Youth Forum: Death penalty expensive, ineffective and risks innocent lives

By Jesslyn Dhillon / For The Herald

How would you feel if one of your loved ones were wrongly sentenced to death?

The death penalty carries the inherent risk of executing an innocent person. Since 1973, at least 200 people who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated. For every 8 people executed in the United States, 1 person is wrongfully sentenced to death. The death penalty system costs California $137 million per year, while a system with lifelong imprisonment as the maximum penalty would cost $11.5 million. My position on the death penalty is we should no longer have it for three reasons: the cost difference with death penalty and imprisonment for life and how the death penalty does not change the crime rates and how there are people wrongly sentenced, and they must pay with their life.

The death penalty system cost California around $137 million per year before its current moratorium, while a system with lifelong imprisonment as the maximum penalty would cost $11.5 million, an almost 92 percent decrease in expense. That means the death penalty is significantly more expensive than life without parole. Since death penalty is also a more expensive option would you not want to do the cheaper option to save the state money, and it would also save the wrongly accused people. An almost 92 percent decrease in expense the statistics are lower but comparable across other states, including Kansas, Tennessee, and Maryland. Even in other states the price still is comparable across all the states that have the death penalty. Therefore, is there a point in having the death penalty if it cost so much more then lifelong imprisonment. Does the death penalty make less people commit serve crimes?

States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than states without such laws. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “There is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment.” States that have abolished capital punishment show no significant changes in either crime or murder rates. The author of the analysis, Robert Dunham, stated, “It seems absurd to even have to say it out loud, but individuals who are in the throes of emotional crisis are not engaging in the rational assessment of consequences required for a deterrent to deter.”

In fact, 24 of the 30 deadliest mass shootings since 1976 occurred in states with the death penalty. People argue that how the death penalty makes it so less crimes are committed but from the evidence I found they might need a new solution. would you feel if someone you are close to gets sentenced to death and they did nothing wrong, yet they are still the one paying the price?

14-year-old George Stinney Jr. was forced to confess to killing two girls with a 15-inch piece of iron and leaving their lifeless bodies in a ditch. Later he was executed after an all-white male jury found the Black boy guilty of murdering the two white girls. The Clarendon County trial lasted a day, deliberations just 10 minutes. No appeals were filed, no stays requested, and 53 days later, Stinney was killed in Columbia on June 16, 1944, the youngest person legally executed in the U.S. that century.

Judge Carmen Mullen listened to Stinney’s younger siblings 60 years later, and vacated his conviction. If Stinney’s younger siblings would have stayed to help him fight the case, he might have never been executed that day. One report says, “The first 2,400-volt of electricity shooting through Stinney’s body caused the death mask that covered his face — which, again, was made for an adult — to slip off, revealing the teen’s tear-stained face to those witnessing the execution.” It took 4 minutes and three jolts of electricity to kill him. You would think if a kid were so small that he cannot even fit in the electrode built for an adult that they would wait till he has at least grown up and if they would have waited, he would have lived.

With all this information it can show that the death penalty is not the best option of punishment. I showed that the death penalty cost more than a life sentence which is a waste of money. Also, crime rates are not going down so this method is not working how it should so we should try and find a new solution. There are children and adults who get their life taken and some of those lives were wrongly taken and the families could do nothing about it. The death penalty should not be used anymore.