Cost of the Death Penalty

Costs and Consequences of the Death Penalty, written by Mark Costanzo, neatly lists reasons for opposition, and abolishment of, the death penalty. Costanzo provides a review of the history of the death penalty, a review of how the death penalty process is working today, questions on whether or not if the death penalty is inhumane and cheaper than life imprisonment. He also questions if the death penalty is fairly applied and the impact, if any, that it has on deterrence. He closely examines the public's support of the death penalty and questions the morality of the death penalty. Finally, Costanzo provides his own resolution and alternative to the death penalty. Each of these items allows the reader an easy, and once again, neat view of how the death penalty can work against out society rather than for it.
Costanzo concludes there are four trends throughout the history of the death penalty. First, he believes there has been a dramatic shrinking in the number and types of crimes punishable by death. At one point in early colonial times, he argues that there were over fifty crimes fit for death, including vagrancy and petty theft. He believes there is a trend that attempts to lessen the cruelty of executions. Through the tests and reviews of past methods of killing, each one gets a little more "humane", as the Supreme Court puts it. The third trend mentioned attempts to make the death penalty imposed fairly and rationally. Through the revised process of how it is imposed, to the choice of death in the jury's deliberations, there have been drastic changes in how we chose the use this method of punishment. Lastly, the fourth trend is the sanitizing of executions (conducted late at night and using well-defined and specialized procedures). Although this may run side by side with the revision of the death penalty process, Costanzo explains that there is a difference between the reasons why we chose the death penalty in cases, which is the revision discussed in