Final essay
Is America really taking the correct action towards first degree murderers and rapist? I believe some change is necessary; the death penalty should be legalized in all states. The United States should use the capital punishment because it is economical and has deterring effects. While life with no parole sentencing is a valid sentence, the death penalty is in public favor, ruled as constitutional, is humane, and allows convicts many opportunities to appeal.
Many people will claim that too many inmates are executed, the national death row currently has a population of 3726 criminals, and only 712 convicts have been executed since 1976. According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report and Bureau of Justice Statistics, approximately 560,000 murders and 358 executions have taken place from 1967 to 1996.
In comparison to life sentencing, the death penalty is far more economical as well. Life without parole costs $5.53 million per prisoner while death penalty costs only $1.91 million per prisoner. While immediate costs of capital punishment make it seem a more expensive punishment, the costs of life sentences greatly exceed them; factors such as increasing prison, medical, and geriatric costs add to costs of life without parole cases (www.prodeathpenalty.com).
Innocent people have not been executed either. Criminals on death row have been convicted of brutal, heinous crimes and murders and are not "model citizens." There has not been a case in which an inmate sentenced to death was found innocent postmortem. Inmates whose innocence is proven while imprisoned are released, an occurrence happening more often each year. Since 1973, 98 people have been released due to innocence (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org).
Also, some people who oppose capital punishment believe that executions are unequally applied to Caucasians and African-Americans. This is untrue because 46.14 percent of death row inmates are Caucasians (wwwl.ncpa.org/ea/eama87a.html)....