Opposition to the Death Penelty
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Although many people believe that the death penalty is needed to deter crimes, supply retribution for murderers, and bring satisfaction to the victim's families, administering death is immoral, costly, a violation of the eighth and fourteenth amendments, and has room for error. An evil act like murder is not redeemed by another evil act of retaliation, execution in this case. Also, on average 4 innocent people each year are sent to death row and the cost of every execution is 3.2 million dollars (McAdams, 2002).
Supporters of the death penalty claim that the threat of executions prevents capital crimes more effectively than the threat of life imprisonment, even though it is shown that states with the death penalty do not have lower rates of criminal homicides than states without the death penalty. This claim seems valid, but there are a few reasons why the death penalty fails as a deterrent for capital crimes. First, only a small proportion of first- degree murders are sentenced to death, and even fewer are executed. Second, murders are either premeditated or not. In the cases where a crime is premeditated, the criminal usually concentrates on escaping arrest. The threat of execution is not going to prevent these murderers from killing because they think they are too clever to get caught...