On Death Penalty in Texas

  My classmate posted in Blogger that Texas should use death penalty more often. She argues that death penalty is a valid means of detering crimes and giving justice to the victims. Another argument of the post is that in the worst cases the imprisoned murderers would bribe the jail for assistance to escape.
In my opinion, the current use of death penalty in Texas works fine and it should not be used more frequently.
  The United States has the most executions among western countries each year and the majority are carried out in Texas. We learned in GOVT2306 class that Texas' early history justified harsh punishment on criminals, which I totally agree with. However, simply increasing the use of death penalty does not solve crimes. My home country also favors the use of death penalty on capital crimes. In fact, the executions in China per year exceed the total number of executions in the USA since 1980s. My country imposes death penalty on capital murders, dealing heroins and involving in terrorism. Recently, our public even proposed death penalty on human trafficking. But the frequent use of death penalty does not lower crime rate in my country. In many cases, death penalty could make criminals more brutal. If the criminals were faced with the capital punishment, they would spare no mercy on the victims. Another example is illegal drugs. In China, selling 50g of methamphetamine is surely punishable by death penalty. This law does deter some people from dealing drugs. But high risk comes with high profit and the drug lords are still importing illegal drugs through the border.
  On the other hand, death penalty is irreversible if the inmate was wrongly convicted and executed. This is the major difference between death penalty and life sentence without parole. In my opinion, the death penalty in the USA is used with considerable caution. A death row inmate usually stays in prison for 10 years before the sentence is carried out. The long appeal process makes death penalty very slow and difficult to be carried out so that any wrongly convicted inmate has enough time to overturn the sentence. Although the justice seems too late for the victims' family, we should bear in mind that the justice system is not only designed to revenge for the victims, but it must also assure that no citizen is punished for something he/she has not done. If we increased the use of death penalty, there will be many appeals overlooked by the courts, hence increasing the risk of executing the wrong person. Unfortunately, my country used to carry out speedy execution after conviction (in the 1980s), which resulted in many deaths of innocent inmates.
 For these reasons, I believe that the cautious use of death penalty in Texas and the USA works fine. It prevents two extreme cases. One is no punishment on capital crimes like Europe (the Norwegian gunner who killed 30 people was merely punished by life imprisonment). The other is the greater risk of executing the wrong people like China. Last but not least, the original post seems a bit sentimental when expressing the support of death penalty. It's true that I'm also pro-death penalty like the author. Personally I would like to see all murderers and terrorists put to death, but I more firmly believe that a good justice system should not be swayed by public anger or the sentiment of avenge