Death Penalty
Spending millions of dollars in court cases to kill a man? I honestly do not think it is right to punish people with death. It is unconstitutional in my opinion, but many will say an eye for an eye is important. Some of the ways the death penalty is carried out is inhumane is not right as well. Also it is very expensive to use the death penalty. There is millions of dollars being spent for court cost, to decide if it’s right to use the death penalty. Using the death penalty is wrong, it may lead to killing innocent people, it is done inhumanly, and it is also expensive.
There are many people convicted of a crime that they may, or may have not done. You are innocent until proven guilty. With recent advances in technology,
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In the beginning of this penalty, the main use was hangings or firing squads. In recent times the electric chair was the main use to carry out the death penalty. Lethal gas was rarely used, but is was a horrible way to carry out the penalty. Now the most common way to carry out the penalty is lethal injection. Even though there are many ways to carry out the penalty, I do not think it should be carried out. It is not right to kill somebody, no matter the crime they may or may not have committed
It is not worth the money spent to kill one man. The state of Illinois spent around 3.5 million dollars on court cases to try and execute a man in 2012 (Hastings 8). California is struggling to pay for defense lawyers because of all the cases. Even if a person is convicted to death row, it will be a long time before they decided if you are executing or exonerated. 12 men on death row were exonerated in 2014, together the time they spent in prison waiting was a total of 322 years (Wolf 8). The battle to get the execution penalty banned is very expensive. There have been hundreds of cases, but nothing is ever decided.
Using the death penalty is wrong, it may lead to killing innocent people, it is done inhumanly, and it is also expensive. The death penalty is wrong. It leads to killing innocent people. Also it is carried out in inhumane ways that are not constitutional. The battles to execute men are very expensive, and are not worth the
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 cost to execute someone is 5x times more than keeping them in jail. Cases without the death penalty cost roughly about $740,000 depending on the situation, while cases with the death penalty cost roughly $1.26 million. Maintaining each death row prisoners cost taxpayers $90,000 more per year than a prisoner in general population. Another controversy is executing innocent people. It’s a big problem that some cases have to deal with killing an innocent person who didn’t commit the crime. An investigation by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education fund has uncovered evidence that Larry Griffin may have been innocent of the crime by the state of Missouri on June 21,1995. Griffin maintained his innocent until his death, investigators say his case is the strongest demonstration yet on executing a innocent man. There's been many controversies because there are two points of view on the death penalty, you have people who support it and then people who don’t support. The Aurora Theater shooter conviction has been a huge controversy because he killed 12 and wounded 70 and he got sentenced to one life term for each person he killed plus 3,318 years for the attempted murders. Jury couldn't decide if he should get the death
Also, the cost of the death penalty is really high, the cost of keeping someone in jail for life which will cost 600,000 per prisoner and just for one person to be put to death is would cost 2.3 million per prisoner. That is not a logical reason to kill someone then to keep them alive because the cost is three time less to keep a person alive in jail for life then to kill
The death penalty is proven to not deter criminals from committing a crime punishable by death. There are many arguments on whether the death penalty should be legal, but the debate boils down to personal morals. The death penalty is immoral. Criminals will act on their drive, with no thoughts about future consequences. The death penalty not only hurts the criminal, but it affects the criminal's family. The family already had to experience what it felt like to see a loved one take an innocent person's life. This causes emotional unnecessary emotional distress for the family and those close to the person on death row. Murdering the criminal will only put the family through even more unnecessary trauma. Furthermore, humans are not pets. The human race should not be able to put others down in the sense of death. It is dehumanizing for the person sentenced to death and the executioner. There should not be a job in the United States where, in the job description, it states that you will kill someone.
They say the death penalty is inhumane, but people will never know unless they have someone close to them killed, raped, mutilated in ways that couldn’t even be replicated in the movie theaters. Who could possibly be qualified to make such a judgment? Is it judges or jurors? Is it even ethically or morally correct to do so? Since the beginning of time, different methods of execution have been used. These forms have been hanging, guillotine, gas chambers, electric chair, drowning, torched, and firing squads. The first recorded execution was in 1608 and it was for treason. The creator of the death penalty was King Hammurabi of Babylon, and it could be issued for 25 different crimes. Throughout time the British improvised it and it influenced every other country, specially the United States. Some countries use it as a form of population control, others as a show of force. But even still to this day, the world is still individually split on whether they should keep the death penalty or abolish it. The reason people still to this day argue the fact that the capital punishment should be used, is because it bring a sense of satisfaction to the family of the victim, it puts fear within society’s, it eliminates over crowdedness within the prisons, and the mental and physical stress inmates go through. However, people argue it should be abolished because it doesn’t deter crime; there is a chance of executing the wrong individual, cost to taxpayers, discrimination against skin color,
All of the studies on the cost of capital punishment conclude it is much more expensive than a system with life sentences as the maximum penalty. Cases without the death penalty cost roughly $740,000 while cases where the death penalty is sought cost about $1.26 million. Maintaining each death row prisoner costs taxpayers $90,000 more per year than a prisoner in general population. (Top 10 Pros… 2015). A study of the cost of the death penalty in Colorado showed that death penalty proceedings required six times the days in court and took much longer to solve than life-without-parole (LWOP) cases. When people try to say it cost less to tax payers to put a man to death then to care for them in prisons for life they are not aware of the facts. Why do these cases take so long from sentencing to execution? After a person is convicted of a capital crime, they tend not to accept a sentence of "death" without a fight. They appeal to a higher court, and a higher one and a higher one, trying to overturn their conviction for any reason. Resolving those numerous appeals takes years. It's built into the system, and it helps to ensure that the State is certain of a person's guilt before the actual execution. According to a study published in 2004 in the Journal of Parable legal studies, five percent of the 5,826 death sentences imposed from 1973 to 1995 were carried out in those years. The study found there was a 68%
Throughout mankind has been using the death penalty as a form of punishment. Many people argue with this type of punishment because they believe in an eye for an eye. Many people that it is okay to murder a human being due to them having killed an individual over time. There have been many cases that have proven that they death penalty violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, being very expensive, and innocent lives are convicted.
The Death Penalty also known as the capital punishment is a procedure in which states executes a person for a crime he or her has committed it is normally used for very big crimes like treason against the state or crimes against humanity, The Death Penalty it is inhumane and you are as worst as the person if you kill them for the crime they have done, this procedure should be abolished in all states and all around the world.(Davis-245-248)
The financial aspect is one of the more discussed topics surrounding the death penalty. “Each execution can cost between $2.5 million and $5 million.” (Fagan 1). Compared to the millions of dollars it takes to execute a single to person to the more affordable cost of housing a prisoner of a range of $20,000-$40,000 a year; we as a society could punish these people for their crimes without killing and for less money.(Hirby 1). The cost for a non-death penalty trial is in the area of $250,000 whereas a trial concerning the death penalty will be in the area of about $1.7 million (Timberman). According to Sarah Timberman from death penalty.org “California has had to spend more than $4 billion on capital punishment alone since it was reinstated in the year 1978 (this is about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out)”. On top of the $308 million per trial, there is an additional cost of $184 million for all of the trials including multiple appeals, legal representation for the accused and extra security during the entire trial.
The death penalty is absolutely outrageous. There is no real reason that the government should feel that it has the right to execute people. Capital punishment is murder just as much as the people being executed murdered. The is no need for the death penalty and it needs to be abolished. It goes against the Constitution which states that there will be no cruel and unusual punishment. There is nothing crueler than killing a person.
But, as mentioned earlier, in 2012, only 39 inmates were executed. The other 3,000+ stayed on death row. “Death penalty inmates typically spend over a decade awaiting execution” (deathpenaltyinfo.org). Gary Alvord, who was sentenced to death in 1974, spent nearly 40 years on death row, only to die of a brain tumor in May of 2013 (deathpenaltyinfo.org). In a study done by Vera Institute, it shows that “the average per-inmate cost was $31,286, and the forty states surveyed spent $39 billion maintaining prisons in 2010” (vera.org). This is not justice. Inmates are sitting on death row for decades, wasting taxpayers money and time.
"In Texas, a death penalty case costs taxpayers an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years". In terms of cost, capital punishment costs more than a lifetime of imprisonment. The government has to pay more money for a person who was sentenced to death because of more trials, which would result to more fees. The death penalty requires a lot more trials because a life will be taken away. The government could save about $500,000 from each prisoner by putting them in
Some of those who support the death penalty base their argument on the fact that it is a cost-effective alternative to life imprisonment. However, it may be more costly to execute an inmate than to have that person serve a life sentence (Amnesty International, 1987). A 1982 study in New York concluded that the average capital murder trial and the first stage of appeals costs U.S. tax-payers 1.8 million dollars (Bohm, 1987). It is estimated that this is less than it would cost to incarcerate someone for one hundred years. Other sources estimate that it can cost up to 2.2 million dollars to obtain and carry out a death sentence (Johnson, 1990). The principal factor in this cost is the appeals process, which lasts an average of ten years and is deemed necessary to reduce the likelihood of the execution of an innocent person.
The issue of capital punishment is a difficult one and the opinions are as diverse as the people giving them. The death penalty exists in 38 states and those that have it spend enormous amounts of tax payer dollars to engage the justice system in what is a long and drawn out series of court dates and appeals that are lasting years. In addition, the trials and appeals of those on Death Row will have attorneys, prosecutors, experts and judges with more experience creating a major strain on the budget and manpower of the state. Nationally there is no study identifying the cost associated with the Death Penalty, but each state uses their state laws and pay scales in determining the cost of the Death Penalty. Prior to the Death Penalty being abolished New York has spent millions of dollars on Death Penalty cases and the result was there were no executions. Those in favor of the death penalty believe that the cost associated with incarcerating an individual for life will far outweigh those associated with the Death Penalty, due to old age, medical issues, food and other essentials needed to keep one alive. This would be true if the Death Penalty was a swift method of justice. The monies spent on Death Penalty cases could be far better spent on local budgets and programs that are evidenced based and proven to provide needed services, such as law enforcement, drug treatment and youth programs.
The death penalty is very costly to not only the government, but also society. The death penalty has no benefits at all and should be