The Death Penalty: Is It Really Worth It?

I am a former believer of the death penalty. The way I saw it, that person deserved to die based off of the crime they committed and we could save money by not having to feed and house them for the next 60-something years of their lives. Now, I've changed my mind.

People think that it's only fair to kill the criminal, so they don't have to spend the rest of their lives in a prison. To me, that's taking the easy way out for the person. We think that there's nothing worse than death, but we're wrong. Dying is a lot easier than pondering over what you've done. If we're really bent on punishing the person, we should make them think about what they've done rather than killing them.

Something else that really bothers me about the death penalty is that a lot of the people that were found guilty didn't have a decent trial and/or the investigation done on the case was done horribly. Many people that commit a crime that's worthy of capital punishment, are from the working class and probably can't afford a decent criminal attorney. Chances are, they'll have to use one of the government's defense attorneys (who as we all know are overworked enough as it is) and go up against a kick-ass prosecutor hired by the opposing side. This shows a two-tiered justice system that isn't fair and just whatsoever. Also, the person who committed the crime probably didn't have a very fair investigation done on the crime. Take the Troy Davis Case: the person who was the main witness should have been treated like a suspect since he was there when the crime was committed. Now he's thought to be the one who committed the crime rather than just a witness. That means we killed the wrong person. We (obviously) can't revoke the punishment since Troy Davis is dead. If we had just given him life without parole, he could've had a retrial and maybe been found innocent. But sadly, all of this can't happen because of the death penalty.

The last thing that I previously liked about captial punishment, is the fact that we "saved" money by killing the person rather than pay for their hotel stay in prison. I'm a cheapskate by nature; it's just pure instinct, so whenever I read how much the government spends each year, I have a miniature heart-attack. I used to think a way to cut corners for the government was to use the death penalty. Boy, was I wrong. In Colorado, it's been found that cases that deal with the death penalty are in court six times more in days than cases that deal with life without parole. Another study in California found that when keeping a prisoner on death row, they spend $90,000 more each year than if they just had kept that prisoner in a maximum security prison on the sentence of life without parole. After reviewing the facts, my inner cheapskate prefers getting rid of the death penalty.