Persuasive Essay On The Death Penalty

Some may be shocked to be informed that capital punishment actually costs more than life in prison; that is without parole. Many would figure that the costs would be less for the death penalty because of the food, place of living for the prisoners, etc., but quite frankly, it costs more for a prisoner to be punished to death rather than to having life in prison (Hyden). Some state’s taxes differ but for the state of California, capital punishment costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year (Bushman). Additionally, the taxpayers of California spend $250 million per execution (Bushman). According to the nonpartisan state legislative analyst’s office, the average cost of imprisoning an inmate was around $47,000 per year in 2008-09. In comparison, the death penalty can lead to an additional $50,000 to 90,000 per year, according to the studies found (Ulloa). In more studies, they have estimated the taxpayers to spend $70 million per year on incarceration, plus $775 million on additional federal legal challenges to convictions, and $925 million on automatic appeals with the initial challenges to death penalty cases

Some may think that the death penalty is a good punishment though. Their reasons being that is more humane to put someone to death than to throw them into prison to rot for the rest of their life. Inmates who receive the life without parole punishment will never see the light of day ever again. They will spend their whole life knowing that someone else was able to escape their hell by being given the death penalty. To add on to that while they live their life out, they are stuck thinking about the crimes they have committed for the rest of their existence, no matter how much they regret what they have

The death penalty, by definition, is the punishment of execution, administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime. Each state has their own determinates of why someone would be given the death penalty, for example, in Missouri, it is first degree murder, but for Alabama it is intentional murder with 18 aggravating factors.

However, with the life without parole, offenders lose their right to request a lawyer, they abandoned their right to appeal. Life without parole takes the freedom away from offenders and it condemned them to a life filled with suffering. Since then, the prison becomes their cemetery. One can say that offenders abandoned their right in return of the lives they have taken. Death penalty and life without parole both take something valuable from the offenders to compensate the lives they have taken.

Not only does it provides justice to survivors of murder victims, but it also allows more resources to be invested into solving other murders and preventing future violence. We should use the hundreds of millions of dollars we'll save to protect some of those essential services, such as education. The annual cost to keep a prisoner in jail is $43,352 per year. The annual cost of sentencing the death penalty $1.26 million. $43,352 per year with life imprisonment would amount to a tremendous amount more that $1.26 million. Claimed 'cost studies,' often performed by or at the will of death penalty opponents, are frequently so incomplete as to be false and misleading. For example, they do not take into account the increase in the cost of life without parole cases if there were no death penalty. It is not cheaper to keep a criminal confined, because most of the time he will appeal just as much causing as many costs as a convict under death

It is expensive and varies in different states. It cost Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first degree murderers with life in prison without parole, and a death penalty case in Texas would cost an average of $2.3 million – three times as much of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest level for 40 years! (Facts). Instead of spending money for individual criminals, the government can save that money and spend it on the prison facility to create more space.  The money can also be used towards the murdered victim’s families. Most family members who have “lost [loved] ones to murder” sense that the death penalty does not help them (Death Penalty).  The reason why death penalty cases cost more than typical cases is because all of the judges, lawyers, and other personnel would spend more hours into preparing, trying, and reviewing the issues, given that a life is at stake. Judge Gregory Frost estimated that he and his staff spends “40 to 60 hours per month on some aspect” of the death penalty cases, and that the hearings could last from “a few hours to multiple days” (Death-penalty). Instead of spending an excessive amount of money on the death penalty, the money could be devoted to therapies, counseling sessions, or places that could be helpful for the murdered victim’s families.  The government can also spend that money for the community.  They can help by repairing highways, street lights, and annihilated

Since when was it okay to take someone’s life away as a punishment? To take someone’s life, future, everything away is not right, at all. The death penalty should be banned in the United States. 18 out of 50 states still allow the death penalty, and that number needs to go down to 0. To help stop innocent people from being executed, and drive society away from “an eye for an eye” phrase, stop the death penalty!

The death penalty is wrong because capital punishment is not effective in reducing the amount of crime, it claims the lives of innocent people, it is unfair and biased, and most importantly, it is far more costly than a life in prison.

The death penalty is engaged to show governmental power and is used against people to show others that you will not have the right to live if commit such a terrible crime. People have been killed by the death penalty for many reasons such as treason, terrorism, espionage and murder. Having the death penalty gives closure to the families victim, justice is better served, and deters criminals from committing crimes. Think about if you were close to a victim who traumatized or even killed by a master criminal. You would want the same to be served to the harsh owt law who endangered your

The primary purpose of the criminal justice system is to protect society. All features of the system; detaining delinquents, trials, and punishments all have costs. Reduction in any part of the criminal justice system can potentially result in a harmful society. The question most asked about the death penalty is, “Why should honest, hardworking taxpayers, have to pay for murderers for the rest of their life instead of executing them?” Actually the death penalty is the most expensive part off the system. According to Dr. Ernest Gross, a Creighton University economics professor, who conducted a study in August 2016, the death penalty cost an average 23.2 million more per year than alternative sentences (Gross). The study found that states with the death penalty spend about 3.54% of overall state budgets on court, corrections and other criminal justice functions associated with the death penalty, while states without the death penalty spend about 2.93% on those functions (Gross). The death penalty is more expensive than life without parole because the constitution requires an extensive and complex judicial process for capital crimes. This is to ensure that innocent men and women are not executed for crimes they did not

Death Penalty Information Center, “The report concluded that state and county charges for the defense, prosecution, and courts would be about $1.8 million per case through trial, initial state appeal, and appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.” This was the estimation of how much they would have spent if the death penalty were to be reinstated. Abolishing capital punishment will save taxpayers a lot of money because it would cut the costs significantly on how much money is needed each year in order to prosecute defendants.

With all of the special lawyers, court dates, prison cells and maintenance, a death penalty case can cost millions of dollars. Like a lot of things, capital punishment is paid for with tax dollars. Cases with the death penalty can cost upwards of 1.7 million dollars while cases without it are usually about 740,000 dollars. Maintaining death row prisoners can also bring costs up immensely. One of the most severe instances of these high costs is California. Every year it costs California 180 million dollars more to maintain death row prisoners than it does to maintain LWOP prisoners. They have put thirteen people to death from 1973 until now, and each case has cost 137 million dollars. A 2011 study showed that California has spent four billion dollars on capital punishment since 1976, and that has only grown higher. This is only one of the horrendous examples of our tax dollars at work. Do we really want our hard earned money going towards the killing of what might be innocent

In fact, it is an unwise choice to kill someone for his or her wrong doings because that could not turn everything back to normal and there is a chance of wrong conviction. Executing someone is an unchangeable act, which means that once it happens, nothing can be done to recover. Thus, if it is mistakenly decided, the life of innocent people can be killed. In addition, according to an article titled The Truth About Life Without Parole: Condemned to Die in Prison (n.d.), “More than 200 innocent men and women have been freed from prison in California after it was discovered that they were wrongfully convicted; three of them were sentenced to die for crimes they did not commit.” Similarly, Pilkington (2013), a chief reporter for Guardian US, claimed that at least 4.1% of US accused prisoners are flawed. Therefore, the faulty of accusation is unavoidable; nonetheless, there is a possibility for giving justice to those who were wrongly convicted under life imprisonment, but if death penalty had been used, those guiltless lives would have gone forever.

The death penalty may be costly but, but it’s worth it and that is debatable, because, it cost more to keep an inmate alive that the actually death penalty. Every human life is precious and important and having the death penalty is moral it teaches criminals a lesson or learning experience of how strict laws can be on citizens who have the intent to hurt others. To others it my, seems un-human, but it is called capital punishment for a

Some people appose the death penalty because they believe it cost more to kill the person than to keep them in prison for life. If you put any thought into this at all, you will see that it is entirely wrong. If you put someone in jail for life, you have to feed them every single day, keep them sheltered, and take up the space in the jails. If you put someone to death, you don't have to worry about any of that. The cost of executions is far less than life in jail. Death penalty cases have alot of appeals, that cost alot of money, but life without parole cases have just about the same amount of appeals and cost just the same. When it comes down to it, putting the murderers in our country to death saves money, time, and space in our jails.