The death penalty: Kill the death penalty

Written by Brianna Ehley Friday, 20 November 2009 08:00

Eight years after John Allen Mohammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were convicted of killing ten people in a two-week shooting spree around the Washington DC metropolitan area, Mohammad was put to death by lethal injection. Boyd, 17 at the time of conviction, was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Though the crimes committed by the two were horrendous and they deserve to be brought to justice, the death penalty was not, and is never, the solution.

In a time of economic instability, the astronomical cost of capital punishment is an unnecessary expense that could be put to better use such as funding crime prevention, rehabilitation and victim’s services.

According to Amnesty International, taxpayers in states with capital punishment paid an average of $30 million per execution in 2008. That figure is relatively low compared to some states.

A report released last year by the California Commission on Fair Administration of Justice estimated that California spends an average of $137 million per year on the death penalty. The commission estimated that a comparable system substituting the death penalty with life without parole would cost the state only $11.5 million per year.

The costs of capital punishment come mostly from legal fees. This includes pre-trial costs, jury selection, the actual trial, incarceration and the lengthy appeals process. The legal process in capital cases is much more costly and time consuming than non-capital cases.

The investigation must be as thorough as possible if the defendant’s life is on the line, which means the expenses are greater for the extensive investigation, including obtaining forensic evidence and acquiring more expert witnesses. According to the Urban Institute, in Maryland, an average death penalty case resulting in a death sentence costs approximately $3 million.

Do states need to be spending millions of dollars to put one criminal to death? What is the purpose of capital punishment other than satisfying the feeling of revenge?

Some argue the death penalty works to deter criminals from committing violent acts, but its ineffectiveness remains visible.

According to a study published in the Northwestern University School of Law’s Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology conducted by professors Michael Radelet and Traci Lacock, 88 percent of the nation’s leading criminologists do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime.

A survey done by The New York Times found that the murder rate in states without the death penalty has remained consistently lower than the rate in states with the death penalty.

Criminals who commit heinous crimes that are punishable by death usually do not commit those crimes in a rational state of mind. This means that premeditated or not, the criminal is disturbed and does not have a rational way of thinking to seriously contemplate the act.

And who is benefiting from the death of another human being? There are even families of murder victims who speak out against the death penalty by forming anti-death penalty advocacy groups such as Murder Victim’s Families For Reconciliation, and Murder Victim’s Families For Human Rights.

Both groups work to educate the public on the reasons to eliminate capital punishment, using testimonials of enduring the lengthy and emotionally exhausting process of trials and appeals. The process can take over ten years, which means family member are forced to relive their real-life nightmares and permanent losses over an excessive amount of time in front of a courtroom audience.

The death penalty is a social issue driven greatly by emotion. The United States is the only westernized democracy in the world that uses capital punishment. Countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany have all chosen to save their money and abolish the death penalty.

In our society it is largely accepted that a dangerous criminal should be punished by death for the intolerable acts he or she has committed, but how much money are taxpayers willing to part with to see a person put to death? How important is revenge to the American public? Is there a difference between revenge and justice in the eyes of our society?

Is executing a criminal rather than confining them to a federal prison for life really worth millions of taxpayer’s hard earned money?

For such an expensive price tag, all you are getting is a dead criminal; there is no statistical evidence that punishment by death will reduce the number of crimes.

There are better ways to spend our money that can reduce crimes and assist victims.

Simply put, the United States should follow its northern neighbors and abolish capital punishment. Right now, we could really use the extra money.

Brianna is a junior studying journalism.

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