The Death Penalty 2 — страница 4

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or poor instead of rich. Ernest van den Haag wrote: “If and when discrimination occurs it should be corrected. Not, however, by letting the guilty blacks escape the death penalty because guilty whites do, but by making sure that the guilty white offenders suffer it as the guilty blacks do. Discrimination must be abolished by abolishing discrimination – not by abolishing penalties. However, even if…this cannot be done, I do not see any good reason to let any guilty murderer escape his penalty. It does happen in the administration of criminal justice that one person gets away with murder and another is executed. Yet the fact that one gets away with it is no reason to let another one escape.” A 1991 Rand Corporation study by Stephen Klein found that white murderers received

the death penalty slightly more often (32%) than non-white murderers (27%). And while the study found murderers of white victims received the death penalty more often (32%) than murderers of non-white victims (23%), when controlled for variables such as severity and number of crimes committed, there is no disparity between those sentenced to death for killing white or black victims. Also, doesn’t the fact that the death penalty is optional make it seem more prone to racial discrimination? It has been called racist since a prosecutor can seek a death sentence against an African-American for a capital crime but not a white person for the same offense. I never hear prisons called “racist” because they are mandatory for many crimes. If the death penalty were the same way, race

would be a non-issue and the courts would be forced to concentrate only on the crime committed, as it should be. For capital punishment to be applied equally to every criminal, rich or poor, black or white, it must be mandatory for all capital cases. Capital Punishment and its Costs: There’s a claim that it is more expensive for the state to execute a criminal than to incarcerate him for life. Many opponents present, as fact, that the cost of the death penalty is so expensive (at least $2 million per case?), that we must choose life without parole (”LWOP”) at a cost of $1 million for 50 years. Most likely, these pronouncements are entirely false. JFA (Justice for All) estimates that LWOP cases will cost $1.2 million – $3.6 million more than equivalent death penalty cases.

And life without parole prisoners face, on average, 30 or 40 years in prison while the annual cost of incarceration is $40,000 to $50,000 a year for each prisoner or more! There is no question that the up front costs of the death penalty are significantly higher than for equivalent LWOP cases. There also appears to be no question that, over time, equivalent LWOP cases are much more expensive – from $1.2 to $3.6 million – than death penalty cases. The death penalty costs reside mainly in appeals costs. Life without parole prisoners get the same appeals and should be considered to bear the same costs. Furthermore, the cost for justice does not have to be so high for the execution of murderers. If we only allowed appeals that are relevant in proving one’s innocence and

eliminated the many more that are used merely as delaying tactics, it would save millions in taxpayer dollars. In most cases, I don t think inmates sentenced to Death Row have a right to appeal at all. Maybe it sounds selfish, but I do not want any of my money going to keeping these murderers alive. The Constitutionality of Capital Punishment: Abolitionists claim that the death penalty is unconstitutional by quoting the eighth amendment which forbids “cruel and unusual punishment.” “Cruel and unusual” has never been defined by our founding fathers, but let’s examine the issue anyway. Where does the Supreme Court stand on the “cruel and unusual” claim of the abolitionists? In several cases the Justices of the Supreme Court have held that the DP is not cruel and/or

unusual , and is in fact, a Constitutionally acceptable remedy for a criminal act. In Trop vs. Dulles, Chief Justice Earl Warren, no friend of the death penalty, said: “Whatever the arguments may be against capital punishment, both on moral grounds and on grounds and in terms of accomplishing the purposes of punishment…. the death penalty has been employed throughout our history, and in a day when it is still widely accepted, it cannot be said to violate the conceptional concept of cruelty”. Indeed, the Supreme Court has constantly held that the death penalty in itself, as a sentence for a crime, is neither cruel or unusual. In another case of note, the court said: “The punishment of death is not cruel, within the meaning of that word as used in the Constitution. It