The Truth: Death Penalty

The Death Penalty is irreversible.

The innocent are executed.

• Since 1973, 144 people have been released from Death Row because they were found innocent.
• Approximately 1,378 innocent people have been executed since 1973.
• 4.1% of death row inmates are innocent.

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The Death penalty is unjust and unfair.

Racial and Economic discrimination

• Almost all defendants facing the death penalty can't afford their own attorney.
• The lawyers of the state are often inexperienced in capital cases and are underpaid.
• Almost 50% of the people in Death Row are African American.
• Between 2001-2006 48% of the defendants in death penalty cases were African American.
• Studies have shown that death sentences are more likely to occur if a white person was murdered.

Capital Punishment doesn't deter crime.

FBI Uniform Crime Report 2012

• Statistics show that the South, which carries out the most executions, had the highest murder rate in 2012.
• Three regions, except the Northeast, showed an increase in murders.
• The entire Northeast has never had an execution since 2005. Their murder rate decreased by 4.4%
• The Northeast accounts for less than 1% of the executions in the country since 1976.
• Six of the nine states with the lowest murder rates don't have the death penalty.

Lethal Injection

• Since 2013, there has been an ongoing problem in finding a way to carry out executions.
• Drugs used in lethal injections are made in Europe.
• Ever since Europe's opposition to the death penalty, there has been a ban of execution drugs.
• States have turned to compounding pharmacists for execution drugs.
• The state and federal government claim that lethal injection is "quick, safe, and painless"

CLAYTON LOCKETT

• Two days ago, on April 30, 2014, the state of Oklahoma attempted to execute Clayton Lockett by lethal injection.
• Lockett was injected with an untested mix of drugs obtained from an undisclosed source.
• He started convulsing and after 40 minutes, he died not from the injection, but from a heart attack.
• State and federal governments believe that the death penalty should be done in a "humane" way.
• This case shows how wrong an execution can go because of the drugs used in lethal injections.

High cost of Death Penalty

The Death Penalty is EXPENSIVE.

• The death penalty is far more expensive than life imprisonment without parole.
• California taxpayers pay $90,000 more per death row prisoner each year than on regular prisoners.
• California could save $1 billion over the next five years by replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment.
• The death penalty costs 4 times more than a regular case without the death penalty.
• Death penalty trials averaged $395,762 per case. Regular cases averaged $98, 963 per case.

Time is Wasted

• jury trials spent about 40.13 days with death penalty cases
• jury trials spent about 16.79 days for regular cases
• it takes longer because the jury is dealing with a life

Money could be better spent

Money could be better spent

• Money could be spent to improve the communities in which we live in.
• It could be spent on education, police officers, roads, public safety programs, mental health services
• and also services for crime victims and their families

Should the government be given the right to kill people?