Capital punishment which is also known as the death penalty is the pre-meditated and planned taking of a human in response to a crime committed by that legally convicted person. Although the death penalty can be a bit brutal, it can be needed for certain situations. Capital punishment is for prisoners who committed crimes that led to murder. Even with the death penalty is only in certain states it has its pros and cons. Capital punishment in the United States has cost tax payers a lot of money. According to the LA Times, Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1973. In those years only thirteen individuals who were convicted of murder was killed by the capital punishment system. Two out the thirteen were killed by the gas chamber while the others were by lethal injection. Lethal injection came along in 1993 and was given as a choice for people sentenced to death but the year after it was made as the only way. Although lethal injection is a less painful way of being executed it’s still costing tax payers every year.
The good thing about the death penalty is that it’s faster than it was when they used the gas chambers and even when they hung people. Studies show that a federal court in California found that the gas chamber was very cruel and unusual punishment so that’s what led to the lethal injection system. The Way the lethal injection system works is that they fill your body with different chemicals that end up destroying it so that leads to a short but semi painful death. Capital punishment in some cases can be what people really need because they either committed a bad crime or they did some very bad.
Some of the bad things about the death penalty are that sometimes it could have been the wrong person that was executed. In those cases the people have been accused of a crime they haven’t