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I think most Americans don't realize how expensive the death penalty is, and IME when you explain it to them, their response is usually something like, "Well they should just shoot them, bullets are cheap." People are more inclined to see the expense of the death penalty as government inefficiency that needs to be fixed, rather than a reason to get rid of it.
In other words,
Surely there's more to it than most Americans just being blood thirsty monsters, right?
No.
Can you explain why its so expensive? Not how but why
Why is the death penalty so expensive?
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Legal costs: Almost all people who face the death penalty cannot afford their own attorney. The state must assign public defenders or court-appointed lawyers to represent them (the accepted practice is to assign two lawyers), and pay for the costs of the prosecution as well.
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Pre-trial costs: Capital cases are far more complicated than non-capital cases and take longer to go to trial. Experts will probably be needed on forensic evidence, mental health, and the background and life history of the defendant. County taxpayers pick up the costs of added security and longer pre-trial detention.
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Jury selection: Because of the need to question jurors thoroughly on their views about the death penalty, jury selection in capital cases is much more time consuming and expensive.
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Trial: Death-penalty trials can last more than four times longer than non-capital trials, requiring juror and attorney compensation, in addition to court personnel and other related costs.
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Incarceration: Most death rows involve solitary confinement in a special facility. These require more security and other accommodations as the prisoners are kept for 23 hours a day in their cells.
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Appeals: To minimize mistakes, every prisoner is entitled to a series of appeals. The costs are borne at taxpayers’ expense. These appeals are essential because some inmates have come within hours of execution before evidence was uncovered proving their innocence.
Genuinely how would ending the death penalty change those? Those are all costs of the court case, which still has to happen for the same crime. That's not the cost of the death penalty
The fact that we spend so much money to ensure no one is unfairly sentenced to the death is not a reason to keep the death penalty. It is cheaper to house an inmate for life than to go through the legal process of charging them with death.
And even then people get unjustly sentenced to death, like, all the fucking time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmates#United_States
Yes, but people are granted additional recourse to appeal when they're sentenced to death, and the total costs end up being more than life in prison.
This is the part where the bloodthirsty monsters respond, "Well, bullets are cheap, just shoot them."
I don't see how life in prison is more just than death. Not everyone is a bloodthirty monster for having a different perspective than you.
So your argument for how the death penalty being more expensive , from what youve told me, is that people facing the death penalty are given MORE legal representation than someone charged of the same crime without the death penalty. That doesn't give me confidence in your goal.
Bruv the goal is telling you the plain fact that it costs a dramatically greater amount of money for the state to murder someone than to put them in a cage indefinitely. What is your goal?
And life in prison isn't more just. Nothing the American carceral system does is justice. But if you're alive then at least it gives you time to prove that the cops who fingered you were lying about everything and try to get a new trial. Though even that doesn't work sometimes thanks to our august and venerable supreme court.
Give us your actual views instead of this boring devil's advocate shtick. Have some courage.
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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