Capital Punishment should be abolished in the United States

I'm sure we'll have some fun with it. Argument I. Capital Punishment is financially costly A. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation[1], life imprisonment costs, on average, $44,653 per prisoner per year. Considering the number of people and how early they can be imprisoned, that can come to a sizable sum. Even so, the cost of inflicting the death penalty is about $90,000 per prisoner per year than life imprisonment. That comes to $63.3 million additional annual cost for the State of California. B. The Urban Institute conducted a study for the cost of the death penalty in Maryland[2]. The study looked at all 1,227 cases where the death penalty could be sought from 1978 to 1999. Factoring in Trial(and appeals) and Prison costs, cases that did not seek the death penalty costed an average of just over 1.1 million. Cases that did successfully sought the death penalty costed over $3 million. The pattern of costing roughly 3 times as much to use capital punishment holds true for most of the states. To put it bluntly, in a time when states are worried about keeping fiscal sanity, I would rather cut capital punishment than increase taxes or cut benefits to our citizens. Argument II. Capital punishment is applied unfairly Capital punishment is applied against the poor. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated: "I have yet to see a death case among the dozen coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial. .. People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty. " If we are concerned about a fair and equitable system of justice, we can't enforce the law against the poor and let the wealthy get off because they can afford a good lawyer. The courts are supposed to be the one place where all men really are created equal. The fate of someone's life shouldn't be calculated down to their net worth. Argument III. Capital Punishment False convictions of Capital punishment are relatively common compared to the number of people executed. In truth, hundreds have been taken off of death row for false convictions, being mentally retarded, and being minors. [3] 273 exonerated since 1976; reasons other than those stated: Faulty DNA Evidence "Mentally retarded" Persons under 18 In the 80s, DNA evidence was not nearly as reliable as it is now, and resulted in a great many false convictions not dealing with capital punishment. But Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says there has not been, "a single case"not one"in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit" And he's right, no court has found evidence for it. But then, no court looks for evidence once the convicted person is in the ground. And the truth is, the number of people found released from death row after they were convicted is over 15% of the number of people executed. Argument IV. A brief cost-benefit analysis. The costs of capital punishment is quite high in a number of ways, as I've stated. The wealthy will never get the death penalty. There is a terribly high cost of a false conviction, and even if there has never been a single person killed, we are still paying, as a country, 100s of millions of dollars every year to execute people. So to those that still advocate the death penalty, I offer you your prize. 1,301 Executions From 1976 to August 1, 2012 I hope it's enough. [1] Barr, G. (2011, March 24). The cost of life without parole. Retrieved from . http://www.mountain-news.com... [2] "The Cost of the Death Penalty in Maryland" The Urban Institute [3]Neubaeur, D. W. , & Meinhold, S. S. (2007). Judicial process: Law, courts, and politics in the united states.