t to deter a rational person itself. Besides, no criminal commits a crime if he believes he will be caught.The eighth Amendment to the Constitution protects us form the use of excessive bail and fines. It also protects us from cruel and unusual punishment. In 1972 the courts ruled in favor of Furman, in Furman vs. Georgia, on the grounds that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment. Unfortunately, the decision was revoked in 1976, a mere four years later. There was no time taken to see if the change would affect the rate of violent crimes committed in the United States today.“The death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been a more economical alternative to life imprisonment.” said Spangenberg and Walsh. A study by the NY State Defenders Association showed that the cost of capital trial ALONE is more than double the cost of life imprisonment. In Maryland, a comparison of capital trial costs with and without the death penalty for the years 1979- 1984 concluded that a death penalty case costs “approximately 42 percent more than a case resulting in a non-death sentence,” according to the US Government Accounting Office. In 1988 and 1989 the Kansas legislature voted against reinstating the death penalty after it was informed that reintroduction would involve a first-year cost of more than $11 million. And the Miami Herald reported that Florida, with on of the nation’s largest death rows, 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. In Texas alone, criminals only serve about twenty percent of their sentences due to overcrowding in prisons.In capital punishment cases money is a huge issue. Over worked and underpaid, public defense attorney with little experience in cases involving capital punishment try to defend their clients. Some public defense attorneys just don’t care any mo...
