Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Miscellaneous capital punishment7 capital punishment7 In the history of the world, the punishment for murder, or homicide, has generally been “the death penalty”. This seems to be the most logical punishment. If someone intentionally kills an innocent human being, why should he be able to live? Or should he? Should he be forced to suffer for the remainder of his life for this terrible crime? There are many arguments and opinions on this topic; many reasons why we should sentence murderers to death, but many reasons we should not. One main reason we should not sentence these people to death is the cost. It simply costs too much to put people on death row. A gentleman in Texas quoted estimates in two counties near his home. They both estimated the cost of a capital trial to be $400,000 - $600,000 verses the cost of a non-capital trial, about $75,000. Then, 80% of these trials result in appeals, costing the tax-payers more for simply the cost of housing another criminal. At this point, the appeals court will invalidate about 30% of all death sentences, leaving us with only a 50% chance this criminal will actually be executed. (www.personalumich.com) The total cost we end up with is around $580,000 per execution. This is a substantially larger amount than we would pay for a criminal sentenced to life in prison without parole. We can achieve the same goal with each sentence: That this person will not murder anyone again. With the life sentence, we are able to make these people suffer for the remainder of his life, for the crime he committed. With the death sentence, the criminal gets off pretty easy; he dies and doesn’t have the guilt on his conscience anymore. In Florida, a study was done showing each execution averaged $2 million, in North Carolina the average cost is $2.16 million above the cost for a non-death penalty trial with the imprisonment for life sentence. (Duke University, May 1993/ www.essential.ura.ldpic) The cost in California is $90 million annually. The State of Florida has spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973-1988 to achieve only 18 executions. This is an average of $3.2 million per execution. (www.essentialorg.ldpic). In Indiana, $2 million has been spent for only defense costs. (www. Esseneial.org). The problem with spending so much money on this is when the county needs things for different areas such as roadway improvements, educational improvements, there is no money because it was all used on some psychopath who killed an innocent person. One example of this is in Washington, employee pay increases were placed on hold, its $300,000 contigency fund was depleted, and all capital improvements were placed on hold because all funds had been used on capital Sometimes, we sentence people to death row for killing someone, they get sick, and we spend more money for medical treatment. This was also a case in Washington: Mitchell Rope was sentenced to death for murder, and after budgeting $346,000 for his3rd death sentence, money was being spent to treat his liver disease. Much money was being spent to fix his medical problem, then, he was to be executed. Many attorneys are now asking for a death sentence to be post-pone until adequate funding for attorney’s fees are In Okaloosa County, the cost is so high, county commissioners delayed pay raises for the county employees. The county also decided not to replace public health nurses. A halt was placed on non-emergency travel and the purchase of new computers for schools. The cost of the death penalty is draining our counties of necessary spending. If cost isn’t reason enough for abolishing the death penalty, we should look at crime deterrence. The United States is the only western country that uses the death penalty, and it is also the one with the highest crime rate (gtd http://www.pages.prodigy). In the 1980’s, the states honoring the death penalty as penalty for a crime averaged 7.5 criminal homicides per100, 000 people. States without the death penalty had only 7.4 per 100,000. Though these figures are around the same, the lesser of the two was the state without the death penalty. This shows us that capital punishment does not deter crime (gtd http://www.pages.prodigy). In some states, police officers and deputies admit that capital punishment is ranked last for ways to reduce violent crime (gtd http://www.pages.com). When we hear the word “death”, as human beings, we get afraid. It makes sense that if someone murders another person, they should be sentenced to death, and people should be afraid of that. Unfortunately, some aren’t and crime rate doesn’t fall in states with the death penalty. Authors John Sorenson, Robert Wrinkle, Victoria Brewer, and James Margaret examined executions in Texas between 1984-1997 (gtd www.essential.com). The study showed that over the years, the more executions that were completed, the more homicides in that state. Capital punishment actually increased crime rather than decreased it. A study was done in Oklahoma of the same nature. The author’s name was William Bailey. He examined the period between 1989-1991 for total number of killings and sub-types of killing (www.essential.com). He found no evidence that the executions were decreasing crime in the state. He did, however, find that there was a significant increase in stranger killings after Oklahoma resumed executions after a 25-year lay-off (gtd www.essential.com). In California, an author named Ernie Thompson examined criminal homicides in Los Angeles before and after California’s execution of Robert Harris in 1992, the first execution after 25 years. There is increase in homicides in this state as well, after the execution. U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said she has not yet been able to find any evidence to support the effectiveness of the death penalty. A rather convincing piece of information is that the south has the highest crime rate and 80% 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. Bibliography: Word Count: 1310
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