China's Death Penalty Case Study

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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. A 2014 study in Kansas reported that a death row prisoner costs twice as more than general population prisoner- $25,000 difference, it is due to heightened security (Chammah, 2016). According to …show more content…
However, China takes very extreme measurements- China is removing the organs from prisoners, who maybe should not even be in prison. In the United States most death sentence inmates have done heinous crimes against the people, whereas in China inmates are in prison because their views are different than the governments. The China Daily recently reported the total number or organ transplant surgeries performed in China is close to 15,000 which would be a record (Xiaodong, 2016). Officially, China’s government is required to obtain consent from the prisoners for permission to remove their organs, however, human rights groups have observed that the government is ignoring consent forms and is continuing to remove the organs because of the demand for a specific organ and profit. Prisoners of death sentence in China are executed by a gunshot to the back of the head and afterwards the organs are sold to the highest bidder. To avoid the corruption for transplants, the government of the USA could put inmate’s organs anonymously in the national organ transplant list. So if the government uses the inmate’s organs- it could save many lives by providing organs that are hard to obtain. In 2013, Utah became the first state to explicitly permit general prisoners- not death row inmates- to donate their organs if they die while they are in …show more content…
Death penalties will exist in the future in the United States - so it makes sense to gain the most from other people’s death. While, knowing the time death is very important, so there would be a quick transplant operation, there is a view that the payment to the surgeon to remove the organs would not outweigh the gain of organs. Is it acceptable to worry about money, if a person’s life will be saved? Stigma exists that most of the prisoners have many diseases, therefore only few organs could be used-the ones which are not affected with diseases. Financial aspect proves a point that maintaining a death-row inmate in prison is very expensive and execution is a lot cheaper option. On opposition, articles in the Journal of Bioethics says that executing a person to save up money is not acceptable, also it would place physicians in the position as executers, furthermore, even people on death should have choice to donate their organs without coercion. Using the organs from death-row inmates would save many lives for people who already have lost their hopes to live a normal life. Nevertheless, it is unpredictable how a person would feel if he founds that he has an organ from death-row inmate. Changing the method of execution to an execution as organ

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