The Cost of the Death Penalty

With the recent sentencing of Zacarias Moussaoui a self confessed Al-Qaeda operative who knew about and alledgely helped plan the attacks of September 11, 2001, I began looking at the cost of the death penalty. I was always under the impression that one of the “benefits” to the death penalty was that it was cheaper than keeping these people in prison for the rest of their life. Over the years my opinion of the death penalty has waviered and I still am not sure about the moral side of the debate, however after stumbling across this wesbite (linked above) I am more frustrated with the judicial system. The death penalty is costing our country and it is costing us (as a country and on a local level) a lot of money, that could be used for far more beneficial purposes. The article that I have found said, “For the states which employ the death penalty, this luxury comes at a high price. In Texas, a death penalty case costs taxpayers an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. In Florida, each execution is costing the state $3.2 million. In financially strapped California, one report estimated that the state could save $90 million each year by abolishing capital punishment. The New York Department of Correctional Services estimated that implementing the death penalty would cost the state about $118 million annually.” Does this make anybody else a little upset? We are spending more money on a punishment that is suspossed to be, at least partly, to avoid the costs of putting these criminals in jail for the rest of their lives. It just dosen’t make sense. In this situation the costs are huge, but when you look at the opportunity costs it is even more overwhelming, and frustrating. Should we really spend the time or money to execute someone or like Moussaoui should we just put them in a very tiny cell with only a bed and a toilet for 23 hours out of a day. Think of how many other things in America we could spend millions of dollars on!