Davis / 2 Senator Chan

S.B _____

A BILL
To abolish the Death Penalty from Federal and State laws as a means of punishment.
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress
assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE
This act may be cited as the Death Penalty Act of 2015.
SECTION 2. FINDINGS
Congress hereby finds and declares that,
1) An execution could cost between $2.5 million to $5 million.
2) In 2001, murder rates in states without death penalty are 37% lower than states that do have it.
3) In the case of Roosevelt Green, he was executed but had nothing to do with the murder or kidnapping of the
woman.
4) In 1999, 3,527 prisoners in the U.S were sentenced to death; 183 of those people were executed in 2000.
5) 20 people have been executed this year in the United States.
6) Racial Discrimination is a factor of death sentences in the south.
7) Taking a human life is degrading to the human personality.
8) The sanctity of life prohibits the death penalty.
9) Since 1900, every 4 cases per year, there would be an innocent person claimed of a murder.
10) Standards of morality make the death penalty impinge on the cruel and unusual punishment clause.
SECTION 3. STATUTORY LANGUAGE
A) The Death Penalty shall hereby be abolished from all the cases that people were wrongfully convicted. Each
suspect shall get a fair trial by the means of having a jury of different races and political views. A sentenced to life
in prison would be the most extreme sentence that a judge could possibly give without parole.
B) All lawyers and judges shall be tested on their views of races, actions, and decision making to allow suspects to
have a fair trial. The judges with more experience and longer history will condone these cases. Their history of past
trials shall also be considered as well. If one of these evaluated traits doesnt comply with a fair trial, they shall not
be considered for future death penalty trials.
C) Innocence projects and the criminal justice system will be funded to help cases be re-trialed and help make a
possible exoneration. Through planned fundraising, facilities for life sentenced inmates shall be constructed for the
growing number of inmates. These facilities will house only those sentenced to life in confinement. This relocation
of inmates will help bring down the number of inmates in prison.
D) In addition to preventing further re-trials, DNA testing will be implemented where ever possible. With these
DNA tests, the eyewitness misidentification percentage will be reduced. Also, time and money that would be spent
on future re-trials would be saved, speeding up the trial to find a quicker conviction. This additional DNA test
would help reduce inmates in and out of prison.
E) All facilities where death penalties take place shall be torn down and destroyed. Equipment used for the death
penalty shall be disregarded and destroyed.
F) Those that have been sentenced the death penalty before January 1, 2016 shall still receive this penalty. Once the
facility has sentenced their last inmate, it shall be torn down.
G) All death penalty sentences shall be suspended as per the enactment of this bill.

Death Penalty
The Death Penalty should be abolished because the process of an execution is expensive, states
without the death penalty have lower crime rates, and people have been wrongfully convicted.
The cost of an execution is more expensive than keeping the person in jail for life. Statistics show
that an average death penalty case to the execution cost about $1.26 million. Executing a single capital
case costs about three times as much as it costs to keep a person in prison for their remaining life
expectancy, which is about 40 years. As it says, a capital case is three times more expensive than a person
in jail for life and that money difference can be out into having more police on the streets. The cost of the
death penalty in California has totaled over $4 billion since 1978. Since 1978, the death penalty in
California has cost $4 billion dollars and that is only one state out of 31 states that have the death penalty
enforced as of July 1, 2015. The price of obtaining convictions and executions ranges from $2.5 million
to $5 million per case. A case can become so expensive because there can be many retrials throughout the
case. If states abolished their death penalty, they can use the money to have more police out and have
lower crime rates.
States that do not enforce the death penalty have a lower crime rate than states that do enforce it.
From 1991 to 2013, the states without the death penalty have had a lower crime rate than states that do
have it. Data from 1973 to 1984 show that murder rates in the states without the death penalty were
consistently lower and averaged only 63% of the corresponding rates in the states retaining it. As I said
before and including this data, the states without the death penalty have low crime rates. Police officers
on duty do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide in states that have abolished the death
penalty than they do in death-penalty states. The states that do not have the death penalty might have
more police out and that causes some people to not perform acts against the police. These low crime rates
conclude that we should abolish the death penalty so that there wont be any wrongfully convictions.
There have been many cases where people have been wrongfully convicted. Out of all the people
that have been sentenced to death, there has been much exoneration for them. Since 1979, there have
been 681 executions in the United States. This shows that not everybody sentenced to death is wrong. In
2009 there were 3,279 people on death row: 1,364 blacks, 370 Hispanics, 1457 whites, and 77 classified as
other. This shows that there is some racial discrimination when convicting a person. If we abolish the
death penalty, we wouldnt have people being wrongfully convicted.