Death Penalty

Today capital punishment is legal in 30 U.S. states and over 3,000 people are on death row. More than 1,300 individuals have been executed in the U.S. 90 countries have the death penalty but as a practical matter, only 54 foreign countries actually enforce it. In other countries, it is still on the books but seldom enforced, usually only for crimes committed during wartime. The U.S. is the only Western country that routinely uses the death penalty.

I am against the death penalty and feel it should be abolished in the U.S. for a number of reasons. First, no one has proven that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime. Most murders are acts of passion or are committed in the course of another crime such as a robbery.

Death penalty trials are expensive. The American Bar Association states that death penalty trials are 20 times more expensive than trials seeking a life sentence without parole. Since 1976, California alone has spent more than $4 billion on death penalty trials. It costs far more to go through the legal process required in a death penalty case than keeping the accused in prison for the rest of his/her life.

But the most important fault of the death penalty is that once applied it is irrevocable. In recent years more than 100 prisoners who were on death row have been released because DNA or other evidence has come to light that proved they were innocent. It is time we join the rest of the civilized world and eliminate the death penalty!