Re: Should the Death Penalty be a Time of the Past?
Kathryn, I agree with your opinion that life without parole is a more effective alternative to the death penalty, and that hopefully capital punishment will become obsolete in the future. In your argument, you mentioned several important reasons for your logic, including a concern for executing innocent people and that life without parole is equivalent to execution in our "eye for eye" culture of justice.
However, there are some points that you did not include in your post, such as the high cost of capital punishment. In Texas, the average cost of a death penalty is $2.3 million per case, which is about three times as much as imprisoning someone in a high security unit for 40 years. This is due to the fact that capital trials are more lengthy and expensive than other murder trials. Because of the need for expert witness investigations, jury selection, and the necessity of two separate trials (for guilt and sentencing), these trials are much more costly even before the appeals process begins. Even more, during many of the trials, life sentences are issued instead of guilty pleas, thus the state has to pay not only for the trial, but also for life imprisonment (which is about $750,000).
Additionally, recent studies have found that the death penalty is not effective in deterring crime. Both criminologists and police chiefs agree concur with this, and believe that capital punishment is not smart on crime. Therefore, in an economy marked with deep budget cuts, I think it’s time for a more efficient to be developed.
--"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishment that the good have inflicted." Oscar Wilde--
Sources:
http://tcadp.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/What-makes-the-Texas-death-penalty-so-expensive-print.pdf
http://www.fnsa.org/v1n1/dieter1.html
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org
No comments:
Post a Comment