By: Madeleine Bartz
Capital punishment in the United States has been going on since the British brought it with them to the colonies. Approximately six in ten Americans support the use of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder, though support has been declining since reaching its all-time high point of 80% in 1994. But the death penalty shouldn’t continue to persist as a means of punishment because, moral complications aside, it simply isn’t practical. Why? Because the death penalty costs a whole lot of money, and states are finding it harder and harder to obtain the drugs used in lethal injection, despite their attempts otherwise.
The expense of capital punishment is greater than that of noncapital punishment, differing by how much from state to state. The majority of capital sentences are carried out in the South. According to Forbes Magazine, a the estimated cost of a death penalty case in Kansas was 70% more than the cost of a comparable non-death penalty case. Citing Richard C. Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, Fox reported that studies have “uniformly and conservatively shown that a death-penalty trial costs $1 million more than one in which prosecutors seek life without parole.” The facts don’t lie. There are countless other statistics that could be listed here, but the point is that the death penalty is a huge burden for obvious financial reasons.
The reasons for these cost discrepancies? According to Amnesty International, the greatest costs associated with the death penalty occur prior to and during the trial, and not in the post-conviction proceedings (appeals), which are, themselves, rather expensive. Even if all post-conviction proceedings were abolished, capital punishment would still be more costly than alternative sentences. The reason for this is that trials in which the prosecutor is seeking a death sentence have two separate and distinct phases: conviction (guilt/innocence) and sentencing. Special motions and extra time for jury selection typically precede such trials. In addition to this, when death penalty trials result in a verdict less than death or are reversed, taxpayers first incur all the extra costs of capital pretrial and trial proceedings, and must then also pay either for the cost of incarcerating the prisoner for life or the costs of a retrial (which often leads to a life sentence). That’s money coming out of the pockets of all the working folks of any place in the US trying to serve up a death penalty sentence. Tack onto that the costs of appeals, and the expense comes out to be a lot more than a non-death penalty case. For the simple matter of cold hard cash, capital punishment is simply impractical.
A second issue with the death penalty is the increasing difficulty in obtaining and properly administering the drugs necessary for lethal injection. This is due to the limited supplies of the ever-changing combinations of suitable drugs. Different states are employing different methods in an attempt to remedy this issue.
According to Manny Fernandez of the New York Times, prison officials in Texas and Virginia have improvised a short-term solution by trading drugs used in lethal injections. Ohio and Nebraska have tried to buy a drug no longer available in the United States from overseas, only to be told by the Food and Drug Administration that importing this drug is illegal. Many executions across the country have been delayed because of this, including Mississippi, where executions have been stayed for months over a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s three-drug protocol. The delay will stretch into next year, with a trial scheduled in July 2016.
Also occurring last year, Oklahoma stayed the execution of Richard E. Glossip, who was part of the challenge the Supreme Court had turned down, after officials realized two hours before it was to take place that the state’s supplier sent prison officials the wrong drug. Oops. Oh, and this error, which led to a stay of all executions, had occurred at least once before this particular instance. Oklahoma executed an inmate in January using potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride, which is required under its state protocol. The use of potassium acetate in January is part of an investigation the Oklahoma attorney general is conducting in the aftermath of Mr. Glossip’s postponed execution. Obviously, there are some serious issues with the drugs used for lethal injections, themselves, which are harder and harder to get in the US (pharmacists tend to want to give out drugs that save people, not kill them), and are generally illegal to import from overseas. And these are only a few instances of the wrong drug or an experimental drug going awry during an execution. Is it really worth all this trouble?
There is a simple solution to this problem. Replace the death penalty with life without parole. This has already been proven to be much more cost effective. And you don’t have to scramble about in a messy attempt to procure the right drugs to execute a person with this punishment, either. It’s a much more practical method of punishing persons convicted of murder, so it’s confusing as to why only nineteen states out of fifty have abolished the death penalty as a form of punishment.
Those vying for the death penalty might be inclined to disagree. They might argue that these people are bad, that they deserve to die. But that’s millions of dollars being used to kill them, millions of dollars that hard working taxpayers are footing the bill for, millions of dollars that could be put towards other, more worthwhile issues. It can’t be argued that not killing them would cost more, because it simply doesn’t. And with all of these appeals, one would think dragging it out would make life more difficult for the loved ones of the victim. That aside, it’s painfully obvious that the states are having trouble getting lethal injection drugs through legal means. In this modern world we live in, it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s harder to find drugs used to kill people. It’s illegal to get them overseas. And, however bad the person may be, with this scramble for drugs, the wrong ones have been used, and not just once. Is that not a violation of the eighth amendment in the Constitution, the sacred document we Americans hold so dear, that violates cruel and unusual punishment of prisoners? What will they do if this issue can’t be remedied? Throw caution to the wind and find whatever toxic substance seems least painful and use that? Hopefully not, but either way that’s a lot of trouble to be wasted on people so bad many think they deserve to die.
The United States has been carrying out capital punishment for a while now, and the facts show that the costs and the difficulties with execution are simply not worth it. Over two-thirds of the countries in the world-141-have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. I think it’s time we followed the rest of the world’s example. The simple solution would be life in prison without parole as punishment for murder. Notwithstanding the moral and racial injustices of the death penalty, capital punishment is just another burden for our nation’s people to bear.
