With the recent activity in the political sphere, it appears many politicians are dying to get capital punishment banned at the federal level in the United States. In light of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's decision to repeal capital punishment in New Mexico, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., is re-introducing legislation to eliminate the death penalty in the United States, a policy already in place in Wisconsin. In fact, Wisconsin has only executed one inmate in its 160-year history. New Mexico became the 15th state to outlaw capital punishment and the third state in the last two years to do so after New Jersey and New York.
However, it is easy to see why the bill's timing could be considered horrible at best. America finds itself in a painful economic recession, and prisons are already seeking to scale back on inmate counts in any way possible. Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle included releasing inmates early in his proposed budget as a means to save $40,000 per inmate per year. Eliminating capital punishment would mean lifetime care for any and all inmates who commit the heinous crime of murder, creating a financial burden upon the state. However, fiscal reasoning should not be our guiding light on this issue, and in many cases the death-penalty systems are an even bigger financial burden than forcing lifetime sentences.
Capital punishment is an ideological dinosaur, a product of centuries-old belief in eye-for-an-eye, that every action requires equal retribution and punishment. Capital punishment is also a barbaric and narrow-minded approach from a justice standpoint, especially when you have a justice system as imperfect as ours. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 130 inmates from 26 states have been cleared from death row by new information or evidence that cleared them of guilt since 1973.
In California, a report by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice found that their current death-penalty system would lead to an estimated cost of $137 million annually. If the state switched to lifetime incarceration for their inmates on death row and banned executions, the estimated cost would be $11.5 million per year. Granted, California's inordinately large number of death-row inmates, now around 670 prisoners, inflates the disparity a bit, but it still demonstrates how much more a death-row system costs for a state.
Feingold backs up his report with some shocking facts as well. Already, 123 countries have banned capital punishment, and in 2007, only Iran, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia executed more inmates than the United States. America is also the only industrialized western nation still utilizing execution as a form of punishment.
In addition, with newer and better improvements in forensic science, investigators will have increased power to comb old evidence and information against those accused of murderous acts, allowing more post-conviction mistrials. With the changing dynamic of DNA evidence and new technology, allowing capital punishment is simply too risky of endeavor.
Capital punishment, if ever used, should only be allowed in cases in which the inmate has no desire to carry on their sentence out of guilt or personal anguish. Such a provision will ensure that even the lifetime sentence is not also considered ""cruel and unusual"" in nature.
America prides itself on liberty, justice and equality, yet capital punishment jeopardizes all three. Repealing the death penalty would not legitimize the act of killing, but rather acknowledge the fact that our justice system is yet to be perfect and America will strive to protect its citizens to the very end of their lives.
Jon Spike is a junior majoring in secondary education in English. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
