The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty

In the article “ The Case Against the Death Penalty “ , that appears in Crime and Criminals, by Eric Freedman argues that the death penalty not only doesn’t deter violent crimes but works against reducing the crime rate. Freedman states, “The death penalty not only is useless in itself, but it’s also counterproductive. “ This essay will analyze Freedman’s article from the viewpoints of a middle class working taxpayer, a person of lesser means, and a politician. Freedman argues that the death penalty does nothing to prevent crime from happening, his article argues that states that have the death penalty have crime rates that are just as high or if not higher opposed to the states that don’t have the death penalty. It also says that criminal cases in which the death penalty is requested are much more expensive to try than criminal cases that don’t have the death penalty, which denies funds that could go to programs targeted to reduce or help prevent crimes from taking place.

A middle class working person that pays taxes could possibly agree with freedman’s point of view with relation to the financial aspect of the death penalty since freedman talks about how the death penalty costs much more than having an inmate stay in prison for life without being executed. According to freedman the cost to have an inmate on death row and have him or her executed is roughly around $ 3.2 million dollars which is nearly six times more than to just house an inmate for life. Most would think it would the other way around, but it’s not. So why have the death penalty if it costs so much and it’s the tax payers who are paying for it, many of these tax payers don’t realize what goes into having an inmate on death row waiting to be executed, there’s the pre-trial, the actual trial, the gathering of evidence, the jury, the appeals process that’s if they appeal it because the inmate didn’t like the first verdict they received and the continued housing of the inmate. I didn’t know all that I thought it would be cheaper to execute than to sit. I didn’t know it was that expensive to execute someone. I’m almost certain that if the taxpayers knew that they would rather have their tax dollars be used to fund programs that would help prevent crimes from happening.

Now let’s look at a person of lesser means, the person who can’t afford a high price legal team. These people would probably agree with freedman simply for the fact that they don’t have money for a decent attorney, thus they get the inedible privilege of having a court appointed attorney a.k.a public defender or to many public pretenders. The inmate that gets sentenced to death row might feel as if they are or were being singled out or being discriminated against and only received the death penalty because they don’t have the money to afford a decent attorney, well they may think that after the verdict