Society has always used punishment to discourage would-be criminals from unlawful action. Since society has the highest interest in preventing murder, it should use the strongest punishment available to deter murder, and that is the death penalty. If murderers are sentenced to death and executed, potential murderers will think twice before killing for fear of losing their own life.

For years, criminologists analyzed murder rates to see if they fluctuated with the likelihood of convicted murderers being executed, but the results were inconclusive. Then in 1973 Isaac Ehrlich employed a new kind of analysis which produced results showing that for every inmate who was executed, 7 lives were spared because others were deterred from committing murder. Similar results have been produced by disciples of Ehrlich in follow-up studies.

People in support of capital punishment say that if it were carried out as it was intended then it would prove to stop crime as it was intended, but instead not many p

People against the death penalty feel that it is cruel and an inhuman taking of life, but the people in support of the death penalty feel it is more humane than rotting in jail for his/her life because, it is quick and instantaneous (Alcorn 2001).

Public defense expenditures reached 16.4 billion in 1990, which breaks down to about seven thousand per capita for each case tried in public defense costs alone. This is for spending on public defense but they could also be deduced by limiting appeals by death row inmates.

The average time a death row prisoner spends in jail or prison is nine and a half years. This is more economical then keeping prisoners for a full life sentence. The twenty two thousand a year plus cost of execution plus construction during the average nine and a half years equals approximately six hundred and ninety thousand. A person serving a life sentence for 60 years would cost taxpayers four million five hundred and sixty thousand for cost to keep them in jail and construction during the time spent in jail. Even if prisoners were only in jail or prison for twenty years it would cost taxpayers approximately one million five hundred and twenty thousand. Limited appeals would save taxpayers money due to reduced court and imprisonment fees. Ted Bundy, a recent death row inmate, stayed on death row for ten years and cost Florida taxpayers over six million dollars.

Besides, many of the claims of innocence by those who have been released from death row are actually based on legal technicalities. Just because someone's conviction is overturned years later and the prosecutor decides not to retry him, does not mean he is actually innocent.

Although the victim and the victim's family cannot be restored to the status which preceded the murder, at least an execution brings closure to the murderer's crime (and closure to the ordeal for the victim's family) and ensures that the murderer will

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