Argumentative Essay: The Death Penalty In The United States

857 Words4 Pages

The clock, slowly ticking, echoes throughout the courtroom as people wait anxiously for the jury's final verdict. In another room, people carefully voted for the final decision that determines the end of a book. The death penalty, a slow trial that takes months maybe years to determine whether a person's life should be thrown away or not. The United States is holding at least a million prisoners and a small percentage is being sentenced to death. In 2013, 2,979 inmates were sentenced to death under the Federal Bureau of Prisons, only 39 were executed.
(Snell). Seeing how few people are being executed, it shows little success in bringing justice to families and friends. The death penalty is not an option to send someone's life to death, …show more content…

The American justice system holds more than 2.3 million prisoners while 22 percent are serving life sentences. According to John W. Whitehead, an attorney of Rutherford Institute, “the death penalty, however, costs the state a great deal of money. Some studies estimate that states spend 48% to 300% more prosecuting cases in which the death penalty is an option versus cases” (Whitehead). The death penalty is more expensive than serving a life sentence. Millions of dollars are spent to achieve a single death sentence that will not most likely be carried out. This money can be used to serve police stations that are desperately in need of money to help improve law enforcements. In California, there are at thousands of capital punishment cases, out of the 2,000 capital cases, only 13 are executed. Found from an opposing viewpoint written by Julie Delcour, associate of Tulsa World, wrote, “Over those 33 years, the death system case cost the state $4.6 billion...equates to $308 million per execution” (Delcour). The reason the death penalty is so expensive because the government is using the money to conduct time consuming trials and ineffective petitions. It takes a tremendous amount of time and years for the final decision. The money being used for the death penalty can used for local police task forces to solve a homicide and rape cases or spending or go towards to education. The death penalty has been a top priority for some states that some faced severe