The Pros And Cons Of The Death Penalty

As we go into the future of the criminal justice system, the question of if the death penalty should stay around is always asked. Currently there is disputing research stating that the death penalty is good and others saying it is a bad thing. Although, whether a person is in favor of the death penalty or not, what implications does it have on our Country? One of the most important factors for looking at if the death penalty should stay around in the future is what the cost is. Capital cases are unique to the court system in that they have many extra steps. There are a number of unique procedures including appointing specialized attorneys, an investigation of the defendant's life history, and a two part trial including both the guilt and the punishment phase (Petersen & Lynch, 2012). This makes the price of death penalty much higher than other types of cases. For example, in Florida the cost of executing one person is 3.2 million dollars on average (Von Drehle, 1988). Another example given by Petersen and Lynch is that California has spent almost four billion dollars on their death penalty cases from 1978 to 2010 (2012). With the price of maintaining this system so high, …show more content…
The Supreme Court has ruled in cases such as Furman v. Georgia, 1972, Gregg v. Georgia, 1976, and Gardner v. Florida 1977, that sentencing someone to death is unique and requires a “super due process” (Costanzo & White, 1994). Costanzo and White also state that another defense to streamlining the system in that there are a significant amount of cases on death row that are appealed and overturned and that “a streamlined system presumably would allow some percentage of these cases to “slip through" to the death chamber” (1994). This evidence suggests that streamlining the system to reduce cost is not a valid solution. It leaves room for too much error and the courts have made it so that death penalties have to be carefully