would also produce this same result. Millions and millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the death penalty sine 1976. The average cost per execution averages two and a half to three and a half million dollars. This is about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for forty years (Death Penalty Information Center 1).It is the ultimate punishment. The key part of the death penalty is that it involves death -- something which is rather permanent for humans. This creates a major problem when there continue to be many instances of innocent people being sentenced to death (Tabak 38). According to a 1987 study, twenty three people who were innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted were executed between 1900 and 1985 (Long 79). A report by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights shows that seventy people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence since 1970 (Death Penalty Information Center 1). These death penalty errors are irreversible. Until human judgment becomes infallible, this problem alone is reason enough to abolish the death penalty at the hands of the state more dedicated to vengeance than to truth and justice. In our legal system, there exists numerous ways in which justice might be poorly served for a recipient of the death sentence. Foremost is in the handling of his own defense counsel. In the event that a defendant is without counsel, a lawyer will be provided. Attorneys appointed to represent indigent capital defendants frequently lack the qualities necessary to provide a competent defense and sometimes have exhibited such poor character that they have subsequently been disbarred (Tabak 37). With payment caps or court determined sums of, for example, five dollars an hour, there is not much incentive for a lawyer to spend a great deal of time representing a capital defendant. In other words, "Ca...
