A politician would probably disagree with Freedman because he would believe a price tag cannot be put on doing the things that are right. He would probably see the statistics Freedman gave as irrelevant. Freedman says, “In Florida, each execution costs $3,200,000, six times the expense of life imprisonment” (141). The politician would see these costs as very high but taken out of context. He would most likely look to the statistics of how the death penalty has actually been a crime deterrent, as proven by Jay Johansen in his article “Does Death Penalty Deter Crime?” Johansen says that the “[h]omicide rate is a mirror image of the number of executions. Consistently as the number of executions goes down, the homicide rate goes up, and when the number of executions goes up, the homicide rate goes down” (138). He would see this as proof that capital punishment is a deterrent, and it should remain legal as long as it continues to deter crime.

A politician might use Johansen’s statistics to prove that the death penalty should not be abolished. He might see that even though a capital punishment case costs more, if the crime rate goes down than we have fewer criminals to take to trial. If we have fewer criminals to take to trial, we are actually saving more money in the long run by keeping capital punishment legal. A politician might be angry that Freedman does not show the actual statistics of the crime rate as executions were outlawed and then when executions were again legalized. He might see Freedman as trying to divert people’s attention away from the actual statistics by showing how much one capital punishment case compared to one non-capital punishment case.

A politician might also disagree with Freedman because Freedman proposes to take a state’s right away. He would agree with Michael Levin that a state should have the right