Capital Punishment Research Paper

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Capital Punishment Marylyn vos Savant once stated that “capital punishment is the source of many an argument, both good and bad.” Most people would agree the act of an individual taking another individuals life is wrong. Since childhood we, as humans, have been taught that the act of taking another person’s life is murder. So, what is the death penalty, or rather capital punishment? Capital punishment is not a good form of punishment for a plethora of reasons. Yes, the death penalty should be abolished, but not out of empathy for criminals. First and foremost, it has been researched and shown that the death penalty isn’t an effective way to prevent or reduce crime. Secondly, on an economic standpoint, the process of ending a life through the death penalty cost much more than life in prison. Lastly, there is always going to be a risk of people being falsely convicted being executed. First, the sentiment of “an eye for an eye” these days just doesn’t deter people from doing what they’ve set their mind to do, if it ever did. If someone wants to kill another that badly for whatever cause it may be, the thought of ramifications of their actions usually come second to the thought of finishing the job. There is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than a sentencing of life in prison. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than states without these laws. “Texas not only leads the nation in state-sanctioned killings (front page, May 25), it has executed three times as many people as its two closest competitors since 1976, and four times more than any other state.
Yet Texas has consistently had one of the highest murder rates in the country, demonstrating that the death penalty does not have a general deterrent effect”(Leven). And states that have abolished capital punishment show no significant changes in either crime or murder rates. The death penalty has no deterrent effect. Claims that each execution deters a certain number of murders have been thoroughly discredited by social science research. Second, it has been established that the death penalty is clearly more expensive than a system handling similar cases with a lesser punishment. "The median amount of $353,185 for authorized cases [of the federal death penalty]... indicates that cases in which a capital prosecution was authorized cost almost eight times as much as those death-eligible cases that were not authorized... there is no mistaking the vast increase in cost when the Department of Justice decides to authorize a capital prosecution"(Gould).Capital punishment combines the costliest parts of both punishments: lengthy and complicated death penalty trials, followed by incarceration for life. Everything that is needed for an ordinary trial is needed for a death penalty case, only more so such as more pre-trail time, more experts, twice as many attorneys, let alone the two trials instead of one: one for guilt and one for punishment and the series of appeals while the inmate is held in high security of death row.
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