, friends or loved ones see you like this, it really crushes their morale, heart and spirit because they never want to visit you under such circumstances.

Then there are those cases where the death row inmate was wrongly accused, convicted and exonerated. And after almost a lifetime of incarceration, they are finally released. How can you even begin to imagine how to compensate these people? Who during their incarceration have suffered so much pain, loss, and decades of their lives lost due to egregious behavior, prosecutorial misconduct, faulty evidence, or false testimony to further their agenda.

Conclusion

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be punished for their actions at all. But since this country prides itself on human rights, equality, protection, liberty and justice for all. And is also the first to condemn other countries that carry out such cruel and barbaric punishments.

Maybe we need to look at ourselves first before we as a nation give someone the death penalty. Because the death penalty does not protect anyone, but instead creates more separation, turmoil and uncertainty, when far better alternatives can bring closure to all involved, instead of revenge or vengeance. And this outdated punishment of the death penalty should be abolished altogether.

Thank you for taking the time and interest to read my essay.

Sincerely,
Efren Medina
Arizona Death Row