Death Row As of October 1, 2017, there were 2,831 prison inmates on death row in the United States. This number changes daily because of new criminal convictions, court decisions overturning convictions or sentencing, commutations, or deaths of inmates either through execution or otherwise. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 1,463 convicted murderers have been executed in the United States. Inmates on death row spend roughly five to twenty-five years in prison before execution. In 2010, a death row inmate spent an average of 178 months (roughly fifteen years) between sentencing and execution. Nearly twenty-five percent of inmates on death row in the United States die of natural causes while awaiting execution or appealing their …show more content…
Endless studies have exhibited that the death penalty costs a great deal more. In California alone, an execution costs eighteen times as much as a life sentence would. Although the previously mentioned figure is not uniform across the country, capital punishment puts a strain on the taxpayers in every state that employs it. Even though it may seem like housing and feeding a prisoner for the rest of their lives would cost more, there are additional factors that people may not account for. Because executing someone is the only form of permanent punishment, the case is automatically reviewed after the verdict is given in an appellate court. An immense amount of hours, finances, and resources are dedicated to this appeal process. For example, one judge in Ohio described that this proceeding necessitates three assistant attorney generals, the prison warden, three inmate attorneys, the director of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, counsel and other officials, the judge, and two law clerks. All of these people are compensated for hearings that can last anywhere from hours to days. This same judge explains that he and his staff have the potential to spend anywhere from forty to sixty hours a month on these cases. Because of this, each case conceivably costs millions of dollars in legal fees alone. Furthermore, it takes …show more content…
In no way can it be declared that the use of capital punishment is impartial to discriminatory rulings. There are several factors that suggest the death penalty is subject to arbitrariness, both in civil and criminal cases. In a system described as a “perpetual malfunction,” there is strong evidence that cases leading to capital punishment are inflicted with as much prejudice and overabundance as before courts had established that the penalty should either be implemented justly or simply be abolished. Race holds a considerable amount of influence when a jury is constituting sentencing. The relationship between defendant and victim oftentimes determines the consistency in which a case is handled. Sherod Thaxton outlines that “Caucasian-defendant and Caucasian-victim cases are handled more consistently than in non-Caucasian-defendant and non-Caucasian-victim cases,” revealing that when the two parties are Caucasian, they are evidently susceptible to undergo a fair trial. When predicting a death sentence, the race of a victim is shown to be almost as substantial as the reason the defendant is receiving the punishment. According to LB Bienen, “blacks who killed whites were twenty-two times more likely to be sentenced to death than blacks who killed blacks.” In fact, when the victim is white, the rate of earning capital punishment is roughly eleven times higher than when the victim is black, further