When the Bill of Rights was drafted, the founding fathers wrote, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

Many Americans still believe in this amendment, or at least claim too. However, many seem to believe that the ultimate sacrifice, one’s life, doesn’t qualify as cruel or unusual because it’s “painless” (even though, if there were an error, nobody would know because the person who experienced the pain is now dead) and a “last meal” is provided (a luxury dinner seems to make it fine that we are about to take the life, dreams, and mind of another).

Some people believe murderers are more likely to kill others again, even if sent to a high security prison. You may as well send the poor to prisons because people with low-income are more likely to become criminals. People shouldn’t be punished for something they might do in the future.

However, even if you believe some people deserve to be executed for what they’ve done, one still can’t deny that there is a small margin of error in the investigation. Prosecutors could hold back information, a detective could overlook a detail, an officer might be bribed, etc. This is proved by how many are released from death row (where the “criminal” could’ve died at any time before the investigation caught up). This means it’s entirely possible for an innocent person to be executed before they’re discovered as innocent.

Even if we based everything on money alone (which is already stupid, because crimes shouldn’t be weighed just because of a budget, but for all I know, some greedy prick bases his moral code on money alone is reading this), this article shows that the death penalty is more expensive than a life sentence.