Take The Capital Out Of The Punishment Essay, Research Paper

Enc. 1102

Take the Capital out of the Punishment

You recently purchase a new car that is said to be the most fuel efficient and safest vehicle on the market. After a few months of driving it you notice that this car is costing you more money on gasoline and upkeep than you thought, and occasionally the airbags deploy, the doors fall off, and the seatbelts unclip while you are driving. Would you keep this car that is not living up to its high expectations? Capital Punishment was said to be a cheaper alternative to life imprisonment; and it claimed to be an effective way to deter people from criminal acts. We have received a “lemon”; our new car, and the death penalty are not proving to be good investments. Its time to take them back to the dealership. The death penalty is not an effective way to resolve the crime problem in our country. The United States of America should abolish Capital Punishment because of the high cost, and its lack of deterrence.

The United States should dispose of the death penalty due to the astronomical price it costs taxpayers to execute a prisoner. It is sometimes suggested that abolishing capital punishment is unfair to the taxpayer, as though life imprisonment were obviously more expensive than executions. If one takes into account all of the relevant costs, the reverse is true. The death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a more economical alternative to life imprisonment. A murderer trial normally takes much longer when the death penalty is at issue than when it is not. Litigation costs- including the time of the judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and court reporters are all borne by the taxpayer. Florida, with one of the nations largest death rows, is a prime example of the ridiculous cost of execution. The state has estimated that the true cost of each execution is approximately $3.2 million, or approximately six times the cost of a life imprisonment sentence. When Bryan Schlussel, FAU student, was educated of these numbers he commented: “No *censored*. It really costs that much to kill someone? I always thought that we had the death penalty because it was cheaper and faster.” The only way to make the death penalty a “better buy” than life imprisonment is to weaken the court system and the length of appeals, which are the defendants (and your) only protection against the wrongdoings of the law. The amount of money the nation would save would be at the price of justice. It is not economically feasible to keep Capital Punishment in the U.S. Court System since the price of execution is too high.

The argument most often cited in support of capital punishment is that the threat of executions deters capital crimes more effectively than imprisonment. This claim is possible but the facts do not support it. Capital punishment could be an effective deterrent if it was consistently and promptly employed; but it can not be administered to meet these conditions. The process can be sped up, at the price of abandoning the procedural safeguards and constitutional rights of suspects, defendants, and convicts, with the high risk of convicting the wrong person and executing the innocent. After seeing some of the alarming statistics, lawyer Rob Lovett stated: “most of the time the people who commit these hanious crimes are too mentally disturbed to even care about the consequences of their actions. The death penalty doesn’t scare them into reconsidering their plans.” Studies show that death penalty states have higher crime rates than life imprisonment states. During the 1980’s, death penalty states averaged an annual rate of 7.5 criminal homicides per 100,000 of population; abolition states averaged a rate on 7.4. States should not fear the sudden and serious changes in the curve of crime if they loosen they’re reliance on the death penalty. The only way for the death penalty to become and effective deterrent is to execute anyone convicted of criminal homicide. Unfortunately, society would not tolerate dozens of executions daily, but nothing less would suffice. The death penalty does not deter criminal behavior.

We as a nation need to come up with some type of alternative to capital punishment, because the death penalty is not performing the duties it promised to do. “Instead of executing the criminals we make them go outside and work. Manual labor, right off of I-95, in the middle of summer, 110 degrees outside, its perfect!” says Detective Jeff Podweika of the Coral Springs Police Department. Life imprisonment with out the possibility of parole is an equally effective, cheaper, and more humane way to punish capital criminals. Not only is the cost of executing a prisoner ridiculous, but the death penalty has in no way shown that it deters criminal activity. The abolishment of the death penalty is necessary to achieve the utopian society we as a nation so desire.

Bibliography

Enc. 1102

Case Against the Death Penalty, The. Amnesty International. 4 October 1999

http://www.dnai.com/~mwood/deathpen.html

Facts and Figures on the Death Penalty. Amnesty International. 4 October 1999

http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/dp/dpfacts.htm

Lovett, Rob. Telephone Interview. 1 October 1999.

Podweika, Jeff. Personal Interview. 30 September 1999.

Schlussel, Bryan. Personal Interview. 3 October 1999.