The Death Penalty Should Be Abolished Essay

Throughout the United States an argumentative topic is the death penalty - should it be legalized across the 50 states or be declared unconstitutional? Some believe the death penalty is a better option for those who deserve the highest form of punishment available. However, others argue capital punishment is a waste of resources and should be brought to an end. Therefore, while many believe the death penalty should be legalized throughout the United States because it offers a higher form of punishment, others believe the death penalty should be repealed because it causes unnecessary deaths.

You are all aware that we are reviewing our recidivism rate to various crimes and reviewing our stance regarding the death penalty as we approach 2009. Everyone here understands that capital punishment is a very controversial topic in the United States. In Texas, from December 1982 through August 2008, only 361 criminals of the millions of Texans in our good state were executed for the wickedest

Capital Punishment has been a controversial topic in the United States since the inception of the constitution, and now, in 2016, the topic has peaked once again and this time in our home state of Nebraska. In May of 2015, legislation passed in Nebraska’s unicameral banning the death penalty for the state, changing the maximum penalty for first degree murder to a life in prison. This legislation was passed by the Nebraska Senate, overriding a veto from Governor Pete Ricketts. Now in November during the general election, Nebraska voters will have the ability to vote to either reinstate the death penalty or to abolished it completely. The death penalty should not be reinstated in Nebraska. It is costly to Nebraska tax payers, delivers erroneous

According to Di Editorial Board, “the death penalty is both an ineffective deterrent to violent crime and is incredibly cost-inefficient. Our funds would be better put to use in other areas, such as education, mental health, and law enforcement — all of which have been proven to deter violent crime”(2012). We have learn that punishment did not prevent crime in California as a result of the War on Drug and harsh punishment have lead criminal justice system in crisis. California prisons are overcrowded and now political what to modify the system to reduce sentences for nonviolent offender. Dan Levine and David Ingram claim, “… a modification of the Justice Department's charging policies so that certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to

for and 52.8% against repealing the law. As a result, California’s death penalty system has become backlogged and many offenders continue to wither away on death row. Something to bear in mind is the fact that just because a state has a capital punishment law on the books, doesn’t necessarily mean that the condemned will be executed soon after conviction. As already discussed, multiple trials, appeals, and petitions will delay the process, which will likely result in years, sometimes decades before the convicted is ever executed, if at all. Sometimes an offender dies on death row before he ever receives an execution date.

One of the most recent states to abolish the death penalty is Illinois. It created the Capital Punishment Reform Study to investigate problems in the current capital punishment system and to make recommendations for ways to make it more effective. In a ten year period, it cost the state 200 million dollars in expenses. Illinois believed that fixing the Capital Punishment System was not possible because there are too many problems. The biggest issue is the financial burden on the state. The problem is a direct result of the time it takes to reach an verdict in a death penalty case. Once a person is found guilty, he or she has the right to appeal the decision; those appeals may take between 6-10 years. It is not uncommon for inmates to spend around 25 years on death row before being executed

Proposition 34 would abolish the death penalty in California and switch everyone on death row to life without the possibility of parole. After Judge Carney’s decision on the California’s death penalty system, we will have to see how this will affect future executions. Will all the people on death row for a certain period of time be re-sentenced to life or will the planned reform of the system scheduled in November of Two Thousand and Sixteen take precedence? Californian’s already stated they want the death penalty to stand, but that leaves the legislatures with a unique task to fix a broken system. Some of the proposals of reform will have limited appeals by prisoners facing the death penalty and remove them from the death-row housing. It would also require that death row prisoners work in prisons to pay restitution to victims’ families (The Associated Press, 2014). With this new reform there may be even longer delays added to the system, but if this reform works it may lead to a more efficient death penalty system for the State of California. Several proposals were made in the past by the California commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (CCFAJ) back on June Thirtieth of Two Thousand and Eight. They also noted that if California maintained their average of about Twenty death judgments per year that full implementation of their recommendations could reduce the

Currently the death penalty in California is still active, however it has been a full decade since the last execution of Clarence Ray Allen. There has been situations right after his death about the protocol of the lethal injection, which brought the state's execution machinery to halt. Although this had occurred California's death row is the largest in the country, still continuing to increase in number. First it appeared as 646 people in January of 2006, but today it's 750. Last year California officially ran out of space for its condemned prisoners. Urging Governor Jerry Brown to assist them by soliciting 3.2 million from the lawmakers to expand the death cells. Even though only 13 men have been executed in California, there is still a number more than 100 that have died facing execution. A quarter of these prisoners have committed

Twenty-five years after 1967 because of the United States Supreme Court choices there were no executions. In 1962 the Supreme Court thought that death penalty as cruel and unusual punishment. Because of this 107 people had their sentences changed to something that was not death. In November 1972 nine months after they had this choice the California electorate amended the state constitution overruled it. Then in 1973 the Supreme Court decided that the death penalty was unconstitutional. The California legislation was passed in 1973, which meant that the death penalty could only happen under certain conditions. These conditions were kidnapping if the person dies, train wrecking if any person dies, assault by a life prisoner if the victim dies within a

Multiple prisoners in the United States still receive death as a punishment for heinous crimes. More than 1,420 inmates have been sentenced to death since 1976 ("Capital Punishment: Should" 1). Because so many lives have been lost, some question weather death is a suitable punishment. In addition, there are a number of states of which have enacted the death penalty. According to the DPIC as of 2015, 31 states have enacted the penalty but several are debating abolishing it. The many issues of the punishment have provoked controversy within states. Lastly, the method of execution for the prisoners is also frequently debated. Although it has been rendered unaccountable, more than 85% of executions since 1976 have been by the method of lethal injection ("Capital Punishment: Should" 1). The inaccuracy of the method raises many suspicions of unreliability and violation of the 8th amendment. Overall, the debate over capital punishment is likely to continue in the near

The ongoing problem of the death penalty system in California is the ineffective and expensive process between sentencing and executing. The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), a national non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment, published the total numbers of death row inmates by states on July 1, 2016. From the data, California has the largest death rows in America. There are 741 inmates on death row in California. The next is 396 in Florida and 254 in Texas. However, there are just 13 executed prisons in California since the reinstatement of death penalty in 1978. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), operating all prisons and parole systems in California, published a document to analyze the time of execution. According to the statistics, the average time served on death row is 17.9 years and the average age at time of execution is 49 years old. A typical example is Clarence Ray Allen, who had been convicted in 1982, but he has not been executed until 2006. After the execution, one of the victims’ family members claimed that “it has taken 23 years but justice has prevailed today. Mr. Allen abused the justice system with endless appeals until he lived longer in prison than the short 17 years of Josephine’s life” (“Clarence Ray Allen Summary” 4). The case of Allen reflects that most of the prisons stay on the death row for more than two

When the country is in debt, and states are facing budget shortages, $620,932 is a lot of tax money to spend on one criminal to pursue the death penalty (“Death Penalty Information Center”). The death penalty should not be legal in the United States because putting the criminal in prison would keep people safe and cost much less money than following through with the death penalty, capital punishment has also been proven not to be a deterrent, and defendants are not treated equally. The cost alone should be enough to abolish capital punishment because of the funds it dries up when more money could go towards crime prevention. If the expenses aren’t enough for a person to realize the death penalty is a waste of resources, the

Capital punishment is one of the least enforced forms of punishments in California. The state currently faces a large deficit and continues to hold inmates for life sentences. One hundred and fourteen dollars are spent daily on each inmate in California. That is more than what most Californians earn in a hardworking day at a minimum wage pay job. Thanks to inmate advocates, Californians spend millions on inmates verse spending on education and health for the work class. Capital punishment should be enforced in California more often to get rid of problems such as prison overcrowding and reducing, the increase the state deficit, and as well as restore the victim’s

In his 2007 research about the death penalty, Judge Alarcon called for an overhaul of the entire capital punishment process. The main complaint in his research being that the delay in justice is no justice at all. This was clearly in response to the many inmate that spent twenty plus years on death row and die of natural causes, instead of being put to death as prescribed by the people. California, leads the country with over seven-hundred inmates convicted to death, that are waiting for their appeals, or their day to pay their debt to society. However, most of these inmates may never be put to sleep, because in California, an execution has not been carried out since 2006, and looks to be put on hold for a long

society. It also helps to keep order in our cities. It is a just and effective punishment for those who have committed crimes heinous enough to deserve death.