Capital punishment is punishment by death for committing a crime. Since the early 1800s, most executions have resulted from convictions for murder. The death penalty has also been imposed for other serious crimes such as armed robbery, kidnapping, rape and treason. People disagree about whether capital punishment is moral or is effective in discouraging crime. Questions that are most often argued when discussing capital punishment fall into three categories: Does capital punishment save money? Does capital punishment strike fear into offenders, saving innocent lives by deterring would-be killers? What does capital punishment mean to an innocent person wrongly accused?Capital punishment definitely does not save money. It actually cost more than any other penalty. Dan Cutrer has used tow Texas counties to quote estimated costs of capital trials as compared to non-capital trials. These counties estimated the cost of a capital trial between $400,000 and $600,000. When the cost of a non-capital trial, which is around $75,000, is subtracted from the cost of the capital trail, the median of the two estimates is $425,000 to try each capital defendant. Assume that the juries will pass a death sentence in 80% of all capital trials, and the appeal courts will continue to over turn about 30% of all death sentences. This means that about 50% of all capital trials will result in an actual execution. The actual cost of each execution, counting only the initial trial costs, comes at $850,000. Therefore, capital punishment does cost more than any other penalty exacted by the criminal justice system. Even these estimates, which reflect only the cost of the original trials, and not appeals, death row housing, or execution cost, prove that capital punishment does not save money (Capital).The idea that capital punishment discourages or prevents criminals from committing crimes is based on a simple assumption that most people fear death. Th...
