Costs of Capital Punishment

     Having capital punishment in America is a great financial burden on society.  Costs of a capital trial are between ,000 and ,000.  Subtracting the cost of a non-capital murder trial (,000 from the median of these estimates) the total is ,000 to try each capital defendant.  Assuming that juries pass a death sentence in 80% of all capital trials, and the appeal courts will invalidate 30% of all death sentences, then 50% of all capital trials will result in an execution.  The cost of each execution (counting initial trial costs) is from ,000 to millions of dollars.

Murder Rate

     Capital punishment in U.S. society does not reduce the murder rate.  Our rate is three times as high as most other western industrialized nations.  In Canada, capital punishment did not reduce or stop the increase in the murder rate.The murder rate in Canada rose between 1962 and 1975 by 0.127 per year.  When parliament replaced the ineffective capital statute with a uniform and severe sentence for all premeditated murder, the increase in the murder rate stopped suddenly and declined.

Worldwide

     Effects of capital punishment worldwide are evident.  Arroyo, president of the Phillipines, lifted her moratorium on the death penalty.  Much pressure was put on the Philippines to resume executing death convicts because of an abundance of kidnap-for-ransom cases in metropolitan Manila.  In the 1800s Venezula, Portugal, Netherlands, Costa Rica, Brazil, and Ecuador ended the death penalty for all crimes.

      The Southern American states are the  the most active users of the death penalty, yet the murder rate has not decreased.  In fact, the murder rate increased by 2.1 percent.

The Wrongly Accused

     There is always the fear that an innocent person will be executed.  In a study by the Stanford Law Review done by Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet, they found 23 capital cases contained convictions with insufficient evidence.

     In Texas, Jesse Jacobs confessed to murder, and then recanted accusing his sister of the killing.  The prosecutor didn't believe Jacobs.  Jacobs had been previously sentenced to death and his sister sentenced to a prison term.  Jacob's conviction was on kidnapping and pistol whipping, which did not warrant the death penalty, yet he was executed.  With Jacobs executed and his sister in jail, two people were convicted for a crime only one could commit.  Texas killed an innocent man.

Reactions to Capital Punishment

     Many people form their own opinions on capital punishment.Some support it while others strongly oppose it. Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political activist and author against the death penalty.  Once a death row inmate, now on life imprisonment, he writes and speaks against capital punishment.

     Sister Helen Prejean is the founder of the Moratorium Campaign.  She gives talks and writes books about terminating the death penalty.  She wrote the famous book and now movie, Dead  Man Walking.