Term Papers on When Society Kills

Term Paper Title	When Society Kills
# of Words	923
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.69

When Society Kills

By Megan

Capital punishment is not "actual" punishment. It's a capital reaction to a type of criminal act. It serves no purpose. When a person is executed, the person learns no lesson. He or she cannot say, "Hey! I learned my lesson. I surely won't do that again," for he or she is dead.

Although the word "punishment" is used in varying contexts, it is generally accepted that it is served out unpleasantly to an individual in hopes that that person learns from the punishment and, therefore, doesn't repeat the bad deed.

Good grief... So, why execute? The question is one of justification. It is wrong to deliberately kill another person, yet capital punishment (or "killing") consists of doing precisely this.

Cost of the Death Penalty

Capital punishment in California, as in every other state, is more expensive than a life imprisonment sentence without the opportunity of parole. These costs are not the result of frivolous appeals but rather the result of Constitutionally mandated safeguards that can be summarized as follows:

Juries must be given clear guidelines on sentencing, which result in explicit provisions for what constitutes aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Defendants must have a dual trial--one to establish guilt or innocence and if guilty a second trial to determine whether or not they would get the death penalty. Defendants sentenced to death are granted oversight protection in an automatic appeal to the state supreme court.

                    These constitutional safeguards translate into:
                         a more extensive jury selection procedure
                         a four fold increase in the number of motions filed
                         a longer, dual trial process
                         more investigators and expert testimony
                         more lawyers specializing in death penalty litigation
                         and automatic, mandatory appeals

Since there are few defendants who will plead guilty to a capital charge, virtually every death penalty trial becomes a jury trial with all of the above necessary requirements and expenses. In Los Angeles County, the total cost of capital punishment is $2,087,926. In Los Angeles County, the total cost of life imprisonment without possibility of parole is $1,448,935.

General Studies

A study done by the Sacramento Bee argued that California would save $90 million per year if it were to abolish the death penalty. The average cost of a capital trial in Texas is $2.3 million--three times the cost to incarcerate an individual for 40 years. The average cost of a capital trial in Florida is $3.2 million.

Myths and Facts

Deterrence
Scientific studies have consistently failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime. The respected Thorsten Sellin studies of the U...

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