preview

Death Penalty Pros And Cons Essay

Decent Essays

Cons of Capital Punishment Symphony Downey
Ms. Pearson
Fourth Hour

“At yearend 2013, thirty-five states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons held 2,979 inmates under sentence of death,” (Snell,2014) . Approximately ten percent of those people have severe mental illnesses. It also costs millions of dollars for every case associated with capital punishment which is significantly more than cases not associated with the death penalty. There has also been little to no research done that actually proves that it deters crime at all. Capital Punishment is negative in several aspects, it kills many mentally ill men and women, it’s very expensive, and it’s inefficient. To begin, many people who suffer from mental diseases have been killed due to the death penalty. Ten percent of people on death row have extremely severe mental issues (The Facts: 13 Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty, n.d.).One seventy-four year old man from Missouri, Cecil Clayton, was killed after killing a cop although he …show more content…

A case lacking death penalty costs $520,000 less than a case with it. A case with the death penalty costs 1.26 million dollars whereas one without costs $740,000. In Washington, the cost is a million dollars apart; cases with the penalty cost an average of $3.01 million and cases without cost $2.01 million. Also, to support prisoners on death row, it costs taxpayers ninety thousand dollars more annually than a normal prisoner (Costs of the Death Penalty, n.d.). The reason why it’s more costly is because the Constitution requires a long judicial process for capital cases to ensure they don’t kill an innocent person, which still occasionally happens. In fact, in California studies show that to assure fair judgements in capital cases they would have to spend approximately 232.7 million dollars yearly, but they only spend $137 million (Costs of the Death Penalty,

Get Access