• Home Page
  • Capital Punishment In The United States

Capital Punishment In The United States

Great Essays
Show More
Whenever someone asks if it is moral to commit murder, the answer would always be no, but if it was asked what the punishment should be for those persons, then the feedback would vary on the extreme levels. When the conditions are correct and the person found guilty through due process of law, their punishment should nearly always come down to capital punishment. Capital punishment is the execution of a criminal as a result of a crime, which is primarily murder but also includes treason, espionage, and a few others. Although many people believe that the implementation of capital punishment should not be used in the United States, I believe that it should be used more often as a punishment for severe crimes.
Capital Punishment, or the execution …show more content…
Capital punishment’s initial cost is varying throughout the states that allow such punishment but rests at an average of about $1 million per case whereas LWOP or life in prison without a chance for parole costs an average of $1.2-$3.6 million more than the cost of capital punishment depending on when the person commits the offense. This far outweighs the cost of prison but this is just from a financial standpoint, saving the United States more money that could go to much more important things like education and such. The cost of capital punishment is much higher than one would initially think and this is because of the time they are paid for as they sit on death row, which is basically like a prison for those who are sentenced to death. The costs of the death penalty could be significantly cut down if the time of death row were decreased, some of the longest cases being several years of waiting for an execution statement from the …show more content…
These suggest that the best way to go in America today is to increase the rate of capital punishments dealt out in our society for those criminals who qualify and are judged deserving by an assembled

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Analysis Of Just Revenge: Cost And Consequences Of The Death Penalty
    • 263 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Analysis Of Just Revenge: Cost And Consequences Of The Death Penalty

    Killing murderers may sound like the easiest way out of the problem. That is not exactly the truth, it brings more problems because capital punishment is expensive. The book Just Revenge: Cost and Consequences of the Death Penalty by Mark Costanzo states how expensive it is to give a prisoner the death penalty. Just to keep a prisoner in life imprisonment without parole (LWOP) is from $750,000 to $1.1 million per prisoner (Costanzo, pg. 60).…

    • 263 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Harlem Lewis Arguments Against Capital Punishment
    • 716 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Harlem Lewis Arguments Against Capital Punishment

    To keep one prisoner on the death row costs $90,000 for the United States taxpayers. Cases without capital punishment involved cost up to $740,000, while $1.26 million is spent in cases where the death penalty is present. It not only for a moral cause, but also for the costs it takes to go through the death penalty process. It is understandable that governments find this sort of punishments a way to maintain the safety of their population, it has not been as effective as it should…

    • 716 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Death Penalty In America Book Report
    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Death Penalty In America Book Report

    As the costs of the death penalty varies from state to state and even between different counties the taxpayers are still the sole providers to how the counties can even afford the option of pursuing the death penalty. The Dallas County District Attorney, Norman Kinne says, ‘”If you can be satisfied with putting a person in the penitentiary for the rest of his life…I think we have to be satisfied with that as opposed to spending $1 million to try and get them executed.”’ Kinne, makes a plausible point as he argues that although morally one might have stronger feelings about ‘eye for an eye’ and doing to one what they’ve done to others; in the long run it is more cost effective to just lock them away in the penitentiary than to waste taxpayer dollars on one trial that might not even end up with the outcome originally pursued. While most of the costs that accumulate from these kinds of cases are from the trials themselves, the process of appeals that the offenders get if they are sentenced the death penalty takes a serious toll on not only the financial aspect of the government, but the time it takes to go through that…

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Capital Punishment The Great American Paradox Analysis
    • 1042 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Capital Punishment The Great American Paradox Analysis

    Having individuals that can testify against the false avocation that the death penalty is used to punish those truly guilty for their crimes because it displays the extreme used in the wrong instance through its ruling on the innocent. Capital punishment’s inefficiency shines through the innocents’ conviction because how is providing the wrongful ruling suppose to deter future crime it only works to diminish the public’s trust in the judicial system and the validness of the death penalty ruling. Along with innocent men speaking out against capital punishment, comes the costly and time-consuming misconception that the act of evolving the death penalty has made it more humane even though despite popular belief “the death penalty has not become more civilized with the passage of time” (Stroud III, 381). We an human beings can’t continue to turn a blind eye towards the fact that no matter how the executors of the death penalty make it look it is still the blatant taking of another’s life whether it be with a rope, a chair or lethal doses of drugs. Another reason that both Stroud and myself see as being worth ending the option of capital punishment judicial decision is the appalling conditions that create “an environment conducive to depression and hopelessness” for its inmates (Stroud, 383).…

    • 1042 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Cameron Todd Willingham Case
    • 622 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Cameron Todd Willingham Case

    In 1992, Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of arson and murder that caused the deaths of his three children. In 2004, he was given capital punishment. According to the Texas Forensic Science Commission, it was demonstrated that the evidence had been misinterpreted, and that none of the evidence that had previously been used against Willingham was valid. The new evidence showed that the fire was accidental. As a society, we should not allow capital punishment to be legal in the United States.…

    • 622 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Capital Punishment Annotated Bibliography Essay
    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Capital Punishment Annotated Bibliography Essay

    We believe that we only need the capital punishment act because of evil existing in this world. As capital punishment continues to be a highly debated and also a public policies issue in the U.S. As social science begins to join the debate…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    China's Death Penalty Case Study
    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages

    China's Death Penalty Case Study

    Second reason to change the method of execution in the United States is finances. Cases without the death penalty cost approximately $740,000, while cases with the death penalty cost over than $1.2 million- it is almost $500,000 difference. To maintain a death row prisoner to live in prison costs taxpayers $90,000 more per year than a prisoner in general population. At this moment, in 2016 there are 714 inmates on California 's death row (“Costs of the Death Penalty”). Also the death penalty is also growing more expensive with each passing year.…

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Capital Punishment Essay: Death Penalty In The United States
    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Capital Punishment Essay: Death Penalty In The United States

    vTrey & Josh Mr. Ruff Government 1 Nov. 2017 Death Penalty "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This passage written by Thomas Jefferson and taken directly from the Declaration of Independence defines the rights the American nation is founded upon. These “unalienable” rights every American has “endowed” upon them are ones that cannot be taken away.…

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Death Penalty In Texas
    • 367 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Death Penalty In Texas

    The death penalty does not act as a deterrent any better than other punishments. If it did, death penalty states would have lower rates of murder than non-death penalty states. This is not the case. The death penalty is hugely expensive.…

    • 367 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Death Penalty: Disputable In The United States
    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Death Penalty: Disputable In The United States

    With many people being sentenced the death penalty it begins to become expensive. It costs more to execute a person than to keep him or he confined in prison for life. There has been 1,435 executions since 1976 the death penalty is sought cost $1.26 million. In some cases the inmate was innocent, but it may be too late because he or she has already been put to death. Then there is money lost and a life taken away for no…

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    The United States Arguments Against Capital Punishment
    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The United States Arguments Against Capital Punishment

    Capital punishment has always been a subject that people normally do not like to talk about because people, especially the government, knows that capital punishment is an unconstitutional cruel and unusual idea. Capital punishment should be used by states to execute a prisoner, given that the evidence that is against them is substantial enough and beyond a doubt calls for a death sentence. Even though capital punishment is rare and slowly decreasing (Source A), the fact that it continues to exist is the general problem with it. Capital punishment itself would go against the 8th Amendment, saying that “…cruel and unusual punishments [would not be] inflicted” and the fact that the American government would overlook this very clear part of the Constitution is very worrisome because they could do this with many other Amendments. In my opinion, capital punishment is unjustified in every way and should not exist because the best substitute for capital punishment is lifetime in prison provided with rehabilitation options for the guiltily…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Decent Essays

    The Death Penalty In The United States
    • 297 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Death Penalty In The United States

    The death penalty is an ultimate penalty. There could not possibly be more harsher punishments than putting someone to death. Currently 58 nations use the death penalty. The United States will only use the death penalty if one commits first degree murder. The people who believe in the death penalty believe that this type of punishment will deter murderers.…

    • 297 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
    Read More
  • Superior Essays

    The Role Of The Death Penalty In The United States
    • 2102 Words
    • 9 Pages

    The Role Of The Death Penalty In The United States

    Since 1976, the U.S. has executed approximately 1,439 people, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (2016). However, this is not a new issue in U.S. politics, as the death penalty has been a controversial form of punishment in America since colonial times. According to a PBS article by Michael H. Reggio, the use of capital punishment in the U.S. was a tradition brought over by the English settlers, with the first execution on American soil occurring in 1608 when the Virginia colony executed George Kendall for treason against the Crown (Reggio, 2014). Over time, other colonies began using the death penalty, death by hanging for specific crimes such as: “...murder, sodomy, burglary, robbery, rape, horse-stealing, slave rebellion,…

    • 2102 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Essay Arguing for Death Penalty
    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Essay Arguing for Death Penalty

    The death penalty costs 2.16 million dollars per execution than the imprisonment of convicted murders for a lifetime (Jacqueline Brux). ii. Philip J Cook a Duke professor states that if the death penalty was repealed it would save the state 21 million dollars of cases in just the trial phase. II. Time a. Colorado i. In Colorado a study of the death penalty efficiency and functionality showed that it took six times the amount of days to pass one death penalty case than it did to pass one life-without-parole case.…

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Argumentative Essay: Is The Death Penalty?
    • 1307 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Argumentative Essay: Is The Death Penalty?

    A study of Los Angeles County trials has shown that the average trial in which prosecutors demand the death penalty costs $1,898,323, while a murder trial where the death penalty is not sought comes in at $627,322. Death penalty is the most expensive because the constitution requires a long and complex judicial process for any capital cases. The process is required to make sure that innocent men and women are not executed for crimes they did not commit, and also to protect the innocent person from getting executed. According to George Sjostrom, “The cost of the death penalty is too high, both in dollars and in emotional pain,” (192). If we replace the death penalty with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, it will cost millions less and also ensures that the public is safe and protected and we will also eliminate the risk of…

    • 1307 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More

Related Topics

Ready To Get Started?
Discover
Company
Follow
©2024 Cram.com
Privacy Policy |  About Ads |  Site Map |  Advertise  | 
  • Cookie Settings