Economic View of the Death Penalty
In 1972, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty, as applied in three capital cases in the state of Georgia was "cruel and unusual punishment and in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. (Hastings and Johnson, 2001, paraphrased) A mere four years later the state of Georgia was once against before the Supreme Court in the case of Gregg v. Georgia, a case in which the decision handed down by the court found that the death penalty was in fact constitutional. (Hastings and Johnson, 2001, paraphrased) The objective of this study is to examine the practice of the death penalty from an economic perspective. Towards this end, this study will examine the literature in this area of study. According to a recent report there are several states considering abolition of the death penalty including the states of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and New Hampshire, all of which have "shifted the debate about capital punishment, at least in part, from morality to cost." (The Economist, 2009, p.1)
I. Costs of the Practice of the Death Penalty
The Economist reports that in a recent study conducted and reported by the Urban Institute, a think tank estimations stated are death the death penalty "cost Maryland's taxpayers $186m between 1978 and 1999." (2009, p.1) Various reports state that there is no evidence that the death penalty deters violent crimes. (Donohue and Wolfers, 2006; Economics Resource Center, 2003) The Report of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice reports the following facts:
( 1) Using conservative rough projections, the Commission estimates the annual costs of the present (death penalty) system to be $137 million per year.
( 2) The cost of the present system with reforms recommended by the Commission to ensure a fair process would be $232.7 million per year.
( 3) The cost of a system in which the...
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Capital Punishment Is Capital Punishment Cruel and Unusual? What is cruel and unusual punishment? Does the definition of cruel and unusual punishment change with time and changing social mores? Does the determination of whether or not a punishment is cruel and unusual depend on the crime committed, the criminal being punished, or both? These are all very important questions, which must all be examined before one can determine whether or not capital
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A good example is the 1985 murder of convenience store clerk Cynthia Barlieb, whose murder was prosecuted by a district attorney bent on securing execution for Barlieb's killer (Pompeilo 2005). The original trial and all the subsequent appeals forced Barlieb's family, including four young daughters, to spend 17 years in the legal process - her oldest daughter was 8 years old when Cynthia was first shot, and 25 when
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