According to Statista, “Average time between sentencing and execution on death row in the United States from years 1990 to 2020”, published December 13, 2021. In the United States in 2019, the average time spent on death row, from sentencing to execution, was 264 months, or 22 years. That is a very long time, I couldn’t imagine spending that much time in a cell waiting for my death, these people are waiting for their execution for longer than I’ve been alive, and that doesn’t seem like something that should be going on in our country. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are 2,436 people still on death row. There is also a lot of other reasons to get rid of the death penalty. I will be describing why the death penalty should be abolished, starting with the innocent people killed, then the botched executions that are surprisingly common, and then how the death penalty is a very expensive process compared to a life sentencing. 

First, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are many innocent people sentenced. Since just 1973, there have been 186 people exonerated of all charges because of new things being provided to them like scientific testing, impartial and fairly picked juries, and proper attorneys in their retrials. The year with the most exonerations was 2003 which had 12 exonerations throughout it. The state with the most exonerations is Florida with 30. Larry Swearingen was sentenced to death in July of 2000 in Texas for the murder of a woman. He was executed on August 21 of 2019, even though there were significant flaws with nearly every piece of forensic evidence gathered and very strong evidence that he couldn’t have committed the murder. The next paragraph talks about botched executions.

Second, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, executions are pretty commonly botched, meaning that sometimes executions take longer and are more painful, and sometimes the sentenced person lives without serious damage. Botches are a lot more common than most would imagine. The most common execution that most states use today, lethal injection, has the highest botch rate of any execution we have ever used. The only reason we still use lethal injection is because it is generally considered cheaper and more humane. One of the reasons that lethal execution is botched so much is because if the prisoner has a medical condition that makes a usable vein difficult or impossible to find, then the lethal injection will be botched or called off. An example of a vein not being able to be found and an execution being botched is in Alabama in 2018, Doyle Lee Hamm’s execution was botched. The defense counsel argued that it would be impossible to find a usable vein for the drugs because Hamm suffered from advanced lymphatic cancer and carcinoma. The state decided to go on with the execution, and for two and a half hours, the executioners tried to find a vein, and left 6 puncture marks in his groin and punctured his bladder. The execution was called off. Sometimes the executioners mess up and botch the execution.

Last, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, the death penalty is a very expensive sentence. There are a few reasons why this is. The first of them is that most people who are on trial for a death sentence cannot afford to pay for their own lawyers, so the state is required to give them public defenders and pay for the costs of the prosecution as well. Another reason for this is that there is a lot more that goes into a capital case than a non-capital case, they can take longer to go to trial, and there will need to be experts on background checks of the individual, mental health checks, and forensics experts testing evidence. The third reason for this hefty cost is jury selection. More things go into jury selection in a capital case than a non-capital case. For instance, there needs to be a lot more questioning about the potential jurors' views on the death penalty, it is more time-consuming and expensive. The fourth reason for this price increase is the trial itself, trials for capital cases can take up to four times longer than non-capital cases, requiring juror and attorney compensation for their participation. The fifth cost is keeping a prisoner. A prisoner on death row can usually expect to be kept in solitary confinement in a cell for 23 hours a day, death row cells are highly secure which costs more than a normal prison. The last reason for the higher price is the set of appeals the prisoners are given to minimize mistakes. Taxpayers’ money is used for these appeals. The appeals are very important because in some cases prisoners have proved their innocence hours before execution.

In conclusion, The death penalty is something that is not needed in our country. It is unnecessarily expensive, innocent people are killed, and executions are botched a lot, putting prisoners in unnecessary pain and agony. People spend decades on death row, and still sometimes come out as innocent, spending all that time in prison for nothing. I personally think that the death penalty has no place in the U.S. and that the states who have not abolished it should think about the pros and cons of this system.