For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, this is Newton’s third law of motion.  This law is true in human society, since there is a punishment for every crime, as well as a reward for something that is deemed good that is done.  When someone sees something happen to a person that they then deem is incorrect and want to set it right, this concept is commonly referred to as justice.  The concept of justice is a big thing in modern society as the average human likes justice so much that there are two comic book companies that are famous all around the world, however there is a limit of how far most people will continue pursue the results.  The majority of people in the world are not willing to throw away their morals nor their money for the sake of justice; although they may not be the easiest to see, there are those that will.  For the sake of justice, people are willing to overlook the finical costs, any moral issues, and public opinion of the death penalty.

For the vast majority of people, money is what makes the world go round. In some – most cases - it is the decisive factor.  This occurs as money is required to do almost anything in the current age, from traveling to acquiring food; so it is reasonable to understand why most people are protective and frugal with their money.  So when people have to give their hard earned money to the government in the form of taxes, they are angry and want to know what the government is doing with all that money it has collected.  There are a variety of actions that the government uses tax payer money for, from paying government workers to keeping street lit so their citizens can see as they go home at night; another way that the government uses money is to pay for the trials of inmates that are sentenced to the death penalty.  The process in which the convicted inmate may choose to take is a lengthy process that is quite expensive compared to that of a prisoner who is sentenced to life in prison without parole, and the price varies depending on the charges brought against the inmate. According to Kaplan, in Oregon as of 2016, “Results indicate that the costs for aggravated murder cases that resulted in death sentences range, on average, from about $800,000 to over $1,000,000 more per case when compared to similar non-death aggravated murder cases.” (Kaplan).  There are multiple parts to the death penalty appeal process; the first step is the direct appeal, in which the appeal is made to the highest court in the state.  This is where someone can seek to appeal from a conviction and death sentence, this typically happens in the presence of a panel of judges.  Possible results are the affirmation of the conviction and sentence, reversal of the conviction, or reversal of the death sentence.  In the occurrence of federal cases, the process stays the same but on the federal level instead of the state level.  The final step in the process is federal habeas corpus, this however is limited to federal issues raised on the appeal in the state courts.  The appeal is passed through the U.S District Court then the U.S Court of Appeals and then finally to the U.S Supreme Court.  In order to make it to the U.S Court of Appeals, the appeal must be granted permission by the U.S District Court.  The defendant can be re-tried here, and if nothing changes then the defendant can petition the U.S Supreme Court; however, the Supreme Court typically reviews under 10 cases a year making the likelihood of this happening very unlikely.  Upon failing this step, the defendant can request executive clemency, this is where the execution can be put on hold for further review or even have the defendant's sentence reduced.  One might think that a large percentage of the total cost for the death penalty would come from the method of execution, however in an article by Kelly Erb, “the drugs run about $100 (the Texas Department of Criminal Justice put the cost of their drug cocktails at $83 in 2011).” (Erb) There are people that believe that the government has better things to be spending the money on, rather than pay for criminals to try to escape death. This group of people are typically those that known someone who was the victim and want justice, those that believe in the “an eye for an eye” policy, or those that unknowledgeable about the cost.  On the other side of the coin are the people that that believe that their tax money is being well spent on the appeal of death row inmates, since everyone deserves a second chance.  This group normally consists of people that try to let everyone be treated fairly, and believe in giving people second chances.  According to the Death Penalty Information Center, it was “‘conservatively estimated’ that an Oklahoma capital case cost $110,000 more on average than a non-capital case” meaning that it is not always that much more expensive for a death row inmate to appeal (Death Penalty).  Normally when the people that are against the death penalty for finical reasons learn and understand how big the difference in the two procedures really is, they are willing to support it under the conditions that it will bring about justice.  The best solution for the issue of how the cost, is to reduce the amount of trials and appeals, this would not only solve the issue of the large sum of money needed for the procedure, but also would decrease the amount needed to keep the prisoner in prison during the duration of the trial.

Morals and beliefs are what makes each person individual and unique, most of the time these cannot be forced upon someone, since if they are, then they do not hold the same meaning “as would be had” if the person discovered them for themselves.  There is a group of people who hold the belief that no one or group should have the right to take the life of another person.  These people belong to the group that is against the death penalty since they don’t agree with the government having the right to take away someone’s right to life. On the flip side, there is a group that is for the death penalty since it upholds the law and restores a sense of balance.  By reserving the death penalty for those that commit crimes against humanity or the state, however, if the rate of which the death penalty was given out was increased and given out for petty crimes, such as thievery; then the value of human life would decrease since then a human life would be equal to that of a car.  In the group that supports the death penalty, there exists a group that believes that having a punishment that results in the removal of one’s life would decrease crime rate, or in other words, would act as deterrence for future potential criminals.  Since there is a large proponent of people who think this way, some writers decided to research this and found out “that during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 percent to 101 percent higher than in states without the death penalty” (Bonner).  The reason why this statistic is concerning is that there is a large number of people that support the death penalty for this single cause.  Whether or not criminals faced the threat of death seemed to have little effect on their behavior. Jeffrey Fagan is quoted saying that, "New York's homicide decline has continued before the capital-punishment statute, through the capital-punishment statute, and after the capital-punishment statute" (Ehrenfreund).  One of the reasons why scientists believe that the death penalty is not decreasing the rate at violent crimes that are being committed is because the killers might not be in a state of mind to coolly evaluate their chances of being caught, tried and put to death.  Most are just concerned about getting caught and do not really think about what happens after.  Ehrenfreund quotes Daniel Nagin in saying that, "it’s the certainty of apprehension that’s been demonstrated consistently to be an effective deterrent, not the severity of the ensuing consequences" (Ehrenfreund).  The issue about morality is that it doesn’t really make sense when it come to the current version of the justice system, recently there was a mother who got high on meth and let her 3-year-old child freeze to death, this mother was not only not put on death row, but she was not even imprisoned.  This is a perfect example of why the current version of the justice system doesn’t make sense; this person who caused a child to die since she was on illegal drugs didn’t get jail time, while other offenders are imprisoned for illegal drugs. Although this example doesn’t really dead with morality that much it still shows that people took pity on the mother since she had no control over the child freezing to death since she was not conscience.  This also shows that there are people who believe that the mother is innocent and shouldn’t have to pay the price for her actions, which led to her own child freezing to death.  One doesn’t have to agree with the government having the right to take someone’s life away, but they should still have enough morality to realize that causing someone death is also most as bad of killing the person themselves.

There are also people that have a problem with the death penalty and support the appeal process considering it gives people the chance to prove that they are truly innocent and do not deserve to die, for these people the death penalty would be a conflict in morals.  There is most likely a percent of people that would support the death penalty if they knew it was humane and would not have a chance of going wrong.  An example of an execution going wrong is the execution of a man a few years ago in Oklahoma, where a man was “tortured to death” because the untested drugs he received reacted with other medicines that he was on causing him to be in pain for 43 minutes (Cohen).  The current method is lethal injection through three different stages, anesthetic, then muscle relaxant then potassium chloride, however this concoction differs from state to state.  The anesthetic is to make the person unconscious while the muscle relaxant’s purpose is to induce the sentenced into a paralysis as well as relax the respiratory muscles leading to asphyxiation.  The potassium chloride is there to stop the heart, causing cardiac arrest.  This method is supposed to be humane since the sentenced is unconscious and relaxed, however this method is not liked by all.  For some, they call this inhumane, while most people in the United States think this is the best way and thus appreciate this method.  The people that call this method inhumane believe it to be so due to incidents where the sentenced can still feel the pain and reacts to it.  The number of people in this group increased after the botched execution of the man in Oklahoma, there were similar cases in Arizona and Texas, where the sentenced were still conscious and in pain for almost an hour.  All the United States needs to do is to change the execution method then there would be a group of people whose opinions would change, the problem with this is that there is no set method that all people would call humane. The United States has a history with executions, dating all the way back to the colonial time; different methods include such as hanging, firing squads, gas chambers, electrocution (ProCon), these ones are the ones that the government deemed humane.  The United States used a method to execute people the same way that the Nazi did.  Even when the method changes, the opposition does not, inhumane executions will always be against people’s moral.  Inhumane executions can be anything where the sentenced feels pain and suffers as they are dying.  Something that separates humans from animals is that humans feel sympathy and compassion for other humans, people are willing to overlook these emotions if their view of justice would be the result.  For those that are opposed to the government using inhumane methods to execute people, they should be happy that there are several state governments that are trying to use a new method to execute people, this method would involve fentanyl.  This drug is normally used as a pain killer, it is also 50 times stronger than heroin and about 100 times stronger than meth; this drug was decided upon since there are a large number of deaths related to this drug each year in the United States.

For as long as there have been laws, there has been punishments. Punishment is needed in order for a rule to have any effect, since without a consequence a rule is just a bunch of words.  People normally like to go with the flow and blend into the masses, this is true for opinions about stuff, such as sport teams, movies, and songs.  People do this so that they don’t feel different and left out. However, on the flip side of the same coin, there are also the people that like to be different than everyone else and changes to be different.  There are also the people that have their opinions and stick to them, no matter how much others hate them for holding said opinions.  However as long as people have had the right to openly voice their views and opinions, confrontations have arisen, as a difference in anything between two people typically leads to confrontations.  However as soon as something changes, opinions are also likely to change, for example, if a man and woman are against the death penalty then their child is murdered in cold blood, they will most likely be out for justice or even blood with this justice normally being death for the person responsible for the change in lifestyle.  The family will still be out for justice even if the public is not, there is a good chance that the general public would be moved if there was a story about a little child being murdered.  There are cases where a person is arrested for child molestation or murder, these prisoners have been murdered or abused by other prisoners; the prisoners who beat up the molesters and murders say they did it because they would want someone to do that if their child was murdered or raped..  There will always be those people that will still be against it, until something happens to them.  And even then there are the people that would still be against the death penalty even if their family member was murdered, these people would be the ones that stick to their opinions no matter what.  In the case of a family member being murdered, there are some extreme cases where a member of the surviving family seeks justice on their own terms, this could result in the murderer being murdered, which would them cause the avenging family member to take the spot of the murderer as a criminal, with the public being on their side.  Location effects your opinions, as people from peaceful places would have the opinion that something is bad while people from violent places would differ.  The same is for the United States and Europe, up until recently Europe was a much more peaceful place, while the United States was more violent.  This is probably why the United States does not condemn violent punishments, while the Europeans, on the other hand, have straight up abolished capital punishment for peacetimes and wartimes, this shows that they have different views than the majority of people who live in the United States. The Europeans disagree so much with the United States still having the death penalty that Italian government officials pressured Hospira, the producer of the drug, to stop producing it when the company sought to shift production of the drug to an Italian plant (Horne).

By analyzing the financial costs, moral issues, and public opinion we can see that, in order to achieve justice, people are willing to forsake these ideas.  There will forever be conflict with this topic as long as people have the right to voice their opinions, have their own morals, and be concerned about money.  While the death penalty is not often delivered, it is a needed punishment; even if it has not been an efficient deterrent in decreasing crime rates.  Although throughout the history of the United State there have been cases where people have been falsely imprisoned then executed by the government only to be found out that they were truly innocent, this is the major objection to those that want to remove the appeal process. That was when technology was not as advanced as it is now, with technology on a regular basis getting improved and upgraded; this problem should no longer be a problem in the future.  The best case scenario would be if the appeal process would be to shortened, this would cause it not to cost as much.  And as for those that worry about people being falsely imprisoned and sentenced, the technological advances should take care of the concern.  These technological advances will also help with the method of execution, since no matter what method is chosen there will also be a chance of that being messed up and the argument that it is inhumane.  Even with the whole continent of Europe disagreeing with the United States keeping the death penalty, the European countries have no problem with extraditing prisoners back to the United States who most likely will end up on death row and possibly even be executed in the future.
