Abolishing the Death Penalty
When a person is found guilty in this country, they may either serve a term in prison or be put on death row. On death row, the person awaits their death as a punishment for the crime they committed. The United States remains in the minority of nations in the world that still uses death as penalty for certain crimes. Many see the penalty as barbaric and against American values. Others see it as a very important tool in fighting violent pre-meditated murder. The death penalty should be abolished because of its financial costs to tax payers, it’s barbaric, and its ineffectiveness.
The average American thinks would think that it’s simpler and cheaper to kill a convicted person rather than pay millions of tax dollars to keep the convict in jail for a life term. However, they are very wrong. One reason why the death penalty should be abolished is because of its expensive costs. In reality, the death penalty is two to five times more expensive than keeping a convict in prison for life. This expensive price tag has to do with the endless appeals and additional required procedures that drag the process out. Since a convict’s life is on the line, the chance of making the mistake of killing the wrong person has to be very slim to none. Therefore, more than one trial or appeal is done to make sure this is the exact person that will be punished for the crime by death. Sometimes, the person found guilty sits on death row 15-20 years before they are officially put to death. Not only are taxpayers paying to keep the convicted person in prison, but they are also paying for the judges, attorneys, court reporters, clerks, and court facilities. Do we Americans really have that many resources to waste?
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...fied individuals. Although the court system is at fault, the ultimate risk is the mistake of killing the wrong person.
The expensive price tag for tax payers, barbaric method, and ineffectiveness of the death penalty are reasons why the punishment should be abolished in the United States. To create a society where there is true equality and justice means we must relinquish the barbaric methods we use in our society. Capital punishment is one of those outdated methods for punishing people convicted of a crime. Why use a justice system, whose purpose is to give the best and most fair punishment to those found guilty, when there is a chance of being punished in the most unfair and unjust way? Simply seeking revenge for the murder of a loved one is not enough to waste millions of dollars, give a hypocritical image to the world, and gain superficial satisfaction.
This quote provides details of why the finality in the decisions regarding death may not accurately represent the justice the accused deserves. It augments the ultimate overarching point made by Scheck and Rust-Tierney that we should not determine
The death penalty is legal in thirty-one states and illegal in nineteen states. There are at least forty-one federal capital crimes in the United States that can be considered or guaranteed with the death penalty. The death penalty should be abolished because it is unlawful to society, humanity, and civilization as a whole. It costs far more to execute a person rather than to keep them in prison for the rest of his or her life. Logically speaking, the death penalty is an illicit and wrongful punishment no matter what the crime. The emotion and anger toward the criminals that commit horrible crimes can overcome what is actually right for society. There are many more opposing factors towards the death penalty than there are supporting ones. Capital punishment is nefarious to say the least and there are other consequences and actions that can be substituted rather than directly executing a person for their actions.
“Any last words?” is the sentence that is given to the people who are about to be put to death.
Thirty-two of the fifty states of the United States of America have capital punishment and in those thirty-two sates there are over three thousand people on death row as of January 1, 2013, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The murderers of today’s society can be assured of a much longer life even after conviction because of the appeals process slowing the implementation of their death sentence. (Oberg) The imposition of the death penalty is extremely expensive because it allows for endless appeals at the expense of the taxpayers. The effectiveness of the death penalty is greatly compromised when it is not carried through. There needs to be a certainty attached to it to make it effective, and that has not happened. There needs to be one trial, one appeal, and then either acquittal, or execution. (Baltimore Sun) The states need to stop pushing for the abolition of the death penalty and start looking for a way to make it more cost-effective.
As many people begin to examine the debate of whether or not the death penalty should be inflicted upon those who commit such heinous crimes in the United States, are finding flaws in the system. One of those flaws being that the cost of executing someone on death row is much higher than someone sentenced to life-without-parole. This may come as a shock to many people due to the fact that it costs a sufficient amount of money to provide food, shelter, and security to the people sentenced to a lifetime in prison. This forces much of society to question whether such funds
Many people are led to believe that the death penalty doesn’t occur very often and that very few people are actually killed, but in reality, it’s quite the opposite. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1,359 people have been executed as a result of being on death row since 1977 to 2013. Even though this form of punishment is extremely controversial, due to the fact that someone’s life is at stake, it somehow still stands to this very day as our ultimate form of punishment. Although capital punishment puts murderers to death, it should be abolished because killing someone who murdered another, does not and will not make the situation any better in addition to costing tax payers millions of dollars.
At first glance, it may seem that maintaining a life-term prisoner is more burdensome for taxpayers. However, according to Richard C. Dieter, the cost of a death penalty may amount to or even surpass the expenditures of handling less severe punishments for similar cases. Actually, the imposition of capital punishment requires complicated and numerous trials which can take a great amount of time. During this period, the defendant remains incarcerated and his maintenance is paid for with taxpayers’ money. Additional pre-trial time is needed to impose a death sentence with the involvement law experts, attorneys and additional trials (Dieter). All of these procedures require additional expenditures which make a death trial a costly
It is sometimes suggested that abolishing capital punishment is unfair to the taxpayer, on the assumption that life imprisonment is more expensive than execution. If one takes into account all the relevant costs, however, just the reverse is true. "The death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a more economical alternative to life imprisonment."56 A murder trial normally takes much longer when the death penalty is at issue than when it is not. Litigation costs -- including the time of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and court reporters, and the high costs of briefs -- are mostly borne by the taxpayer. A 1982 study showed that were the death penalty to be reintroduced in New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more than double the cost of a life term in prison.57
Almost all nations in the world either have the death sentence or have had it at one time. It was used in most cases to punish those who broke the laws or standards that were expected of them. Since the death penalty wastes tax money, is inhumane, and is largely unnecessary it should be abolished in every state across the United States. The use of the death penalty puts the United States in the same category as countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia which are two of the world’s worst human rights violators (Friedman 34). Lauri Friedman quotes, “Executions simply inject more violence into an already hostile American society.”
On one hand, many people argue that death should be implemented in the whole United States. But many believe that death row shouldn’t be implemented here in the United States and I have an example why. For some people justice is more important and sometimes they want a eye for an eye situation on many big cases and if the convict found guilty, the state had to kill the convict which makes the state the killer. Death penalty condemns the innocent to die and studies have attempted to prove the death penalty deters murder (Nodeathpenalty.org). Many convicts don’t even received what they should receive, such as fair trials and chances to change and rejoin the the society. In some states convicts of some serious crime case were put in the jail
There are different beliefs and controversy about the death penalty, even though it is not
As Bryan Stevenson once stated, “The death penalty symbolizes whom we fear and don’t fear; whom we care about and whose lives are not valid.” Capital punishment should be prohibited in the United States because it cost too much, it takes too long, and is stressful for everyone involved.
Is the death penalty something our nation should allow, or is it something that should be taken away completely? I believe our country should not abolish this punishment for heinous crimes committed against innocent people. Not only to punish the offender, but also to give closure that this person will not have the chance to cause another family the same pain. Furthermore, I would like justice to be given for everyone involved in this crime, especially the victim, who in many cases just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The combination of too many mistakes and too much money the death penalty does not justify the people that are actually put to death. According to Holloway regular cases cost around 740 thousand dollars while death penalty cases cost around 1.26 million dollars or more. By abolishing the death penalty the United States could save millions of dollars a year to help with more jobs and higher salaries. The states that seek out the death penalty will give out approximately 3.5 million dollars a year, as opposed to around 15 thousand dollars a year if the state has not sought out the death penalty. The death penalty makes no financial sense if the United States is in debt, the money from the death penalty cases should go to that. The death penalty is costly but it is also a slow and process for the
Today's system of capital punishment tolerates many inequalities and injustices. The common arguments for the death penalty are filled with holes. Imposing the death penalty is expensive and time consuming. Each year billions of dollars are spent to sentence criminals to death. Perhaps the most frequently raised argument against capital punishment is that of its cost. Other thoughts on the death penalty are to turn criminals away from committing violent acts. A just argument against the death penalty would be that sentencing an individual to death prevents future crimes by other individuals. However, criminals are not afraid of the death penalty. The chance of a criminal being sentenced to death is very slim. The number of inmates actually put to death is far less than it was decades ago. This decrease in number shows that the death penalty is faulty. With that being true, many criminals feel that they can get away with a crime and go unpunished. Also, the less that the death sentence is invoked, the more conflicting it becomes when it is actually used. Alternative can be found to substitute for the death penalty. A huge misconception of the death penalty is that it saves society the costs of keeping inmates imprisoned for long periods of time. Ironically, the cost of the death penalty is far greater than the cost of housing a criminal for life. Appeals on the death penalty become a long, drawn-out and very expensive process. There are those who cry that we, the taxpayers, shouldn't have to "support" condemned people for an entire lifetime in prison-that we should simply "eliminate" them and save ourselves time and money. The truth is that the cost of state killing is up to three times the cost of lifetime imprisonment (Long 80). ...