Cost
Currently it costs more money to execute a guilty criminal than to just simply sentence the convicted criminal to life in prison. About twenty years ago it would have costed more to keep the criminal in prison, but now days prisoners have to go through so many appeals leading up to execution that it costs more to execute them. Prisoners also have to sit in jail or prison while they are on death for maybe even years which costs taxpayers extra money as well. Over the past thirty-four years California alone has spent over 184 million dollars per year just to execute 13 people. Since it costs more money to execute criminals many people see the death penalty or capital punishment as no longer practical.
False Acquisitions
During court cases that are deciding whether or not a convicted criminal is guilty or not many innocent people are having their lives put at risk. Some court systems have accused innocent people of a crime or felony they did not commit and then the innocent individual is wrongly sentenced to death. According to the Innocence Project in the past fifteen years eighteen people were trialed as guilty of murder and were sentenced to death, but in reality they were all innocent. Luckily all eighteen individuals were saved because they were found to be innocent through further investigation and testing, but if they had not been found innocent they would have all lost their lives through execution for a crime they did not commit. These individuals served a combined 229 years waiting on death row in prison for crimes they were not even involved in. This has made people mad because innocent people are sitting in jails or prisons for an action they did not do and possibly could have lost their lives because they were wrongly accused.
Not Moral
|
|
One of the major arguments against the death penalty is that many people think that the death penalty is not moral or right. Over time moral beliefs have changed so capital punishment is now seen as hypocritical and cruel. It also does not allow people to learn from their mistakes. The justice systems in the United States state that it is wrong to kill, but then court systems give out death sentences because a murder killed someone else. Execution is very hypocritical because the government systems are not performing what they teach. Our government says that it is wrong to kill, yet they are killing another person for their wrong doings which is not right. Once a criminal is sentenced to death they must be executed. There are five different ways people are executed, but there are two main methods that are very wrong. Through lethal injection and poisonous gases execution results in a long painful death. People who get executed this way can struggle for hours before finally dying and many people see this has inhumane because it is like torture. Once a convicted criminal is executed they can not learn from their mistake because they will be dead. Once they are dead there is no bring that specific person back to life. Overall the death penalty as a whole is just not moral.