Facts about the death penalty

• currently 3307 (3256 men and 51 women) inmates in the US are condemned to death
  
  
• 35 of 50 US States have the DP
  
  
• Most democracies in the world have abandoned the death penalty. The U.S. and Japan and South Korea are the only exceptions
  
  
• Since 1972 133 innocents were released from death row because of actual Innocence
  
  
• Costs of DP cases are 2-5 times higher (from trial to execution) than a case with life without parole
  
  
• A study in North Carolina showed that murders with white victims were 3.5 times more likely to result in the death penalty than murders with black victims
  
  
• In Kansas, the costs of capital cases are 70% more expensive than comparable non-capital cases, including the costs of incarceration.
  (Kansas Performance Audit Report, December 2003).
  
  
• 80% of all executions are in the south of the U.S.
  
  
• 95% of the convicted persons can not pay a lawyer and get a lawyer by the State (who are often the worst-paid and most-inexperienced and least-skillful lawyers.)
  
  
• It sends the wrong message: why kill people who kill people to show killing is wrong
  
  
• The death penalty does not deter crime. According to an anti-death penalty editorial in USA Today (March 8, 1995), the death penalty may actually increase crime and violence: The average 1993 murder rate in the states with the death penalty was 56% higher than in states without," said the editorial
  
  
• The death penalty is unfairly applied. jury decisions on when to apply the death penalty, say critics, are often unfairly influenced by race and money. Studies show that juries are much more likely to apply the death penalty if the murder victim is white than if he or she is black. They also charge that people who are wealthy enough to hire good lawyers are less likely to get the death penalty than people who are poor
  
  
• The death penalty is unconstitutional. Many death penalty opponents argue that the death penalty is "cruel and unusual punishment," and thus should be banned under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The death penalty is cruel, they argue, because it is morally wrong; and it is unusual, they argue, because it is applied unfairly
  
  
• Executions destroy the lives of inmate’s families
  
  
• Many supporters in the abolition movement are family members of victims, and consider the death penalty contradictory
  
  
• In 1987 a study was conducted and from 1900 until the conclusion of this study, 23 people that were executed were later proved to be innocent. Amnesty International states that at least 3 people every year are exonerated from death row, proving the death penalty is not infallible