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Krisna CanapiProfessor Kelly SchendelEnglish 1051 December 2008Death Penalty: Cruel and Unusual PunishmentThe death penalty is the highest form of capital punishment to violators of crime mostespecially murder. In every state they have different list of crimes that are punishable by thedeath penalty, but most states follow that if a person committed first-degree murder then he or she is a candidate for execution. Thirty-eight out of fifty states in the United States havemaintained the penalty up until present time. Though in recent years, questions about the fairnessand reliability of the judicial system have been contributing to the decline of executions butmajority of the population is still supporting it nonetheless. The purpose of having death penaltyis to deter criminals to think twice before committing a crime, and if they do they know whatconsequences they will have to face if they get caught by the authority. In contrast, death penaltyviolates the human rights and over the decades survey shows that the crime rates of those statesthat have death penalty have not decreased. As a result, people doubt the effectiveness of this punishment.The cost of going to the process of death penalty is time consuming and extravagantlyexpensive due to the lengthy court process. An estimate of two million per person versus thefive- hundred thousand dollars spent for lifetime imprisonment is one of the reasons why thedeath penalty will cause more of a financial problem to taxpayers and to the state rather thanlowering crimes. Death penalty is four times more expensive than having a criminal spend hislifetime in prison. According to Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury Office of Research,
 
2004, death penalty trials cost an average of 48% more than the average cost of trials in which prosecutors seek life imprisonment. In California the current system costs $137 million per year;it would cost $11.5 million for a system without the death penalty reported by CCFAJ, 2005. InMarch 6,2008 the Urban institute found that tax payers in Maryland have paid at least $37.2million for each of the state’s five executions since 1978 when the state reenacted the death penalty. A New Jersey Policy Perspectives report concluded that the state's death penalty hascost taxpayers $253 million since 1983.All of the expenses for executing a criminal can add upto better crime-reduction programs such as, drug- rehabilitation, adding more police officers andspeedier trials.Another con of the death penalty is that it can lead to wrongful convictions such asinnocent people being convicted, people who are under the influence of drugs and alcohol have biased situation, and accusing people who are mentally retarded. Since the DP was reinstated in1976, 82 inmates have been freed from Death Row that is one death row inmate found to bewrongfully convicted for every 7 executed (AntiDeathPenalty.org).. In 1983, Earl Washington Jr,a mentally retarded guy who have an IQ of 69 was convinced by police officers to confess to burglary, attempted rape, and malicious wounding, crimes he did not commit. The followingyear Earl was convicted and sentenced to death, but in 1994, Earl’s attorney presented evidenceshowing that he wasn’t guilty, but the state of Virginia only gives twenty-one days to presentnew evidence of innocence. Thankfully by the help of anti-death penalty activists, Earl wassaved by sophisticated DNA testing, and won a full pardon from the state of Virginia. Earl’s caseis an example of how cruelly the chances have been stacked against people facing the death penalty. A comprehensive study of 328 criminal cases over the last 15 years in which theconvicted person was exonerated suggests that there are thousands of innocent people in prison
 
today (Liptak, 2004)It is not a deterrent; crime rates have not gone down. In fact, the murder rate in the US issix times that of Britain and 5 times that of Australia, countries in which death penalty is notenacted. (AntiDeathPenalty.org). A survey from the files reported that in the year 2006,homicide rates of the top executing states are higher than in states without death penalty. Themurder rate in non-death penalty states has remained consistently lower than national averagethan in states with death penalty and the gap difference are up 42% since the 1990’s. The surveysuggests to many experts that the threat of the death penalty rarely deters criminals. Does thedeath penalty give increased protection against being murdered? This argument for continuationof the death penalty is most likely a deterrent, but it has failed as a deterrent. There is no clear evidence because empirical studies done in the 50’s by Professor Thorsten Sellin, (sociologist)did not give support to deterrence (McClellan, G., 1961). Innocent people can be convicted andif they do not have the power or any help to defend their side, then they can be murdered bydeath penalty just because they do not have sufficient evidence to present the jury.For people that supports and want to maintain the death penalty, they have some validreason to argue. An example is that criminals can escape jail. This can happen, but it is not oftenthat criminals can escape jail, in fact in 1998, the most recent year for which data are availablefrom the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 6,530 people escaped or were AWOL from state prisons.That was a little more than one-half of a percent of the total population of 1,100,224 state prisoners. (Suellentrop, 2001). And the numbers declined almost two percent. Fewer people haveescaped from state prisons every year since 1994, and the percentage of prisoners escaping or going AWOL has fallen steadily, too. In 1993, 14,305 prisoners escaped out of a prison population of 780,357. (Suellentrop, 2001). Compare the figures of staggering number of people
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