The Controversial Issue Of The Death Penalty

Death Penalty Research Paper

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a practice where a person is put to death as a punishment of a crime. In the past it has been popular to hang people for their crimes or actions, especially in the distant past. Now in recent years, countless people have questioned the use of capital punishment and several countries around the world since the 1800’s have abolished the death penalty (Issit and Newton 1), but the United States of America is not one of them. The death penalty is a controversial issue because it gives people the ability to kill others for their actions, but really it is an issue of whether or not it is a form of cruel and unusual punishment? Death Penalty should not be legal because

Georgia, and they ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional because capital punishment violates the eighth amendment which is no cruel and unusual punishment (Bowman and DiLascio 3). However, in the year 1976 in the supreme court case of Gregg v. Georgia. The supreme court decided to reinstate the death penalty. Several organizations form after this particular supreme court decision. They wanted a change to the current state of capital punishment. During that time states decided whether or not someone gets executed for their crime. Later on, in a 2007 supreme case of Uttech v. Brown, the Supreme Court ruled “states can remove jurors from serving on death penalty cases if they have a moral objection to capital punishment” (Bowman and DiLascio 3). After the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue, death sentences have declined by 75% percent (“Death Penalty: Guide” 4). States still can execute death sentences, but it is less than before the Furman v. Georgia case. Even if the states want to give death sentences to criminals, it comes at the cost of money to taxpayers. There was an study by the Death Penalty Information Center says that in recent years, the evidence has shown that “the death penalty process consumes tremendous amounts of money and resources and fails to deter criminals” (Ballaro and Cushman 2). Also, this study looked at the state of Maryland and the state of California, and found that taxpayers had to pay $186 million dollars for the past 30 years of executions in that state of Maryland which was the result of five executions during that time period. For the state of California, this study found that it had the “largest death row in the country because they spent over $4 billion dollars on the death penalty since 1978 while carrying only just 13 executions” (Ballaro and Cushman 2). With the argument that life imprisonment without parole is more expensive,