The strongest arguments for why the death penalty should be abolished are practical, not philosophical: the United States has sentenced innocent people to die, executions do not deter murder, capital cases cost millions more than life imprisonment, and who ends up on death row depends more on race and money than on the crime itself. Roughly 2,100 people currently sit on death row. Twenty-three states have already repealed their capital statutes, and four more have halted executions by moratorium.
Innocent People Have Been Sentenced to Die
Since 1973, at least 202 people sentenced to death in the United States have been fully exonerated. Many spent decades in isolation before DNA testing, recanted testimony, or withheld prosecution files proved they had no part in the crime. The causes repeat: eyewitness misidentification, coerced or false confessions, unreliable forensics, and prosecutors who failed to turn over exculpatory evidence.
Every other sentence can be revisited. A prison term can be shortened, a conviction vacated, a record expunged. An execution cannot be undone. The “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard is the highest in American law, but the Supreme Court has described it as establishing “a moral certainty,” not an absolute one. When the state kills the wrong person, there is no appeal left to file.
It Does Not Deter Murder
States without the death penalty have maintained lower murder rates than states that actively use it, and that gap has held for decades. If the threat of execution deterred killing, the pattern would run the other way.
Most homicides are not calculated. They happen during rage, intoxication, or other crimes, where no one is weighing sentencing guidelines. For the rare premeditated killing, the offender almost always expects to escape detection. A punishment carried out 15 to 25 years later, if at all, is too remote to shape behavior in the moment.
A national survey of U.S. police chiefs placed the death penalty last among tools for reducing violent crime, behind addressing drug abuse, increasing police staffing, reducing barriers to prosecution, and longer prison sentences. A majority of chiefs did not believe executions significantly reduce homicides. Offered the alternative of life without parole combined with victim restitution, support for capital punishment dropped to barely half.
It Costs Far More Than Life Imprisonment
Capital prosecutions run roughly $1 million to $3 million more per case than the same crime tried without the death penalty on the table. Most of that money is spent on the legal process, not on housing or the execution itself.
Capital trials are bifurcated: one phase decides guilt, a second decides between death and life.1National Institute of Justice. Law 101: Legal Guide for the Forensic Expert – Special Circumstances (Death Penalty) Jury selection drags on because both sides must screen for views on capital punishment. Expert witnesses multiply. The defense must investigate the defendant’s full life history for mitigating evidence — childhood trauma, mental illness, intellectual limitations — which calls for mitigation specialists, psychologists, and social workers alongside the lawyers.
After sentencing, mandatory appeals extend the timeline for years. Constitutional review of every death sentence is required, not optional.2Congress.gov. Amdt8.4.9.4 Gregg v Georgia and Limits on Death Penalty Direct appeals, state post-conviction review, and federal habeas petitions can stretch across two decades, with attorneys, court time, and judicial resources funded by taxpayers at every stage.
Housing adds another layer. Death row inmates are typically held in segregated single cells with enhanced security, costing states up to twice what general-population housing costs per year. Those costs accumulate across the long gap between sentencing and either execution or natural death. The system consumes enormous public money while producing actual executions in a shrinking share of cases.
Race and Wealth Decide Who Gets Death
Two factors predict a death sentence more reliably than the facts of the crime: the race of the victim and the wealth of the defendant.
Sentencing studies show defendants are significantly more likely to receive a death sentence when the victim is white than when the victim is Black or Latino, even after controlling for the nature of the crime. The disparity does not require conscious prejudice. It reflects structural bias built into charging decisions, jury composition, venue selection, and the accumulated weight of discretionary choices throughout the process.
Money draws the other line. Defendants who can afford experienced private counsel, independent investigators, and expert witnesses have a far better chance of avoiding death through effective mitigation. The overwhelming majority of capital defendants are indigent and rely on court-appointed attorneys whose caseloads, pay, and resources vary widely by jurisdiction. In some places, appointed counsel in capital cases have little or no prior death penalty experience. The result is a system where the harshest sentence tracks socioeconomic status more faithfully than the evidence.
Executions Themselves Go Wrong
The Eighth Amendment forbids “cruel and unusual punishments.”3Congress.gov. Constitution of the United States – Eighth Amendment Whether the death penalty itself crosses that line is still contested. How executions are carried out is a separate problem, and the record is getting worse.
Lethal injection is the method used in nearly every modern execution and has the highest documented botch rate of any method at 7.12%, worse than lethal gas, hanging, electrocution, or firing squad. Botched executions have involved failed IV placements with staff searching for veins for over an hour, incorrect dosages that left the person conscious and in visible pain, and drug combinations that caused prolonged asphyxiation instead of rapid unconsciousness.
In Glossip v. Gross (2015), the Supreme Court held that a prisoner challenging an execution method must show a “demonstrated risk of severe pain” that is “substantial when compared to the known and available alternatives.”4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Glossip v Gross, 576 US 863 (2015) The condemned person, in other words, must identify a less painful way for the state to kill them. Pharmaceutical companies continue to refuse to supply lethal injection drugs, and some jurisdictions have responded by experimenting with untested drug combinations or reviving older methods like nitrogen hypoxia.
Victims’ Families Do Not Get Closure
The idea that executions help victims’ families heal is widely assumed and poorly supported. In one study, only 2.5% of family members reported true closure after an execution, while more than 20% said the execution did not help them heal at all.
Capital cases take far longer to resolve than non-capital cases. Mandatory appeals stretch across years, sometimes more than a decade, and family members are repeatedly called to testify, confront graphic evidence, and relive the crime at each new proceeding. One participant in a 2025 study described “ten and a half years of trials of hell,” saying the prolonged proceedings worsened both physical and mental health. A 2012 study from Marquette University Law School found that families of murder victims reported better physical and psychological health, and greater satisfaction with the justice system, when the defendant received a life sentence instead of a death sentence. Life sentences bring finality and relative obscurity; capital cases keep reopening the wound.
The Supreme Court Keeps Narrowing Who Can Be Executed
Over the past four decades, the Court has steadily cut categories of people and crimes out of death penalty eligibility, relying on what it calls “evolving standards of decency.” Each decision rested on the conclusion that executing a particular group served neither retribution nor deterrence.
- In Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the Court banned the execution of people with intellectual disabilities, finding the death penalty “excessive” as applied to them.5Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Atkins v Virginia, 536 US 304 (2002)
- In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the Court held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid executing anyone under 18 at the time of the crime.6Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Roper v Simmons, 543 US 551 (2005)
- In Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008), the Court ruled that the death penalty cannot be imposed for crimes that did not result in and were not intended to result in the victim’s death, including child rape.7Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Kennedy v Louisiana, 554 US 407 (2008)
- In Ford v. Wainwright (1986), the Court prohibited executing a prisoner who is not mentally competent to understand the punishment or the reason for it, finding such executions “simply offend[] humanity.”8Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Ford v Wainwright, 477 US 399 (1986)
Federal law tracks these limits. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3591, no one may be sentenced to death if they were under 18 at the time of the offense, and capital eligibility for homicide is limited to intentional killing or intentional participation in violence creating a grave risk of death.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3591 – Sentence of Death The reasoning behind each of these rulings — that an execution must serve a legitimate purpose and cannot be imposed disproportionately — applies with increasing weight to the broader question of whether any execution can meet that standard.
The U.S. Is Increasingly Alone
Twenty-three states have repealed their death penalty statutes. Virginia abolished it in 2021, Colorado in 2020, and New Hampshire in 2019. Four more — California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Ohio — keep the penalty on the books but have governor-imposed moratoriums halting executions. In practice, roughly half the country has stopped killing prisoners.
The federal picture has swung the other way recently. Attorney General Merrick Garland imposed a moratorium on federal executions in July 2021. That moratorium was lifted on February 5, 2025, after Attorney General Pamela Bondi implemented a January 2025 executive order directing the Department of Justice to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.”10The White House. Restoring The Death Penalty And Protecting Public Safety The order also instructs the Attorney General to seek the overruling of Supreme Court precedents that currently limit capital punishment.11Congress.gov. Federal Capital Punishment: Recent Executive Action
Internationally, the United States stands nearly alone among Western democracies. Roughly 150 countries have abolished the death penalty entirely or maintain formal moratoriums. Every other G7 country — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom — has either abolished the practice or applies it with extreme rarity. The Supreme Court itself has pointed to that international consensus in cases like Roper and Atkins as one indicator of evolving standards of decency. Fifty years after the Court revived capital punishment on the premise that procedural safeguards could cure its arbitrariness, the same problems — innocent people on death row, racial and geographic disparity, botched executions, and no measurable deterrent effect — remain in place.