Death Penalty Controversy Essay

The Death Penalty Controversy May Be Easily Ended In the United States, the death penalty is used as the capital punishment. The Oxford Dictionary defines capital punishment as “the legally authorized killing of someone as punishment for a crime.” Common counterarguments to abolishing the death penalty often say that it deters future crime and saves money. It is also said that the death penalty is a justified punishment for the most heinous of crime (Mulhausen). Another feat of keeping the death penalty is that it saves taxpayers money that would originally be spent towards the average $29,000 incarceration cost per prisoner each year (Federal Register). But with the death penalty, comes innocent incarceration, drastic mental tolls, and slow evolution of government for the United States. Other countries, such as Canada, do not use the death penalty and still excel past us with lower crime rates (Breslow). Therefore, the death penalty should be eliminated due to its inhumanity, the instability of court rulings, and conflict to political …show more content…
settle death penalty cases with skyrocketing funds. Nick Gillespie discusses these principles in his video called: “Three Reasons to Get Rid of the Death Penalty”. He states that since 1980, California has spent over four billion dollars on death penalty cases; yet has only executed thirteen inmates. The U.S. also annually dishes out 134 million dollars per case concerning the death penalty. This is far more expensive than the cost that would be covered for incarcerating the criminals for life without parole (Gillespie). It is inherently obvious that the death penalty has been and will always be, for the remainder of its implementation, a shaky approach to resolving issues. It is very expensive and has many missing parts to why we even keep it around. These reasons hold true to the fact that the national abolishment of the death penalty is the optimal option in pushing towards a better