The Death Penalty1 (also called capital punishment) has become a highly contentious issue in recent times with seemingly weighty arguments advanced by people on both sides of the fence. Supporters of the death penalty argue that it is an effective deterrent against serious crime, conforms to the principle of retribution for taking of a human life, and prevents murderers from repeating their crimes. Its opponents, on the other hand, claim that life imprisonment is in no way a less effective deterrent, death penalty violates a criminal's "right to life," it may result in executions of some who are wrongfully convicted, and discriminates against minorities and the poor. It is my contention that death penalty should be more frequently in cases of sufficiently serious nature such as premeditated murder so that tax payers' money is not wasted on a criminal who can no longer contribute to society.
             Although economics can never be the sole or even the major reason for a 'life and death' question such as capital punishment, I make this contention precisely because opponents of death penalty have frequently used the costs involved in enforcing the death penalty as an argument against it. It has been a long-standing argument of the abolitionists that death penalty is far more expensive than life imprisonment. Various studies carried out in the United States apparently indicate that capital cases are about 70% more expensive than comparable non-death penalty cases (Kansas State Study quoted in "Costs of Death Penalty" 2006). A closer look at such studies and the statistics and logic used in them, reveal that most of them are unreliable and have arrived at the wrong conclusion. For example, a 2005 Los Angeles Times Study claims that a single execution in California costs more than $ 250 million (Tempest, 2005). This seems an astronomical amount on first sight and the anti-death penalty activists prominentl...