Capital Punishment

Essay by jayanithaHigh School, 12th gradeA+, May 2006

download word file, 6 pages 3.0

The topic I chose for my research paper is capital punishment. I chose this topic because; this is one of the hot political issues around the world today. Capital Punishment has been in the national spotlight for many years and the center of the debate and it still remains a hot issue. I think capital punishment should be abolished because it violates religious beliefs about killing, cost so much money, inhumane and show no respect to God's creations. Furthermore, I'd say that capital punishment is wrong in every respect. It neither prevents crime nor justly punishes the worst of criminals. United Nations Committee, after extensive research, found that, "the data which now exist show no correlation between the existence of capital punishment and the lower rates of capital crime." Actually, society is worse off because of the institution of capital punishment. We are worse off financially, morally, and paradigmatically. Financially speaking, capital punishment is unfavorable to society.

California spends an average of $90 million a year on capital punishment, Florida spends $3.2 million per executed prisoner, and in Texas the cost per case is $2.3 million, but this is still three times the cost of keeping a criminal in maximum-security prison for forty years.

A strong argument used against capital punishment is the possibility of mistakes. Wrongful convictions in Canada have had a high profile including five different cases. "David Milgaard was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1969 murder of Gail Miller, a Saskatoon nursing aide. David spent 22 years in prison, The Supreme Court set aside Milgaard's conviction in 1992, and he was cleared by DNA evidence in 1997. The Saskatchewan government awarded Milgaard $10 million to try and compensate for 22 years of his life gone to waste." If David was in the United States, he would...