Death Penalty -- Part One "The Death

Death Penalty -- Part One "The Death Penalty Costs Too Much" -- George Sjostrom: The arguments presented by Sjostrom follow other similar lines of argument by those who oppose the death penalty. He doesn't take the ethical line or the line that putting a criminal to death doesn't deter crime. He is concerned with dollars and cents. And he alludes to the emotional price society pays for putting a person to death.

It costs California taxpayers about $250 million to execute a felon (he bases that on the last 11 executions in California; it includes the cost of the trial, and the other long, drawn-out legal procedures, appeals, new trials) but it costs a lot less to just house a criminal who gets life without the possibility of parole. On top of the high cost of trial and legal fees, Sjostrom claims that there is a kind of "emotional purgatory" that the death penalty creates.

For the jury (they have to deal with the guilt of putting a person to death) and for the family of the felon, there are powerful emotions that cannot be denied. Sjostrom wants the death penalty in California to end. "The Death Penalty Does Not Cost Too Much" -- Jon Sorensen. In this essay the author is taking the opposite position that Sjostrom has taken. Sorenson asserts that there is "questionable math" involved in the arguments presented by Sjostrom and others.

He questions a study in the Dallas Morning News (that estimates a typical death penalty cases costs $2.3 million) and claims that in fact the cost of putting someone to death in Texas is about the same as keeping a prisoner incarcerated for 40 years. He says the claim that life imprisonment is cheaper than putting a felon to death is "intellectually dishonest" -- and insists that execution is "…less costly than warehousing a murderer for life" (198). He blames "death-penalty opponents" for driving up the costs of death penalty cases.

None of Sorensen's arguments have to do with ethics, morality, or emotional issues; he is a dollar and cents writer and he goes into great detail to point out how those who claim capital punishment is cheaper are wrong. "The Cost of the Death Penalty Outweighs Its Benefits to Society" -- Julie Delcour. This author points to the fact that state budgets are very tight (it is an era of "fiscal peril") and uses that as criteria to oppose the death penalty.

She mentions all the states that have abolished the death penalty (New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, and others) for the reason that it was very expensive and does not deter crime. The "financial impracticality of the system" is what makes it wrong, she writes (67). She basically rebuts Sorensen's arguments by saying that in Texas, a death penalty case costs "about $3 million, three times the cost of imprisoning an inmate for 40 years" (67).

And in North Carolina, there is reported to be a "$2 million difference between a death sentence and a life-without-parole sentence" (66). "The Death Penalty Is Essential, and its Cost is Irrelevant" -- Derek Schmidt. The title of this essay tells the reader just about everything that.