The death penalty costs too much

Since 1890, it has killed over 9000 people in America alone. Forty-nine percent of Americans support it fully. Infact, a quick google search will tell who it will kill next, and when. Curiosity could lead you to a list of all the people it will kill right up to the year 2020. Marcal Williams, from Arizona will be killed by it on April Twenty-fourth. I’m talking about the death penalty, which was reinstated in America in 1972. Of course, Mr. Williams is no saint, nor a victim of some terminal illness. No. Marcal Williams kidnapped, robbed, and murdered Stacy Errickson in 1994, and because of that, he will be executed. Although we all feel he should face justice, death may not be the right form. The death penalty is expensive, inhumane, and a primal way of dealing out punishment.

According to the New York Times, the annual cost to hold an inmate in America is 31 286 dollars, and their cases cost an average of 740 000 dollars. Compare that to 90 000 dollarrs annually for death row inmates, and anywhere from 750 000 to 1 500 000 for their cases, the death penalty is grossly more expensive. The nonprofit “Death Penalty Information Center”, or DPIC for short says most inmates spend about fifteen years on death row before their execution. At 90 000 dollars, that is 1 350 000 dollars to keep an inmate on death row. That is a ludicrous amount to spend on society’s most despicable individuals.

The book “Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions And America's Death Penalty” states that 8776 people have been executed in America between 1890 and 2010. 276, or 3.15 percent of those executions were botched, meaning they went wrong, or not according to plan. The point of the death penalty is that it should not induce pain on the person being executed. Once something goes wrong, and a person begins to suffer, their punishment has gone from acceptable to cruel and unusual. The DPIC’s database includes death row inmates who were cleared of their charges, To date, 158 prisoners have been exonerated since 1972. Ricky Jackson, Wiley Bridgeman, and Kwame Ajamu were held on death row for thirty-nine years, until their cases were dismissed. The fact that 158 people have been found innocent, implies, and almost guarantees a grim truth, that America has executed innocent citizens. If the death penalty is supposed to protect the lives of innocent people, how can it be fair to put innocent people on death row, the last stop before death.

Capital punishment is often sought after as a form of retribution. Unfortunately, no matter what happens to the criminals in question, their crimes can not be undone. Most of the states that have the death penalty only apply it to murders, but some states such as florida and Wyoming execute kidnappers, drug traffickers, and robbers. The problem is, according to North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the death penalty has had no effect in deterring crime. The death penalty also allows for some form of “escape” for the guilty party. Rather than spend the rest of their lives confined in a prison cell, alone with the memory of their actions, they die on a gurney in the gaze of onlookers, for some, the attention they sought. Truthfully, people deeply want the death penalty. they want to see murderers face the same fate that they imposed upon their victims. Unfortunately, that is not the way the justice system should work. The court does not steal thieves belongings, nor do they hit drunk drivers with cars, so why does it make anymore sense to kill murderers. Instead, the time should be taken to rehabilitate these individuals. They should not be released from custody, but they should be taught the repercussions of their crimes, and made to pay for it with every day they wake up in a jail cell, and possibly one day they will know what they did was heinous, and unforgivable

Capital punishment is almost triple the cost of life without parole, it is inhumane, puts innocent people at risk of death, and is a flawed form of justice. Countries who still instate the death penalty should consider the cost, the morality, and the logic behind the dated form of punishment. Lately, feelings have changed, and Americans are starting to disagree with capital punishment, and if the United States abolished it, other countries might see the example one of the most influential countries in the world has set, and follow them in killing the death penalty.