0% of the executions in this nation. The northeast has only 1% of the executions, and the lowest crime rate. With this information, what do we have to support the death penalty? To show the comparison between states with and without the death penalty, in1997, the murder rate per 100,000 people in a death penalty state was 6.6. The average in non-death penalty states was only 3.5 (www.essential .com). A survey of experts from the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Law Society Association showed that the overwhelming majority did not believe that the death penalty is a proven deterrent to homicide (gtd www.essential.com). Arizona State University reported a brutalizing effect from an execution in Arizona, consistent with the results of the study done in Oklahoma. The study was covering a span of 25 years, from 1957-1982. It shows in the first year there were 5,060 murders and 65 executions (www.cwrl.utexas), however, in the last year of the study there were 22,520 murders committed and only one execution (www.cwrl.utexas). This clearly shows the absence of crime deterrence.Finally, before researching for this paper, I believed strongly in the death penalty, however, as most things in life, when we research and find out all the details, we may form another opinion. All money spent on these cases, could be well spent on something more rewarding, such as education. I do believe that if we are going to remain sentencing people to the death penalty, they should only be able to stay on death row a couple months, then we should decide if they will be executed, or have life in prison. If we chose death, it should then be done. No more criminals on death row for 20 years. I feel we should be sure and make informed decisions about something as important as this and I hope this paper allows you to do that....
