How would you feel if the state that you lived in had to pay at least $117 million in tax money to the people that are on death row? Well, in 2008 Californian tax payers did. This $117 million averages out to be at least $175,000 per inmate each year. If California was to abolish capital punishment and allowed all the inmates on death row to die naturally in prison the state would save at least $4 billion in future costs (Carter). If the death penalty isn’t used an alternate option would be a sentence of life without parole. In order to establish justice, all political leaders should condone the death penalty. By disregarding the death penalty it would reduce the conviction/death of innocent people, as well as decrease the expenses towards the death of criminals.
The first issue with capital punishment is the conviction/killing of innocent people. These actions cause the actual criminals to be out and about carrying out more crimes. In November of 2005 Juan Moreno, the victim of a non-fatal shooting, was the only eye witness to the crime. Moreno had told the Houston Chronicle paper that the alleged shooter, Ruben Cantu, was innocent and that he had only pointed at Cantu because of pressures from the police. Unfortunately, Ruben Cantu had been executed years before the newspaper was published (Sangillo). This shows that pressure from other people towards the witnesses could wrongfully convict and unfortunately kill innocent people. Over the past 40 years researchers found that 143 defendants who were on death row were wrongfully convicted (Valencia). This ties in with the fact that Ruben Cantu couldn’t have been the only innocent person executed. Many of the innocent people most likely can’t afford a well-known attorney to help t...
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Milton J Valencia By Milton J. Valencia Globe Staff. "Lawyers' group blasts death penalty ; Says capital punishment makes 'no sense,' shouldn't be considered in federal cases." Boston Globe. 08 Jan. 2014: B1. eLibrary. Web. 10 Feb. 2014
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Voice of America News / FIND. Amnesty International: Momentum Against Death Penalty Gains Ground. Voice of America News / FIND, , 27 Mar. 2011. eLibrary. Web. 10 Feb. 2014
...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...
Tierney, Diann Rust. “Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?” The New York Times Upfront, 07, Oct. 2013 :22
Although the death penalty alone cannot bring back the life of those who have been murdered, it can serve as ultimate justice for the victims and their families. The deterrence of the death penalty can save lives. While opinions abound on both sides of the fence, in the use of the death penalty on juveniles, no one can argue with the fact that the voices of those murdered cannot be heard. Juveniles may not have fully developed brains, as Raeburn argues, but this is not an adequate excuse to dismiss the death penalty. American society cannot afford to babysit murderers, nor can they rehabilitate them. The end of the innocence begins when an innocent life is taken, and the sanctity of life is held defenseless.
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. .
Cases in which the death penalty is gone after are more expensive and take more time to solve than non capital cases. “Even when a trial wasn’t necessary, those cases where the death penalty was sought still cost about twice as much as those where death was not sought” (Erb 1). The added money is due to legal representation, enhanced security for death row, and the costs it takes to go through the motions of a trial such as this. "The additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate” (The Death Penalty 8). With California’s current death row (670) this would generate $63.3 million dollars per year. This is important because it shows factual stats about how much these cases cost vs regular cases and how much money could be saved if the death penalty was eliminated. These statistics show my thesis is correct because the high costs are one of the reasons why the death penalty might be
"The Death Penalty Deters Crime and Saves Lives." The Heritage Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2014.
...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
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.
Have you ever wondered why people are so interested to learn about the suffrage of others? Over twenty-five years, the population of prisoners has nearly sextulped. Reaching about 1.7 million since 1996, which is almost equal to the population to Houston, Texas, the fourth largest city in the nation (Elliott Currie). All we focus on is how they did it? and why? In other words, many people interpret crime as entertainment, and don’t think about the negative effects taking place in the world or even more that individual. In some cases the innocent are being accused of unlikely punishment but how do they determine? Considerably, the death penalty has been the topic of discussion these past years. This so called “penalty” is becoming the prime consequence in most cases. I think that the use of the death penalty as punishment is wrong because of the psychological effects it has on prisoners, time spent on death row in cases of innocents, and the costly outcome.
Scheck, Barry, Peter Neufeld, and Jim Dwyer. Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted. New York: Random House LLC, 2000. Print.
“Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, 138 innocent men and women have been released from the death row, including some who came within minutes of execution. In Missouri, Texas and Virginia investigations have been opened to determine if those states executed innocent men. To execute an innocent person is morally reprehensible; this risk we cannot
“The case Against the Death Penalty.” aclu.org. American Civil Liberties Union, 2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2013
"Arguments for the death penalty.." The pros and cons of capital punishment in the USA. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Apr 2010. .
Fein, Bruce. "Individual Rights and Responsibility - The Death Penalty, But Sparingly." Speech. American Bar Association. Feb. 2003. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.