The Pros And Cons Of The Death Penalty?

Throughout history there have been many forms of punishment imposed on criminals, today the most severe form of punishment is known as the death penalty. Most often this punishment is reserved for the most heinous of crimes committed among society. This punishment is defined as, “"The infliction by due legal process of the penalty of death as a punishment for crime.”. This has been a hot button topic for most of America’s recent history, as there is two very strongly opposing sides to this issue.

Dating back to the colonial times in America, there has been debate over the death penalty, and if it should be practiced. In Cesare Beccaria 's 1767 essay, On Crimes and Punishment, he discussed the death penalty and stated that there is no justification for the state’s taking someone 's life. Later, prestigious, Thomas Jefferson proposed a bill to revise Virginia’s death penalty laws that would only allow the use of capital punishment in instances of murder and treason. As time progressed more changes began to occur; in 1846 Michigan became the first state to abolish the death penalty in all instances

People who do not support the death penalty stand by the fact that no real evidence can show that the death penalty deters crime in any form or fashion. They also argue that the cost of executing a criminal is much higher than that of the cost of simply keeping them in jail; in California the cost of cases that seek the death penalty average out around $1.26 million, whereas cases that do not seek the death penalty average out around $740,000. The biggest argument on the side of not supporting the death penalty is the fact that many innocent people have been executed. At least 1,000 people since 1976 have been executed who have later been found innocent. Luckily that’s not always the case because 156 people have been freed from death row since