Dangers of the death penalty

The death penalty is a controversial and unnecessary method of punishment. For as long as people have been around, the death penalty has been used as a cruel and unusual punishment for crimes of all capacities. In recent years, the topic of the death penalty has been debated in Nebraska. Capital punishment should be abolished not just in Nebraska, but in the whole country as it’s an archaic and unfair method of punishment. 

There have been many cases throughout American history that have ended in the deaths or convictions of innocent people, simply because they weren’t able to prove their innocence. In this country, there have been 156 death row inmates that have been proven to be innocent since 1973.  Recently, in Nebraska 6 people were freed after being imprisoned for almost 20 years. They were coerced into pleading guilty for a crime they didn’t commit under the threat pf being executed. By even threatening the death penalty, 6 innocent people lost 20 years that they can never get back. If the death penalty was abolished, awful mistakes like this would not occur. They were threatened with capital punishment so that the stat could be spared the expense of a trial, and as a result innocent nebraskans lost two decades of their lives. As reparations for the wrongful imprisonment, those six were given $28.1 million dollars, but no amount of money can ever restore what they lost. There is no compensation for cases like that, and it is not worth it for both citizens and the state to maintain capital punishment while there is a possibility of such wrongful convictions. 

Furthermore, maintaining the death penalty is an extremely expensive burden on the state. In a study written by Ernest Goss, a Creighton University Economist, it is shown that the death penalty costs significantly more than putting a person in prison for a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Through his study, Goss showed that it costs Nebraska 14.6 million dollars a year to maintain capital punishment. He also concluded that every death penalty prosecutions costs $1.5 million more than a prosecution with life in prison without parole costs. Many avid supporters of the death penalty, including governor Pete Ricketts, argued that his study was inaccurate and biased. In response to their criticism, an economist at UNL  agreed with most of Goss’s estimates and validated their accuracy.  Not only is the death penalty ridiculously biased against the poor and other marginalized groups, but it places and unreasonable financial burden on the state.