Essay --

English 103 Marla Allegre 20 November 2013 Abolishing the Death Penalty for Good One of the most controversial issues in the modern world concerns the acceptability of the death penalty. The death penalty is still exercised in many areas as a punishment for heinous crimes especially murder. Communities from the Europe and North America embrace the death penalty as a suitable punishment methodology and from 1608 to 2011 the United States has executed 14,489 people (Evans, Brian). The death penalty has come a long way from the firing squads that were used for the first recorded execution in 1608 of George Kendall for alleged espionage activity (Evans, Brian). However, pertinent issues concerning capital punishment are unlikely to be resolved soon due to the different justifications given by the different sides. Central issues of the death penalty revolve around the cost of the death penalty for the taxpayer’s verses life in prison, the errors that are made during criminal cases, and especially the argument that the death penalty does little to deter crime. Due to the economic crisis in the United States today death penalty opponents have formed their most successful argument yet-money. Just two states have abolished the death penalty in the past forty years, New Jersey in 2007 and New Mexico in 2009. The cost of capital punishment played a key role in both decisions, and is driving current legislative attempts to repeal the death penalty in a number of other states. The bittersweet reality is that money, not morality has become the reason for saving lives. In California, which houses the largest death row facility in the United States, it costs about $137 million annually to maintain the state’s capital punishment system (Lain,... ...me again that that is just not the case. In a time where the United States is in an economic crisis, it is time to start finding ways to cut budgets, and since the death penalty is a punishment that is rarely carried out, I believe that is a good place to start. Not only would we be saving billions of dollars in tax payer money, we would also cut down the rate of people falsely imprisoned on death row due to false testimony, new DNA test results or other new evidence. The claim that the death penalty deters crime can also be dismissed due to the fact that violent crime has been linked to the socioeconomic state of the country, not to the death penalty. If we abolish the death penalty we could use the billions of dollars we would save towards rebuilding the impoverished cities of our nation, and giving people with mental health issues the kind of care that they need.