Citation

Tortorice MD. Univ. Pittsbg. Law Rev. 2017; 78(4): 519-555.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, University of Pittsburgh, School of Law)

DOI

10.5195/lawreview.2017.499

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The death penalty has long been the subject of fervent debate. Much of this debate centers around normative judgments. Is it morally acceptable to "tinker with the machinery of death"? Does capital punishment violate the Eighth Amendment given our nation's "evolving standards of decency"? This Note does not seek to address these questions, nor whether the death penalty is arbitrarily imposed or racially disparate. Rather, the goal of this Note is to focus on the death penalty's utility, solely seeking to bring cognizance to the financial realities of a capital punishment system, particularly within Pennsylvania.

It should be said at the offset that this Note does not suggest that the solution to the death penalty's high cost is to find budget cuts in the current system. It is true that the current system has financially burdensome regulations so as to not run afoul of due process, but simply doing away with those regulations would only lead to more costly mistakes. Fixing the broken death penalty system in Pennsylvania would mean major reform, requiring more money than we spend now. Retentionists are often of the view that money should not be a concern when it comes to protecting society from the "worst of the worst." However, the system may not even be doing that, and that money could be spent on more beneficial and efficient uses.

As this Note will investigate further, Pennsylvania's capital punishment system remains remarkably expensive, despite few executions. Pennsylvania's capital punishment cases rarely reach fruition. Since Pennsylvania reinstated the death penalty in 1978, 352 people have been sentenced to death. However, only three of those people have been executed, and each of those three people had waived their right to appeal

Language: en

Keywords

capital-punishment; deterrence; executions; life; murder