Removing the Death Penalty in our Government
Why is the death penality bad?
The death penalty in America is flawed, expensive, and racist. The government has killed too many innocent people with the death penalty. For every nine people executed, one person on death row has been exonerated. Most of these death penalty cases are on false accusations and official misconduct is the leading cause of wrongful convictions. African Americans make up 42% of people on death row and 34% of those executed, but only 13% of the population is Black. In Washington, prosecutors have found the death sentences almost three times more likely if one or more of the victims are white. The death penalty is also inextricably linked to our history of slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow segregation.
The cost of the death penalty compared to life imprisonment.
The cost of life imprisonment is also much cheaper than the death penalty.
The average length of time on death row was 16.3 years.
It costs a state $56,000 a year per inmate just to pay for staffing, seven times more than the cost to staff a trustee camp for minimum-security inmates.
The Virginia Department of Corrections was reported to have paid $16,500 per dose of the lethal injection.
A 2008 report issued in California stated that costs of the death penalty system were about $137 million per year, and that implementing reforms to ensure a fair process would cost $232.7 million per year.
By contrast, the report found that a system in which life in prison was the maximum penalty would cost only $11.5 million per year.
All together the average death penalty costs more than $929,300 after the lethal injection and 16.3 years on death row.
Removing the death penalty because it is racist.
People of color are more likely to be prosecuted for capital murder, sentenced to death, and executed, especially if the victim in the case is white. Earlier in the twentieth century when it was applied for the crime of rape, 89 percent of the executions involved black defendants, most for the rape of a white woman. A bias towards white-victim cases has been found in almost all of the sophisticated studies exploring this area over many years.
Removing the chances of an innocent person death.
For every nine people executed, one person on death row has been found innocent. This statistic alone proves the death penalty is a flawed system. Removing the death penalty for life imprisonment would give more time for innocent victims to plead their case. A sentence of life without parole means exactly what it says—those convicted of crimes are locked away in prison until they die. However, unlike the death penalty, a sentence of life without parole allows mistakes to be corrected or new evidence to come to light. Having life imprisonment instead of the death penalty will let there be room for mistakes to get corrected. It will not fixate people to death but instead, give them time to plead a case.
How to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment in our federal government?
We should follow the same plan the state of Virginia did. Why Virginia? Because Virginia has the second-most executions in our country. Recently the state of Virginia has become the first southern state to Abolish the death penalty. They became the 23rd state to Abolish the death penalty in America. Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia, signed the bill saying,” We can't give out the ultimate punishment without being 100% sure that we're right. And we can't sentence people to that ultimate punishment knowing that the system doesn't work the same for everyone." Two inmates currently on death row in Virginia will have their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment.
How can we convert this into our federal government?
First, write a bill abolishing the death penalty in America.
Then resentence death row inmates to life imprisonment.
After that, transfer death row inmates to regular prisons.
Finally, change the death row prisons to regular prisons or other government buildings.