-The High Cost of the Death Penalty

By: Nora De Jesus

This is an example of what they put the people in when they are being executed

When you hear the word “capital punishment,” what do you think about? “Capital punishment, the death penalty, and execution are a sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for a crime. Crimes that can result in the death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment

Many people think that capital punishment is right. But I truly believe that capital punishment is very wrong for many reasons. There have been many cases where inmates have been charged with the death penalty, and they were innocent.

Innocence Project’s Melissa Mantle hugs James Bain on Thursday during a hearing at the Polk County Courthouse in Florida

There was an article in the Daily News on Friday, December 18, 2009 entitled “Florida man exonerated after 35 years behind bars.” It was about a man, James Bain, who “was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping a 9-year-old boy and raping him in a nearby field” in 1974. “The sophisticated DNA testing that officials more recently used to determine he could not have been the rapist did not exist when he was convicted,” according to Mitch Stacy of The Associated Press. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/15072&page=2

When I read this article, I didn’t know whether I should have felt angry or happy. I was angry that they made that innocent man live most of his life in prison, but I was happy that he got to live 35 years. Imagine if he had already been executed! There wouldn’t be any way to bring him back to life.

There is also another article in the Daily News on Friday, January 6, 2012 entitled “First U.S. execution of 2012: Oklahoma inmate who fatally stabbed man is put to death.” This was about the first inmate who was executed in Oklahoma this year. Can you believe that they are already executing people? It costs much more money to execute someone rather than having them in prison for life. The death penalty is known to cost about $2 million per case.

I think that it makes absolutely no sense at all to spend so much money just to kill one person. In the state of Florida, they “spent an average of $3.2 million per execution from 1973 to 1988. During that time period, Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty to achieve 18 executions. ("Bottom Line: Life in Prison One-Sixth as Expensive," Miami Herald, July 10, 1988).” http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty

In the link below, there is some more information about how much money each state spends on capital punishment: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty

For all of these reasons, capital punishment is absolutely wrong to me. I am for sure glad that I live in a territory where capital punishment is abolished. But I also think that the United States should ban capital punishment and just charge the convicted criminal with life in prison without parole.