| The Ghost of RubangB said: Against it for every reason. It costs more money to execute somebody than to imprison them for life, due to the amount of appeals necessary for death sentences. This is to try to avoid mistakes, which still happen. If they wanted to make it cheaper, they'd have to have fewer appeals, and make more mistakes. If they wanted to make it more efficient, and never accidentally kill anybody, it would cost much more money. So the best way to have the fewest accidental executions and save the most money is to ban the death penalty altogether. |
The exception is never the rule. We have DNA evidence nowadays, if we use it during the appeals process for the death penalty, then that is the death row prisoner's trump card. No dna evidence? You should have never been convicted.
I just don't like it when anti-death penalty advocates always argue from the logical fallacy "the exception is the rule" to try and dissuade public opinion on the issue. It is blatantly dishonest and in any system, death penalty or not, you will have innocent individuals behind bars. Getting rid of the death penalty will not rid the problem of wrongful convictions.
I agree with the appeals process eventhough it is long and expensive because we are ensuring due process with the amount of appeals and sheer time (10-20 years before executed) it takes to execute a prisoner on death row.
The problem with the appeals process is not enough money for the US courts to expediate the appeals process. If we, and I am favor of this, increased taxes to give the courts more money to speed up the appeals process, then we would not have the decades long cases of individuals such as Mumia Abu Jamal who should have been executed 2 decades ago.
