The death penalty is the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights.
Instead of working towards the abolition of the death penalty worldwide, and aiming to end the cycle of violence created by a system riddled with economic and racial bias, as well as human error, today the state of Georgia decided to stay a man's execution.
The US has good company though, with the likes of China, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Syria and Saudi Arabia....
Singapore has had capital punishment since it was ruled as a British colony. Sadly however, Singapore's independence came before the UK's decision to abolished capital punishment. To this day the Singaporean procedure of hanging condemned individuals is mostly influenced by the methods formerly used in Great Britain.
Good news however, Gabon, a small country in Africa, abolished the death penalty for all crimes in 2010. Go Gabon.
Spend money on science instead:
ReplyDelete• The California death penalty system costs taxpayers $114 million per year beyond the costs of keeping convicts locked up for life.
Taxpayers have paid more than $250 million for each of the state’s executions. (L.A. Times, March 6, 2005)
• In Kansas, the costs of capital cases are 70% more expensive than comparable non-capital cases, including the costs of incarceration.
(Kansas Performance Audit Report, December 2003).
• In Maryland, an average death penalty case resulting in a death sentence costs approximately $3 million. The eventual costs to
Maryland taxpayers for cases pursued 1978-1999 will be $186 million. Five executions have resulted. (Urban Institute 2008).
• The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the
costs of sentencing murderers to life imprisonment. The majority of those costs occur at the trial level. (Duke University, May 1993).
• Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in
prison without parole. Based on the 44 executions Florida had carried out since 1976, that amounts to a cost of $24 million for each
execution. (Palm Beach Post, January 4, 2000).
• In Texas, a death penalty case costs 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. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992)