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Why The Death Penalty Is Wrong

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Every year tax paying Americans spend a good amount of the money they make on taxes, what some of us do not know, however, is where that money is going. A good amount of our money is going towards the death penalty or capital punishment. However, the death penalty is not doing us any good considering the amount of money is spent on it per year. The death penalty should be illegal in the United States because it is proving to be ineffective and is very expensive. The death penalty is not reducing the crime rate in the United States. “Almost all police chiefs surveyed ranked the death penalty last among their priorities for crime fighting, saying they did not believe-based on murder rates-that it deterred homicides,” (“Life Imprisonment is …show more content…

“The average cost, from arrest to execution, for a single death penalty case ranges from $1 million to $3 million dollars,” (Death Penalty Fast Facts”). This is money they are using to kill people, which is morally wrong. The government is in major debt and this what they are spending money on? They could use this money to help us get out of debt. “I no longer believe you can fix the death penalty. It throws millions of dollars down the drain,” (Costs of Death Penalty vs. Life Imprisonment”). The death penalty is throwing millions of dollars down the drain considering that it is not doing anything to help the crime rate. If we continue to waste money on the death penalty imagine how much more money will be “thrown down the drain.” The average cost of death penalty incarceration per year in the United States is about $1 billion. $1 billion dollars is a lot of money to begin with. $1 billion dollars could be used to do so much for various different things in this country other than just the death …show more content…

“States that use life imprisonment as an alternative to the death penalty are spending less money on their prison systems per year,” (“Life Imprisonment is Preferable to the Death Penalty”). This is a good thing because these states now have more money to spend on things that mean so much more and could have a much greater impact. If more and more states do this, the more states that will continue to abolish the death penalty. Prisoners who are sentenced to life imprisonment often get jobs at the prisons to help cope with issues in their daily lives (“Life Imprisonment is Preferable to the Death Penalty”). This is a great thing because even though these men and woman committed major crimes they are still able to live a somewhat normal kind of lives. If we continue to do this maybe when these people get out of prison, if they even get out they are somewhat normal people and not

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Being on death row often prolongs the pain for the inmate. They spend their time in prison fearing the inevitable which for them is death. Today, we live in a society that is very divided on this issue. There are many in support of the death penalty, suggesting that it acts as a positive deterrent against future crime. There are also many

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Another reason that people on death row cost so much is because they will wait in prison for years before they are actually put to death. People who are on death row will spend their time in separate buildings specifically for death row inmates(Daniels). Ideally, we would be able to cut the cost of this by allowing death row inmates to stay in traditional prisons and once they are done going through the judicial process they should be put to death right away. There is no need to keep them alive for years after being proven guilty and put on death row. The government has made it so that no one is put to death that should not be and although this is very necessary and should be that way, it is

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“The 1989 execution of Ted Bundy cost Florida taxpayers an estimated $5 million” (Executing Prisoners). The death penalty opens many doors for appealing and often results in delaying the execution and costing the state a lot of money. The death penalty is an expensive process but for some criminals, like Ted Bundy, it is

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  Just in my state of Tennessee alone the trial average for a death penalty sentence is 48 percent higher than what it is for the typical life sentence trial (Tennessee Treasury Report, 2004).When you look into going to trial to prosecute someone for the death penalty it just gets more expensive year after year.   The fact is that you have to pay more attorneys, more experts to go over the files, and more time is put into making sure that all things are in order (Chammah, 2016).   You are paying multiple attorney's, defenders, judges, clerks, and juries to insure that every detail is covered within

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Being in jail is better than a death sentence in many ways; they get good meals, they have clothes or someone could escape. They have everything that any normal person would have besides independence and sometimes connections to the outside world. The inmates

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The costs of capital murder trials are more expensive than other murder trials for many of reasons. Often in murder trials where the death penalty is not being sought, the case never goes to trial and the offender pleads to a lesser degree of murder such as second degree murder or manslaughter. Depending on the location in the country, a prosecutor may be swayed politically or by the victim’s family to agree to life in prison without the possibility of parole. What makes a capital murder trial so expensive is “the high cost of crime scene investigations, pretrial preparations and motions, expert witness investigations, jury selection, and heightened death row security and maintenance costs” (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015, p. 493). The overall

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The Attorney General alone donates 15% of his budget, to death penalty cases. Maintaining each death row prisoner costs taxpayers $90,000 per year. It cost more than $31,000 to keep someone in prison for a year. The most recent report is that only fifteen states have gotten rid of it all together. These states being Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

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“‘Death sentences represent less than one-tenth of 1% of prison sentences in the United States…,’” (Von Drehle, 9). Furthermore, death row is just a small fraction of the criminal justice system and can not be based on that alone. For instance, what many don't take into account is the justice systems allows for many states, such as the populous state of New York, to ban the death penalty. (state laws, p1)

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Joey Arbuckle Mr. Lealos English II, 2 17 September 2015 Capital Punishment Only 13 of 800 total prisoners sentenced to the death penalty in California have been . The amount of money spent keeping these prisoners on death row for all these years is over $4 billion (End the death penalty in California 2012). From having the death penalty, California has been wasting tax-payer’s money on repeal and living costs. California should abolish the death penalty because the prisoners cost too much and it does not deter criminals.

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Ronald Carlson wanted nothing more but justice for his sister who had been murdered. Ronald talks about how he would have killed the man with his own hands if he would have gotten the chance but his mind quickly changed after he seen his sister's murder being executed, he has a new view on the situation now. He talks about how watching the execution left him full of horror and emptiness. Ronald asks a question that should be addressed he said, “Our justice system should not be dictated by vengeance.” He asked, “As a society, shouldn’t we be more civilized than the murderers we condemn?”

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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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The major reason why the death penalty should be abolished is that the cost of the death penalty is too much and the USA is in debt to many other countries. What this means is that the death penalty should be abolished and also the cost death penalty is more than the cost of maximum sentence life in prison. According to J. Marceau and H. Whitson, “The Cost of Colorado’s Death penalty,” 3 Univ. of Denver Criminal Law Review “A new study of the cost of the death penalty in Colorado revealed that capital proceedings require six times more days in court and

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