Can capital argument be justified? Catherine Ross argues that is cannot from a moral, financial and societal perspective.
┬áMoral arguments against the death penalty are obvious and compelling; ‘it is wrong to kill people,’ is a good start, ‘could you do it?’ is better, ‘turn the other cheek,’ defines an entire faith, with nearly every other modern religion advocating similar views on forgiveness. These phrases are well known to the point of being over used, but one of the most elementary and least examined reasons against the death penalty is simply its staggering cost.
The state of California was among many to reinstate the death penalty in the last century, it did so in 1978, since that date the state executed only 13 people in 34 years but somehow racked up a confounding cost of over four billion dollars, meaning each execution cost the taxpayer $300 million. To reiterate, $300 million dollars was spent on the execution of one man. Money that could have been put into the police system to stop more murders, or into the health care to prevent further deaths or even university fees, instead it was wasted on one criminal. Conversely it only costs $50,000 a year in California to imprison a man, meaning the inmate would have to live for over six thousand years for the to cost equalise. The finical benefits (especially in times of austerity) of life imprisonments must be taken into account. Morality can and will be debated endlessly with one side never completely agreeing or acquiescing to the other. Cold hard financial facts, however, cannot be questioned. It is finically as well as morally beneficial to society not to execute murderers.
Moving into dangerous moral territory, since its reinstatement in 1978 the state of California has also exonerated three men after spending a collective fifty-seven years behind bars, the pain and emotional suffering of these three men is unimaginable and completely undeserving. Imagine how terrifying years in prison would be with the grim spectre of death looming over you. The fact that over 140 people have been posthumously exonerated after being wrongly sentenced to death in the United States only adds gravitas to the arguments against the death penalty. Their lives cannot be brought back, if they had been sentenced to life imprison they would at least get the chance to start again and rebuild.
In the wake of the horrific murder of five year old April Jones and two female police officers in Manchester much of the British public have justly reacted with outrage and called for justice for their murderers but justice and revenge do not equate to one another, their executions will not bring the dead back to life and could tragically be the end of another innocent person’s life.
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