Pros And Cons Of Death Penalty In America

Alex Fisher

English 1302-83031

May 3, 2016

Word Count: 1,277

The Death Penalty in America Imagine awaiting execution and you’re told that you’re going to be executed within months, then later it’s within a few hours, and then you’re told it’ll be within years. As of now, 31 out of the 50 states have made the death penalty a legal sentence. When someone is given the death penalty, they are often placed on death row where they are in solitary confinement for at least 22 hours a day and little to no contact with people except for your lawyer and others. Many prisoners waiting on death row usually end up waiting for years in confinement for execution, and to make things worse, sometimes the execution will be fully set up and before it can occur,

“JFA [Justice for All] estimates that life in prison cases will cost $1.2 million-$3.6 million more than equivalent death penalty cases.” (Pros and Cons - Death penalty) Even though the cite states that death penalty cases are generally more expensive in the beginning than life in prison cases, people argue that given time, with life in prison, the cost of keeping someone alive in prison for the rest up their life will add up and would soon cost more money than if the prisoner was sentenced to death. Since part of what pays to keep prisoners alive in jail is taxpayer money, many people use this to justify the death penalty, because people don’t want their hard earned cash being used to keep someone who has killed multiple people in prison for life when it would cost less in a long run to quickly execute the inmate. People also use the simple phrase of, “an eye for an eye” to justify the legality of the death penalty, where if a person commits a murder then he should be executed for depriving a family of a loved one. It also depends on the seriousness of the crime committed, like if someone murders a lot of people, there needs to be some kind of serious punishment for a crime like

One reason why there should not be a death row where prisoners wait to be executed is because the waiting and delayed executions can cause psychological problems within inmates. “One morning, believing she was to be executed that day, she burst into tears upon being informed that her execution was delayed.” (Inglis-Arkell, 2014) This is an example of a women on death row, Anne Boleyn, who waited painfully day after day for her execution to happen. During her time on death row, she would break into laughing fits, and would practically go insane while waiting. Death row syndrome is what it was called when an inmate was reduced to insanity. (Inglis-Arkell, 2014) Because of this, many inmates would give up trying to appeal and would seek execution as the only