Conclusion

This article is great because it brings all of the death penalty together. It shows how the proportion of blacks that are tried for execution that get killed are much much higher than the proportion of whites that are tried and executed. It also shows how expensive execution is. In California alone it costs tax payers 114 million dollars a year more than if the inmates were to be granted life in prison without parole. It also shows that the southern states use the death penalty much more than the rest of the nation. There have been over 1000 killings in the southern region and the second highest is the Midwest with only 144. Therefore, using this data I have come to the conclusion that the death penalty should not be used as a punishment for capital crimes. Originally I thought that it would help keep the cost of keeping the inmates in jail down, but then I learned that in order to execute the defendant you would need to go through more trials which is much more expensive. Then there is the cost of the execution itself. I also thought that with all of these appeals that the chance of a person being killed that was innocent was very minimal. However, I did not think about how bad the representation that was given by the state could be. The attorneys are so bad that some do not even mention the defendants name in the court case. I do not think that these people deserve a second chance to go live on the street or have parole, but I do believe that we should not kill them so that if evidence comes up that proves their innocence then they could be released. As long as the justice system is as unjust as it is today, there is no way that the death penalty should be in use for it kills people that do not deserve to be killed just because they cannot afford proper representation.