The Pros And Cons Of The Death Penalty

The death penalty and executions have been a acceptable punishment for accused criminals since the late 18th century B.C. From stonings to the guillotine to lynching to what it is now, lethal injection administered by the state. The death penalty has been taken the lives of many who may have been innocent, mentally ill, or to poor to even defend themselves properly. The state should remove this pointless waste of money and stop the killings of criminals who are judged by the imperfect. The United States Justice System is flawed just like everything in this world, so why is something as serious and delicate as a human life held by something imperfect? “Earl Washington Jr. came within days of execution for crimes he did not commit.”

“The researchers found that the average trial and incarceration costs of an Oregon murder case that results in a death penalty are almost double those in a murder case that results in a sentence of life imprisonment or a term of years.” (Death Penalty Info Center) The fiscal burden of an average death penalty alone are enough to put a significant dent in a state’s budget, and over time these death penalty cases are rising in costs “...from $274,209 in the 1980s to $1,783,148 in the 2000s.” (Death Penalty Info Center) In August of 2016, Dr. Ernest Gross, a Creighton University economics professor, found that Nebraska alone spent close to $15 million alone just to keep the capital punishment system. (Death Penalty Info Center) This $15 million is coming out of the tax payers hard worked checks through income property and sales taxes, just to keep a system to kill people who may be innocent, ill or too poor to actually afford a good attorney for their case. The death penalty should be removed because of the significant financial burden it puts on the hard working class citizens and the states. “MDOC’s FY 2014 cost per inmate day for a model facility based on the security requirements and medical needs of inmates at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility totaled $67.95. “ (Max K. Arinder, Ph. D.) That means on average every year we spend close to $25 thousand every year per inmate, which may vary depending on medical needs. On average a person sentenced to life in prison spends nearly 40 years in prison which means for an normal inmate who stayed perfectly healthy would cost the state nearly one million dollars. Many people spend years on death row waiting which means the state is using your hard worked dollars on a criminal who is eventually going to die. That is a waste of a state’s financial budget in a country that is already has a debt in the trillions.