Death Penalty should be abolished in the US

I will divide my arguments into 3 main points, the first of which I think is critically important. P1- Death Penalty doesn't deter crimeIf the death penalty should remain in the US, then the death penalty should deter crime. That is the point, a punishment is a deterrent, and to justify keeping a deterrent (especially an unethical deterrent like killing people), it should work. However, the death penalty doesn't work as a deterrent in the US. A study from 1990-2009 took homicide rates and compared the states who had abolished the death penalty with those who hadn't. The states without the penalty have far better homicide records. They have had lower per capita homicide rates consistently, at times having up to 46% less homicides. They have seen a growing gap in homicide rates, with non penalty states having less on average. A comparison with non-penalty states and neighboring penalty states also shows that the non-penalty states have lower homicide rates; the best example is Iowa/Missouri, with 2.5 and 8 homicides per capita respectively (guess which one has the death penalty? ). An interesting example of a failure to deter crime is California, which saw an average increase in homicide of only 4.8% when there was no death penalty between 1968-91, while in 1952-67 saw an average increase in homicide of 10%. While the main cause of crime certainly wasn't the death penalty, the death penalty clearly wasn't doing anything to deter crime. Another obvious example is that as a whole country, the US has a 4.8 per capita homicide rate, whilst North, West, and Southern Europe (these are actual divisions, Eastern Europe has 2 states with death penalty so they aren't counted here) have homicide rates between 1 and 1.5 per capita, and all states in these regions have abolished the death penalty. And law enforcement officials do not believe that the death penalty is a good deterrent for criminals. When surveyed about detriments to law enforcement, only 2% believed that stifling the death penalty hurts law enforcement. A 1995 survey thought that only 1% thought that expanding the death penalty would reduce crime. It seems fairly clear that the death penalty doesn't discourage crime, and since that is the objective of any punishment, it seems that the death penalty does not work as intended. When coupled with the other issues, there is a strong case for abolishing the death penalty. . http://bit.ly...http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... . http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...http://nccadp.org...http://en.wikipedia.org... P2- The state makes mistakes in many areasIn addition to not deterring crime, the death penalty If the state is to carry out the execution of anyone, then the state should be held to high expectations. In a situation where the life of the defendant is very literally at stake, the margin for error is 0, and if it can't be 0 then there shouldn't be a death penalty. A 2008 study estimated that 4% of the total population of death row inmates (around 7000) would be exonerated if they received proper defense. They based their finding on the exoneration of 117 inmates over a period of 1974-2008, the resources applied to these appeals and the errors in convictions. The fact that 117 people were sentenced to death and later found to be innocent is scary enough, but the possibility of an additional 200 some innocent people being sentenced to death is scarier. And there are a number of death sentences that were carried through despite serious doubt about the guilt of the executed. For example, Gary Graham was convicted for killing a robbery and murder outside of a supermarket, with testimony from only 1 eyewitness who claimed to have seen his face for a few seconds from 30-40 feet away. 2 other witnesses, store employees, said they had seen the killer and it was not Graham, but the defense lawyer never called these men as witnesses. Jurors interviewed later said they would not have convicted him had they heard all of the evidence. Graham was executed in 2000. Leo Jones was convicted of murdering a police officer in Florida based on a confession he gave after hours of interrogation. Later, he claimed the confession was coerced. The officer who arrested him and the interrogator were later kicked off the force for ethical violations, and colleagues of the arresting officer said that he used torture. Witnesses also said that another man was the killer but Jones was executed in 1998. Until the criminal justice system can near guarantee that death sentences will not be erroneously given or that innocent people will not be executed without an opportunity to rectify possible errors, the state should not give out the death penalty. All of these problems, all possibility for error and the killing of innocent people, is prevented by simply abolishing the death penalty, which doesn't deter crimes anyway. Other issues come up in execution with the 8th amendment, which protects from "cruel and unusual punishment". Although executions are not necessarily cruel or unusual, there are often botched executions, especially with lethal injections (the main form of execution in the US), which make executions cruel. For example, a recent botched execution in OK of Clay Lockett, in which the victim (for lack of a better word) was knocked out by the first drug, ended up taking 40 minuets with Lockett mumbling, trying to get up, writing in pain and eventually dying of an unintended heart attack. That undeniably qualifies as cruel. If the state cannot administer capital punishment constitutionally there should be no capital punishment, period. . http://www.pnas.org...http://onforb.es...http://bit.ly...http://on.wsj.com...P3- It's expensiveMultiple studies done by various states have shown that the death penalty sentences are more expensive than life without parole sentences. California did a study in 2008 that showed their current system of capital punishment cost $137 million a year. To reform the system so that it would avoid the type of errors mention in P2, the cost would be $237.2 million. Restricting the crimes that would qualify for the death penalty would result in a system that cost only $130 million. However, the cost of a life with no parole system with no death penalty would only cost $11.5 million a year. That is roughly a tenth of the cost of their current system. That's a lot of dough for a system which has convicted innocent people and does not deter crime. A Maryland study, a state with 5 total executions, found that a case for the death penalty cost $3 million to taxpayers, $1.9 million more than non-death cases. A Nevada study found that death penalty murder cases cost $229,800 for a public defender and $287,250 for appointed counsel. That turns out to be $170,000 and $212,000 more per case compared to non-death penalty murder cases. Federal cases involving the penalty cost on average $620,000, 8 times more than non death penalty cases. Additionally, when defendants spend less than $320,000 on defense, they are guilty 44% of the time, whereas if they spend more they are only guilty 19% of the time. Underrepresented people are more likely to be found guilty because of cost rather than actual guilt. These are only a few of very numerous examples, which I can get into later but I am near the character limit. The point is that death penalty cases cost more to the states than non-death penalty cases, and we have already established that the death penalty do not have a deterring effect (P1) and there is error in the system when there should absolutely not be (P2). Is it really worth the extra cost? I think not. . http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... . http://www.ccfaj.org...