Capital Punishment: California's Financial Burden and Legal Nightmare

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Capital Punishment in the state of California represents the ideals of justice in no way which can justify the great financial and legal burden required to maintain a system that has not actually put any person to death since 2006. It is somewhat of a mystery why California voters allow the process to continue despite having opportunities on fairly recent ballots to discontinue the practice. The current implementation of capital punishment in the state of California spends large amounts of money on the many legal proceedings and processes, while carrying out so few executions of death row prisoners that some would label California as a “De-facto prohibition” state regarding it's practices of capital punishment. Capital Punishment in California fails miserably to represent justice for anyone, and should be abolished. 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... ... middle of paper ... ...the reasons it should be official abolished in California, as the moral costs of implementing capital punishment make it out to be something we actually don't want at all. For these reasons, Capital Punishment in California fails miserably to represent justice for anyone, and should be abolished. Works Cited Koch, Larry Wayne, John F Galliher, and Colin Wark, The Death of the American Death Penalty : States Still Leading the Way. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2012, Ebscohost Ebook. Kovner Guy. "Is Death Row worth the cost? 25-year process at $138 million a year has some questioning dysfunctional system" The Press Democrat 23 October 2009: 3. Online Article. Henderson, Harry, Capital Punishment, New York: Facts On File Inc. 2006, Print. Barnet, Sylvan, and Hugo Bedau. Current Issues and Enduring Questions. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011, Print.

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