The death penalty, pretty intimidating words, no? It’s troubling to think that there are such crimes committed that warrant the perpetrator being put to death. While I believe in the death penalty, there are certain aspects that make me waiver in my position. Everyone knows the costs of keeping inmates in prison is extremely high, in the state of California, it costs an average of $47,000 per inmate, per year. Now that’s just for your everyday, run of the mill inmate. In California, the cost of keeping an inmate on death row is an additional $90,000 per year. As of April 2011, there were 717 death row inmates in California, and the average wait time for a death row inmate is 20 years. Do the math and you’ll see that death row inmates cost California an approximate $98,229,000 per year, and by the time those inmates are gone, they will have cost tax payers nearly two billion dollars. To think that one state is spending a hundred million dollars per year to support people that are already sentenced to death, is extraordinary. This approach would lead me to the question, why wait? If we have already deemed them deserving of the death penalty, why spend so much money per year housing them? Considering most, if not all, of that money comes from tax payers, California could certainly benefit from just killing the prisoners immediately. In fact, those hundred million dollars could help the economic catastrophe that California is currently experiencing with simple Direct Democracy. California has an estimated $26 billion dollar deficit because it allows residents to create their own laws. What’s happening in California is people are voting for it to be illegal to raise taxes, but also voting to increase spending on education. The problem here is that in order to increase spending on education, California must increase taxes, but they can’t. I think by clearing death row, California could help erase that deficit, and have money to spend on important things like education.
That being said, I also have to counter my argument. I couldn’t live with myself if I put an innocent man to death. There is no definite answer to how many innocent people have been killed from the death penalty, but the Northwestern University School of Law's Centre on Wrongful Convictions has documented 38 executions since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976 where there was very compelling evidence for innocence or very serious doubt about guilt. Over 130 death row inmates have been exonerated since 1973 due to new evidence as well as advances in technology relating to solving crimes, such as DNA analysis. Therefore it’s hard to justify the death penalty with such a large margin of error.
When reflecting on both arguments, I’ve come to the conclusion that I do agree with the death penalty, but under certain stipulations. With our current technology, it is much easier to collect evidence in support of, or against, a conviction. I think in order to be sentenced to death there must be either a confession or undeniable evidence proving conviction; the death sentence itself should be carried out in less than 30 days. If we believe beyond a doubt that somebody is deserving of execution it makes no sense to allow them to live for another 20 years at the expense of tax payers.
This blog post is an official entry for the <a href="http://www.joshuapondlaw.com/scholarship">Law Blogger’s Scholarship</a>, sponsored by The Law Office of Joshua Pond, <a href="http://www.joshuapondlaw.com/">http://www.joshuapondlaw.com</a>.
