Preview

Death Penalty Is Becoming More Expensive By Maurice Chammah

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
273 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Death Penalty Is Becoming More Expensive By Maurice Chammah
In “Six Reasons the Death Penalty is Becoming More Expensive,” Maurice Chammah addresses the growth in the cost of capital punishment within the United States of America and the main factors that contribute to this growth. Chammah predominantly traces the growth to the unpredictability regarding the length and verdict of a trial. Many death penalty cases remain intact for a long time before a decision is finally reached, and sometimes, even once a guilty verdict is reached, a verdict of capital punishment can be reversed. When an appeals court reverses a death sentence the county faces the cost of an entire additional trial and another round of appeals. In a murder and robbery trial in Randall County, San Francisco, it’s estimated that the
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Summary: the Changing Nature of Death Penalty Debates.
    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Summary: the Changing Nature of Death Penalty Debates.

    In this paper, the authors examine how the death penalty argument has changed in the last 25 years in the United States. They examine six specific issues: deterrence, incapacitation, caprice and bias, cost innocence and retribution; and how public opinion has change regarding these issues. They argue that social science research is changing the way Americans view the death penalty and suggest that Americans are moving toward an eventual abolition of the death penalty.…

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Edward Koch And David Bruck's The Death Penalty
    • 564 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Edward Koch And David Bruck's The Death Penalty

    Is death the justification of a murder or are we merely subduing ourselves by performing the same heinous act? This argument had been debated for many decades and although some feel that death is the answer to a murder, there are others that find it completely barbaric. Through a careful analysis between Edward Koch's "Death and Justice" and David Bruck's "The Death Penalty", I believe Koch had the better argument in claiming that death is the justification of a murder. I feel that if someone were to kill another person, we have all rights to sentence them to a death penalty to guarantee such a horrific crime would not happen again.…

    • 564 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Bill Richardson Keeping The Death Penalty Summary
    • 1030 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Bill Richardson Keeping The Death Penalty Summary

    However, with necessary changes the death penalty can be a meaningful and just punishment. Richardson supports his decision of stopping the death penalty because he feels innocent lives are at stake if there is a mistake in the sentence of a person. However, according to Jeanne Woodford, the prosecuting attorney of Indiana, “there is no credible evidence to show that any innocent persons have been executed at least since the death penalty was reactivated in 1976”. Moreover, the article “A Message from the Prosecuting Attorney of Indiana” states that the most accurate judgment sentence in any system of justice ever created is death penalty. The death penalty judgment sentence has very little if any mistakes when it comes to sentencing the right person for a crime committed. Nevertheless, the death penalty is not perfect and is flawed in certain ways, such as the cost per prisoner, per year. The financial cost is staggering to take care of death row inmates. According to, the Report of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (2008) “The additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate. With California's current death row population of 670, that accounts for $63.3 million annually." However, this can be fixed by not…

    • 1030 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Analysis of Death and Justice, by Edward Koch
    • 1282 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Analysis of Death and Justice, by Edward Koch

    In his essay Death and Justice, Edward Koch argues in support of capital punishment, he believes it is just and it saves lives. He successfully delivers an argument laced with true and vivid examples of unforgettable murderous events. His intended audience consists of the opposing voters and readers of the New Republic, the political magazine that published his essay. Prior to reading Edward Koch’s essay I was sure that I would disagree but it became clear to me that he is right. There are seven commonly held views against the death penalty that Koch argues against in his essay. In what follows I discuss a few of his arguments and show that the death penalty is the most viable approach to deal with convicted murderers.…

    • 1282 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Why The Death Penalty Needs To Die Analysis
    • 171 Words
    • 1 Page

    Why The Death Penalty Needs To Die Analysis

    In his article Why The Death Penalty Needs To Die, Gillespie mentions that in California alone, $4 billion dollars was spent on administering death penalty cases between 1980 and 2012. That is a lot of money that was wasted on something so useless. In Here's Why We Need to Kill the Death Penalty, Senator Daylin Leach states how unaffordable it is to process, try, and carry out a death penalty sentencing. So much money is spent on the death penalty. Billions and billions of dollars are spent just to have the death penalty. The country is in debt enough as it is. The average case costs about $740,000. With cases that aim for the death penalty it costs around $1.26 million. It costs $90,000 dollars more in taxpayer money to manage a prisoner on…

    • 171 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Cost of the Death Penalty
    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Cost of the Death Penalty

    Costs and Consequences of the Death Penalty, written by Mark Costanzo, neatly lists reasons for opposition, and abolishment of, the death penalty. Costanzo provides a review of the history of the death penalty, a review of how the death penalty process is working today, questions on whether or not if the death penalty is inhumane and cheaper than life imprisonment. He also questions if the death penalty is fairly applied and the impact, if any, that it has on deterrence. He closely examines the public's support of the death penalty and questions the morality of the death penalty. Finally, Costanzo provides his own resolution and alternative to the death penalty. Each of these items allows the reader an easy, and once again, neat view of how the death penalty can work against out society rather than for it.…

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Essay On Wrongful Conviction In Texas
    • 457 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Essay On Wrongful Conviction In Texas

    Things like “aggressive use of the death penalty, wrongful convictions, and flawed evidence procedures” have sparked doubts in people about the Texas judicial system (Champagne & Harpham, 2015, p. 445).…

    • 457 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Death Penalty
    • 4048 Words
    • 17 Pages

    Death Penalty

    Thesis: Capital punishment is useless as a deterrent, morally indefensible, discriminatory in practice, and prone to errors that may have led to the execution of wrongfully convicted people. Its continuing legality in the United States is critically undermining American moral stature around the world. The Supreme Court should bring the United States in line with the rest of the civilized world and hold that death is a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Summary: The death penalty process consumes tremendous amounts of money and resources and fails to deter criminal activity. It is not uniformly applied geographically, and where it is allowed, it is used in an often arbitrary and racist manner. As a result, states have been curtailing the use of the death penalty, the Supreme Court has limited its application, and both death sentences and executions are down sharply. This is at odds with the recent efforts of some states to expand the range of capital crimes, and with national polls which still reflect a clear majority of Americans favor capital punishment. Meanwhile, momentum has been accelerating in the international community to abolish the death penalty, and the United States is increasingly criticized for failing to keep in step with other civilized nations in this area. Capital Punishment in the United States Since the 1977 resumption of capital punishment in the United States, nearly 1,100 convicted prisoners have been put to death in the thirty-eight US states where the practice remains legal. As of the beginning of 2007, approximately 3,350 people remain on death row in American prisons. In recent years, the evidence has shown that the death penalty process consumes tremendous amounts of money and resources and fails to deter criminals. FBI Uniform Crime…

    • 4048 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Essay On Cost Of Death Penalty
    • 611 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Essay On Cost Of Death Penalty

    Some believe if they ban the death penalty the state can save millions. There are claims that the death penalty is more expensive than life without parole. The expense of capital punishment and life without parole is very contentious issue. A study done by the Sacramento Bee, argued that California would save ninety million dollars per year if it were to abolish the death penalty. Many opponents presently say that the cost of the death penalty is so expensive, at least two million dollars per case and say that we must choose life without parole at a cost of one million dollars for fifty years. JFA (Justice for All) estimates that life without parole will cost one point two million dollars through three point six million dollars more than equivalent death penalty cases. Life without parole prisoners faces on average of thirty or forty years in prison while the annual cost of incarceration in forty thousand dollars to fifty thousand dollars a year…

    • 611 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Wrongful Convictions
    • 1783 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Wrongful Convictions

    Lately, there has been an increasing public awareness and significance of wrongful convictions in America. The growing awareness among policy makers and U.S. citizens have resulted mainly due to highly exposed post-conviction DNA exoneration of inmates who served lengthy prison sentences, as well as the growing eradication of the use of death sentence in America. Recent inquiries involving the likelihood of error in capital cases have further helped to create this growing attention - including a sense of urgency - to the problem. A recent study indicates that at least twenty-three innocent citizens have lost their lives through execution. Further research into the issue of errors, on cases filed between 1973 and 1995, indicate that, nearly seven in every ten, capital sentence cases had serious reversible errors, indicating the possibility of numerous cases of wrongful executions and convictions. Although; the errors usually result in numerous wrongful convictions, most do not face life in prison or the death sentence. However, these errors often lead to inmates’ wasting many of their productive years behind bars although it is not warranted. Even as, this happens, the real offenders remain among the public, and are free to commit further crimes, thus posing as a threat to public safety. This paper mainly focuses on wrongfully convicted inmates, particularly those on death row (Huff & Killias, 2010).…

    • 1783 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Reducing Death Penalty Costs
    • 1764 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Reducing Death Penalty Costs

    In this paper, I will be evaluating the death penalty in the United States and ways that costs can be cut to make it much more of a viable option. "Using conservative rough projections, the Commission estimates the annual costs of the present system $137 million per year (California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, 2008). What does an individual death row inmate get for millions of tax payers’ dollars you ask? This includes; housing, garments, meals, health care, mental care, pre-trial and trial, unlimited appeals and petitions. I think that the limit for appeals at the state level should be only 3 appeals and 2 at the federal level. If an inmate knew how many state and federal appeals they had before they were done, we wouldn’t see a waste of appeals on frivolous things. This would cut legal costs and free up the courts dockets a little more by not allowing death row inmates to appeal over every little thing.…

    • 1764 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Death Penalty vs Life Sentence Essay Example
    • 1150 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Death Penalty vs Life Sentence Essay Example

    Life in prison has proven to be more economical than the death sentence, so why are so many states practicing capital punishment? It is illogical to even consider because of the financial ramifications the death sentence cultivates. Some argue that their hard- earned money is being used to afford criminals ‘privileges’ such as three square meals, shelter a yard full of toys for recreation and medical care when sick but the costs of all these do not nearly compete with the cost of putting someone to death. According to a recent study done by the Urban Institute on March 6th 2009, the lifetime costs to taxpayers for each capitally prosecuted case has proven to be 1.9-3 million US dollars more than the lifetime sentence. This is so because the process of putting someone on death row requires endless appeals, investigations, incarceration costs, additional required procedures, and all the bureaucracy that drags out the process. Judges, court reporters, attorneys and court facilities are…

    • 1150 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Death Penalty Research Paper
    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Death Penalty Research Paper

    The death penalty has been a controversy for many years, the question being if it’s ethical or not. The death penalty has been used for many years, and has been applied to different crimes. Recently, there has been a spike in abolishing the death penalty.…

    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    death penalty research paper
    • 771 Words
    • 4 Pages

    death penalty research paper

    Capital punishment, or death penalty, is a very controversial topic for the last decades. Capital punishment is a punishment by way of killing an offender. Death penalty is an inappropriate form of punishment that infringes constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantees of due process of law and of equal protection under the law. Supporters of death penalty argue that it has led to the unjustly sentence of prisoners, that it incites capital crimes, that it does not deter criminals more than life in prisoning, that is against the God’s commandments, and that it discriminates against minorities.…

    • 771 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Capital Punishment
    • 1663 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Capital Punishment

    This study looks to explore how capital punishment has had a positive or negative affect on our justice system. Some states enforce capital punishment within their state lines, and some do not. However, the states that do enforce it hardly ever do so, only in some rare instances. Crimes rates in the states vary with some being high and others remaining at a steady rate. Its no question that the death penalty does have a major impact when it is enforced, but our ethics in the United States, and in our citizen’s minds, chooses to lean towards the life sentence path. Some believe the death penalty does play a relevant part in our justice system because it allows closure for the victim’s families, and saves money by not having to provide care for the prisoner in jail. With the use of capital punishment, we could possibly reduce crimes rates, and deter crime in the states that enforce it, but at what cost would it be to us? The aim is to look at how attitudes towards the death penalty vary in New Mexico, and see if crime has been deterred by capital punishment, how cost effective it is to us, and if its possible that with the use of capital punishment we may kill an innocent victim?…

    • 1663 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More

Related Topics