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Death Penalty Vs Life Imprisonment Analysis

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The price of hanging a convicted felon is $99 and all the supplies needed for lethal injection total $168. The cost of life imprisonment is over $90,00 per inmate per year. In 2014, there were 34 death row inmates, on top of that there are over 49,000 people serving life imprisonment. Assuming each prisoner is admitted at the age of 30 and the expected life span of males in the us is 69 years that’s a total of 39 years. Multiply that by $90,000 (cost per year) and that is a grand total of $3,150,000 per person. $154,457,100,000 for all inmates combined. Not to mention, those are taxpayers dollars. Now, take the cost of lethal injection and multiply it by 34. That comes to a total of $5,712. That is 3,144,288 dollars for all inmates on death row. Obviously, this isn’t just an economic decision but doesn’t society have a moral obligation when this money could be allocated to pay for other things such as social services? You’ll have to then counter the argument that it’s not just an economic decision, but consider: does society have a moral obligation to pay this with taxpayers dollars that could otherwise be spent on social services for members of society who have not committed heinous crimes?] Not to mention that these are taxpayers …show more content…

Watson was convicted for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Kathy Newman, a Tulane University medical student. Isn’t it only fair that every person that commits death penalty worthy crime receives it? Genesis 9:6 says “whosoever sheddeth a man’s blood, so shall his blood be shed” (Genesis). This is saying that everyone deserves to get what he or she did. A similar idea is the “eye for an eye.” An eye for an eye, or the law of retaliation is the principle that a person is penalized to a similar degree in softer interpretations; the victim receives the value of the injury in compensation (Matthew). Supporting the point that people deserve what they do to

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Richard Ramirez’s trials alone cost California 1.8 million dollars before coming to an end by his death. Ramirez was costing taxpayers millions for 23 years before he died ending the financial burden. Financial costs to taxpayers from the death penalty are several times that of keeping someone in prison for life (Messerli). The death penalty combines the costliest parts of both punishments, lengthy and complicated death penalty trials, followed by incarceration for life. Everything that is needed for an ordinary trial is needed for a death penalty case, only extra.

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I am not one to argue that capital punishment is without its flaws, nor am I one to argue that the death penalty is not inherently ugly in its entirety. I simply make the argument that the death penalty, or capital punishment, is a necessary evil. To accomplish this, I will begin by dissecting the arguments made by Stephen Nathanson in An Eye for an Eye. Nathanson states that for some crimes, it would not be considered morally acceptable to provide equal punishment to crimes committed. For example, I listed earlier that if we applied the equal punishment principle flatly across our justice system, it would require us to not only kill murderers, but also rape rapists, torture torturers, and kidnap kidnappers.

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Execution is the act of carrying out of a sentence of death on a condemned person. This is carried out either by lethal injection or electrocution. Execution despite its barbaric nature has survived in many legal system and will continue to because it: reinforces a state of security of the general public, detters other individuals from committing such crimes, and enforces the concept of cause and effect within the legal system. In the text “The Penalty of Death” H.L. Mencken discusses not only why he supports executions, but also the ripple effects this action has on a society. While in a text entitled “Death Penalty,” Anna Quindlen discusses her objections to execution, because, as she states:”it consists of stooping to the level of the

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Each death penalty case in Texas costs taxpayers about $2.3 million. That is approximately three times the cost of imprisoning somebody in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. That is crazy! The government could actually do something good rather than something flawed and hypocritical. Taxpayers complain about paying taxes.

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