Is Capital a Bad Public Policy

Hanging, the firing squad, the gas chamber, the electric chair, lethal injection; these are some present methods of the death penalty. Capital punishment has been used in America for a long time, and has always presented conflicts. There are many groups that protest capital punishment, and there are many groups that are for it. The controversies it presents have to do with the cost, if it is humane, or if it is moral. With all of these problems taken into consideration, it is clear to anyone that capital punishment is the wrong choice. Capital punishment has proven to neither deter criminals, neither directly reduce crime rate nor even rightfully punish rebellious members of society. Rather, capital punishment has cost the American people millions of dollars in maximum-security prisons and executions, wrongfully sentenced innocent men and women, and blatantly gone against the eighth amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
Every convicted felon waiting on death row costs the American people over nine million dollars yearly to imprison. Such an absurd amount of money should be spent on the rehabilitation of these troubled individuals rather than in prolonging their lives only for their own demise. Before reverting to the early philosophy of Hammurabi “an eye for an eye” America should look to its own foundation, the constitution, as well as compare the costs and benefits of such a policy being legal. Despite enormous protections offered by the federal and states constitutions throughout the United States, many people have been executed in spite of evidence of their innocence. When capital punishment is concerned, most Americans believe our criminal system is close to infallible. Many assume that if factual errors do occur at trial, they will be discovered and corrected by higher courts. People believe that the innocent are rarely wrongly convicted and they are certainly not executed. Unfortunately, there is a large numbers of innocents people who