Imagine a man sitting in a room blindfolded with his legs and arms tied. Suddenly about 2,000 volts of electricity causes his body to convulse uncontrollably. Five seconds later it’s over and this man is dead. He wasn’t a victim of a random crime nor is he being tortured. What was just described is perfectly legal in America. It was the harshest penalty the American justice system can administer. Capital punishment does not seem to when described in this manner; it sounds like a scene described from a horror movie. Many nations have replaced this primeval system of punishment with life imprisonment. The death penalty is not a solution to heinous crimes, and humanity should abdicate its use as a form of punishment.
The death penalty
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In truth, though, it does not seem to deter crime at all. The death penalty does not act as a deterrent because the majority of people committing the crimes, such as murder, do not calculate the probability of getting sentenced to death. . In fact, the murder rate in the United States is five-six times higher than both Britain and Australia; both countries have abolished capital punishment. Texas’s murder rate is twice that of Wisconsin, a state which does not have the capital punishment. Both Texas and Oklahoma have historically executed the most number of inmates, yet in 2003 their state murder rates increased, and both have murder rates higher than the national average (Reasons to be against the death penalty"). As Freedman points out, “[Criminals] may be severely mentally disturbed…like Ted Bundy, who chose Florida for his final crimes because it had a death penalty.” This man, Ted Bundy, went to Florida knowing that after he committed his crimes, he would be given the death penalty. Clearly to him being killed was better than spending life in prison. Who can blame him though? Sitting in a dark cell all day long thinking about what they did and realizing how wrong they were, would cause insanity in the majority of society. Some might argue this claim saying that the being put to death is worse than being in prison for life. Although this is somewhat a matter of opinion, studies have …show more content…
Some serial killers, such as Gary Ridgway in Seattle who admitted killing 48 prostitutes and runaways and also an "angel of death" nurse who admitted killing 17 people, receive life in prison. Meanwhile, mentally ill and impoverished murderers who could not afford good lawyers or did not receive much media attention are given the death penalty. One case stated on Antideathpenalty.org that in Alabama, David Hocker was executed after a one-day trial. His mental illness was not sufficiently described to the jury. They also cited another case in Alabama where James Hubbard, a 74-year-old man who had been on death row for 27 years was executed. Hubbard was beset by medical problems which would have probably soon caused his death by natural means: cancer, high blood pressure and the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Another case in Texas, involved a man, Kelsey Patterson, who had schizophrenia. He was executed even after the Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended clemency after learning of his time spent in mental hospitals and his unintelligible rambling. On average per year, there are about 20,000 murders and about 15,000 arrests are made. Of those 15,000 arrest only about 14,000 murder cases are actually taken to court; some are not because not all cases have enough evidence. Only 10,000 of those 14,000 are convicted. And within those that convicted only
...eter, Richard C. “Death Penalty Information Center” A Crisis of Confidence: Americans’ Doubts about the Death Penalty. 2007. 1-30 Print.
Notwithstanding issues of morality, the death penalty process of California is financially inefficient and ineffective. At the current rate of executions, “it would take 1,600 years to execute everybody on death row.” [The Death of the American Death Penalty, 122] The average delay in implementing a death sentence calculates out to be 25 years, at an added cost of $90,000 per year over normal incarceration. [Guy, 2] This is a “premium that currently totals more than $60 million a year” [Guy, 2]. When you take the added costs of death row incarceration and total them up with the additional costs of prosecution and the handling of the many legal appeals death row inmates are entitled to, the unnecessary amount of spending is significant. We could eliminate “$126 million a year” in additional costs by simply sentencing death row inmates to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. [Guy, 2] Because of the afo...
Unlike popular belief, the cost of sentencing someone to death is actually more expensive than a life sentence in prison. In Washington, since the death penalty was reinstated 5 people have been put to death costing taxpayers roughly $120 million, that's roughly $24 million per case (Seattle University, 2015). A reason that people advocate strongly for the death penalty is because they believe that they should not have to pay for the costs to keep criminals fed, sheltered and imprisoned. In fact, 56% of Canadians surveyed believed that the one time cost of a lethal injection is cheaper and will allow their money to go towards something more advantageous like healthcare or education (Angus Reid). This is actually quite different from the truth, in fact is estimated that it costs $740 000 on average to put someone in prison for life. It is also estimated that it costs roughly $1.26 million to sentence someone to death (Seattle University, 2015). (There seems to be a discrepancy between how much a single case costs and how much Washington spent since the death penalty has been reinstated, but I could not find evidence to why that is). Among the reasons why the death penalty is so expensive is the fact that the time in courts is quite lengthy. Jury trials averaged 40.13 days in cases where the death penalty was being sought, but only 16.79 days
Dieter, Richard C. "Innocence and the Death Penalty: The Increasing Danger of Executing the Innocent." DPIC. Death Penalty Information Center, 1 July 1997. Web. 12 Dec. 2014. .
Narration: When it comes to the death penalty there are Opponents and Proponents and although both aim to defend and protect society from crime their beliefs differ in how to accomplish this.
...ed United States. U.S. Government Accounting Office. Capital Punishment. Washington: GPO, 1994 Cheatwood, Derral and Keith Harries. The Geography of Execution: The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America. Rowman, 1996 NAACP Legal Defense Fund . Death Row. New York: Hein, 1996 "Ex-Death Row Inmate Cleared of Charges." USA Today 11 Mar. 1999: 2A "Fatal Flaws: Innocence and the Death Penalty." Amnesty International. 10 Oct. 1999 23 Oct. 1999 Gest, Ted. "House Without a Blue Print." US News and World Report 8 Jul. 1996: 41 Stevens, Michelle. "Unfairness in Life and Death." Chicago Sun-Times 7 Feb. 1999: 23A American Bar Association. The Task Ahead: Reconciling Justice with Politics. 1997 United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Report. Washington: GPO, 1994 Wickham, DeWayne. "Call for a Death Penalty Moratorium." USA Today 8 Feb. 1999: 17A ILKMURPHY
Upon examination, one finds capital punishment to be economically weak and deficient. A common misconception of the death penalty is that the cost to execute a convicted criminal is cheaper than to place a convict in prison for life without parole. Due to the United States judicial system, the process of appeals, which is inevitable with cases involving death as the sentence, incurs an extreme cost and is very time consuming. The cost of a capital trial and execution can be two to six times greater than the amount of money needed to house and feed a prisoner for life. "Studies show incarceration costs roughly $20,000 per inmate per year ($800,000 if a person lives 40 years in prison). Research also shows a death-penalty ease costs roughly $2 million per execution," (Kaplan 2). Capital punishment is extremely expensive and depletes state governments of money that could be used for a wide range of programs that are beneficial. As Belolyn Wiliams-Harold, an author for the journal Black Enterprise, writes that county governments are typically responsible for the costs of prosecution and the costs of the criminal trial, including attorney's fees, and salaries for the members of the courtroom. All this money is spent at the expense of the corrections department and crime prevention programs, which are already is strapped for cash (Williams-Harlod 1). These "financial constraints," such as capital punishment, do not promote a healthy, commercial society, but actually cost and harm the public.
Mappes, Thomas A., Jane S. Zembaty, and David DeGrazia. "The Death Penalty." Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. 105-53. Print.
Andre, Claire, and Manuel Velasquez. “Capital Punishment.” Our Duty or Our Doom. 12 May 2010. 30 May 2010 .
With the cost of the death penalty trial’s and incarceration, the death penalty is significantly much more expensive than the cost of life in prison. First, Trials alone during a death penalty case are one of the main reasons why the death penalty process is so expensive. For example, a twenty four year old man, Dennis Alvarez, was convicte...
Many people, including some higher educated people, tend to believe that executing someone is a lot cheaper than the alternative, which is life in prison without the possibility of parole. Indeed, this thought seems like common sense. However, extensive research has been conducted that contradicts that belief. For instance, a study conducted in Maryland, in 2008, found that the state spends roughly 1.9 million dollars more per capital case, compared to non-capital cases (Warden, 2009). But how can this be some may ask. Well, the reason capital punishment costs more than life without the possibility of parole, is because death penalty cases are longer and more expensive. Because the capital punishment is an irreversible sentence, the state, or government, is required to heighten the defendant’s due process in order to decrease the chance of the defendant being innocent (DPIC). Furthermore, not only is it more expensive for the trial phase, it is also a higher price for a state to imprison death row inmates compared to other
Pasquerella, Lynn. “The Death Penalty in the United States.” The Study Circle Resource Center of Topsfield Foundation. July 1991. Topsfield Foundation. 03 Feb 2011. Web.
“The case Against the Death Penalty.” aclu.org. American Civil Liberties Union, 2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2013
However, on the other hand, to execute death penalty is also costly. In the article, “Death Penalty Is Too Expensive for States, Study Find”, Warren Richey mentioned about the cost of death penalty. For example, in the article, he said “New York spent $170 million over nine years on capital cases before repealing the death penalty. No executions were carried out there. New Jersey spent $253 million over 25 years with no executions.” He also menti...
The death penalty is an economically wasteful method of punishment. It has been calculated that “if the death penalty was extinguished…we could save $11 million a year” (Locke). While this may not seem a significant sum, ...