Argumentative Essay: The Death Penalty Debate

The death penalty has been around for a long time, but most people don't think about it at all. In 2010 the U.S. had 14,000 homicides, however only 114 of those cases were given death sentences’. Of those 114, most of them were overturned by appeals, good layers, or the case was commuted by the state's governor. Only 46 executions took place that year. The death penalty used to be the electrocution but ever since 1976 lethal injection has become the more common choice. There are only two reasons that capital punishment is used; homicide, and rape of a small child. The death penalty is an old form of punishment, and it is very extreme, and does nothing except take the lives of more and more people. We, as a country, should abandon the death penalty, and just sentence criminals to life in jail without parole because it would stop the illegal import of execution drugs, keep dangerous criminals away from society, and
In reality, capital punishment is the more expensive and more complicated option when dealing with dangerous criminals who are guilty of crimes worthy of the death penalty. The other option is to sentence the guilty person to life in prison without parole. This option exists but is very retelly utilized in cases of such nature because the law requires that people guilty of homicide are to be executed. If the law didn't require that, we wouldn’t have to kill anyone else, and it would save a lot of taxpayer money. On average, sentencing a person to life in prison without parole, from age 18 to 100, would only cost about $1,886,000. Sentencing a person of any age to death costs an average of $3,017,000. The reason the death penalty is so expensive is because inmates are sent to a death row facility where they are housed, fed, and finally put to rest. The annual average cost of living in a death row facility is about