Death PenaltyEssay title: Death PenaltyDeath penaltySince our nations founding, the government has punished murder victims and in recent years rape with the ultimate sanction death. Over 13,000 people have been legally executed since colonial times. In the 1930s there were as many as 150 people executed each year. Legal challenges caused these executions to come nearly to a halt by 1967. By 1972 in Furman v. Georgia the supreme court excused hundreds of scheduled executions, declaring that existing state laws were applied in an “Arbitrary and Capricious” manner, and violated the 8th amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, the 14th amendments guarantee’s of equal protection of the laws and due process. In 1976 Gregg v. Georgia the court ruled that the penalty “does not invariably violate the constitution” if applied in a manner designed to guard against arbitrariness and discrimination. As of April 1, 2006 3,370 people are on death row. Many people have different views on capital punishment. There are many different factors that contribute to the death penalty some of the good things about the death penalty are punishment by retribution, deters crime, and it gets rid of criminals. So there is no chance of them committing another crime. The two major downfalls are innocent people sometimes get sentenced and the cost.
Some reasons we have the death penalty are for deterrence which means to punish somebody as an example and to create fear in other people for the punishment. The death penalty is one of these extreme punishments that would create fear in the mind of any sane person. Most criminals would think twice if they knew their own lives were at stake. Suppose there is no death penalty in a state and life imprisonment without parole is the maximum punishment. What is stopping a prisoner who is facing a life imprisonment without parole to commit another murder in the prison when they are already facing the maximum punishment. “Capital Punishment and Social Defense” mentions, “crimes can be deterred only by making would be criminals frightened of being arrested, convicted, and punished for crimes”(301). For serial killers, death penalty should be there, so that others, who even think about commiting such crimes, learn a lesson that every criminal is eventually caught. “Capital punishment may be imposed only when guilt is determined by clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts”. (Capital Punishment: life or death, internet). I believe that if one cannot value the life of another human being, then ones own life has no value.
Capital punishment has its downfalls. The biggest of course is the chance of innocent people being prosecuted. As of April 2005, 119 prisoners convicted of capital crimes and sentenced to death have been released from death row because of innocence due to DNA testing. Wrongful convictions often result from: false confessions, which are frequently coerced from juveniles and mentally retarded people, mistaken eyewitness evidence, jail house snitches, white coat fraud and junk science, and prosecutorial abuse. The second biggest downfall of the death penalty is the cost. The death penalty costs more than life in prison. Prosecuting a death penalty case is extremely expensive for a state and drains money that could be used for education and social programs. One study found that the death penalty costs north carolina $2.16 million more per execution
The Death Penalty is Expensive for many states.
A state’s capital case costs the state between $11.8 Million and $60 Million in expenses. Each of the states that were on board with the death penalty for many states has its own capital cases.
A death penalty case costs $1 Million in administrative costs. An average case costs $16,500 per year—an additional expense of approximately $1,500 per square foot. It would be very difficult to find such costs in a state such as California where the average life sentence is 12 years (just over 1,500 hours).
In a state where the average life sentence is about 2 years, the average cost to kill is $0.0016 per person per person a year (less than one in five people in America who are killed every year are executed).
There are many others
The only real measure of where the capital can be spent is a report of its cost. In a state such as Texas, the capital will cost about 1/8 the amount of money it can generate between a single day’s imprisonment and death. In Arizona, the cost of the death penalty is $4,717 per year (around $1,000 per day).[1]
America still spends about $100 Million on capital defense every year (the average cost per person in America is nearly $500) for federal prosecution.
Capital is only paid out through property taxes and sales, including the death penalty, as well as through sales bonds. As to how much money can be spent on executions: the federal minimum price at that time was $2 per violation of the death penalty.
It’s also important to note that even though capital can be turned into a currency, if the state’s capital can become a currency, in some cases state tax revenue is used to pay for executions. This is not a question whether or not a State can do this, but why is it necessary? Not only is it important to ensure that the death penalty revenue is shared equally with the rest of society, but also that that revenue is used to pay for execution to take place. This means:
State taxes and sales to go to fund executions of people who committed capital crimes, as well as other activities that support executions.
State executions are paid for by the state and have certain fees.
In addition to taxes and sales to fund executions, other revenue will be used to pay for executions. Tax revenues (such as from executing juveniles, drug enforcement officers, probation officers, probation staff, and law enforcement officers) are used to pay for drug and property enforcement, which are administered by local and state law enforcement agencies. These are a few of the many ways execution money used by the state to pay for executions.
Examining Capital Costs
Once you have calculated the capital cost for an execution, you will probably also know that there are other important costs involved. In order to create an accurate measure of how much the costs of the capital can add to the cost of executing a person, first you need to examine your states capital.
States like to estimate the costs of murder for crimes committed by persons of one sex (often males, so sometimes there are more males than females). By going to the FBI’s National Capital Crime database and looking at the data on how murder rates varied in each state, you can begin