Death costs too much: North Carolina should join other states in reconsidering capital punishment

North Carolina should reconsider the death penalty.

Capital punishment as a public policy has become exceedingly expensive.

Budget concerns in a tight economy have led a number of states to introduce bills seeking to abolish or repeal the death penalty.

North Carolina should be one of them. But not just to save money.

When it comes to a contentious issue like the death penalty many people tend to frame the debate in overblown Biblical terms" with ""thou shalt not kill"" moral absolutism on one side and ""eye for an eye"" retributive justice on the other.

Such arguments can go on for hours and get us nowhere.

If there's one thing we can all agree on" it's the fact that — extensive as it might be — our legal system isn't perfect.

Nothing not even a lengthy appeals process can prevent the possibility that innocent men and women may be put to death.

And with each new death row inmate to be exonerated — often as a result of advances in DNA evidence — it becomes harder to defend the use of capital punishment in our system.

In North Carolina three death row inmates were exonerated in the last two years.

On the national level more than 50 were exonerated in the last 10 years.

There's no telling how many have been executed for crimes they didn't commit.

Herein lies the moral aspect of this debate.

Whatever the alleged benefits of capital punishment may be can they ever justify that risk?

We think not.

And mounting statistics seem to question whether the death penalty benefits society at all. Otherwise state governments — Republican and Democrat — wouldn't be willing to part with it so easily.

A number of states such as New Jersey in 2007" commissioned bipartisan studies to assess the practicality of capital punishment.

The New Jersey commission determined that the death penalty was a ""deeply flawed"" public policy that costs tax payers millions of dollars to implement" does not act as a deterrent against violent crime" delays closure for victims' loved ones and carries no guarantee against the execution of innocent people.

Proponents of capital punishment are left clinging to outdated rhetoric like ""an eye for an eye"" and ""they deserve it.""

This line of reasoning is woefully inadequate.

When the death penalty issue hits close to home – as it has in the Chapel Hill community – it is easy to let emotions guide our judgment.

If the men accused of murdering former Student Body President Eve Carson are guilty" many of us may feel that if anyone deserves capital punishment they certainly do.

But we cannot afford a legal system based on our emotionally driven predilections for vengeance.

Literally.

A Duke University study found that death penalty cases in North Carolina cost the state more than $2 million more per execution than a non-death penalty case.

In these tight economic times the state should be cutting programs that cost too much and don't benefit the citizens of North Carolina.

It can start by getting rid of the death penalty.