Death Penalty

This past week I had to give a debate in my political science class. I had to debate the reason the death penalty should not be used to as a way to prosecute criminals. We discussed the financial reasons, the moral reasons and the chance of wrongly killed people.
The death penalty is a very expensive to carry out. It is said that California pays 114 million dollars beyond what they would have to pay if they just keep the prisoners in jail for life. Also and in Texas it costs 2.3 million dollars a person to execute them. That is three times more than it costs to keep someone in jail at the highest security level.
Another reason we said the death penalty was wrong was because it is morally wrong. We kill people who kill people to prove that killing people is wrong. That makes no sense. We also have the mentality of an eye for an eye. That is a very bad philosophy to have. It also gives us a bad reputation along with other countries.
The last reason why we said the death penalty was wrong was because of the error rate it has. Since the death penalty was instituted in 1976 1156 people have been killed. However 130 other people were convicted but later found innocent. That means that approximately 10% of the people convicted are Innocent. Is that a price we should be willing to pay for justice? These were the few of the reasons we said that the death penalty is wrong. There are more reasons than just that. I would encourage individuals to look closely at their beliefs and weigh both sides before coming up with there opinion.