In H.L Mencken’s “The Penalty of Death” goes into great detail about the history of the death penalty and why people support it for the wrong reasons. Critics of capital punishment sometimes argue on utilitarian grounds that the expense involving executions is substantially greater than the cost of life imprisonment. The costs of appeals and legal counseling are the principal expenses. Thus, the extra financial burden of capital punishment contributes to a greater balance of unhappiness vs. happiness. There are three problems with this

The danger that innocent people will be executed because of errors in the criminal justice system is getting worse. A total of sixty-nine people have been released from death row since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. Twenty-one condemned inmates have been released since 1993, including seven from the state of Illinois alone.

There are substantial evidences that capital punishment does not deter crime. The state of Florida is the most executing state with the number the number of executions from year 1973 to 1995, are eight hundred seventy. But why are so many tourists murdered there? These are terrible crimes, committed in the states with the largest death row and the largest score of government sanctioned killings. In a study conducted by Schiraldi and Godrey on the effects of executions found that there is a 9 percent increase in the murder rates, going from three hundred six per month before to three hundred thirty three after the executions. In addition, the nation’s crime rate rose five percent from 1982 to 1991. Like in Taxes for example, they have been executions weekly but the crime rate rose twenty-four percent instead and the violent crime rate rose forty-six percent. One of the reasons is that most capital crime is committed in the heat of the moment. They are committe

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