The Chicago Tribune, along with other national and local news outlets, has recently published numerous articles surrounding the possible end of the death penalty.

I would like to thank state governments around the country to have the testicular fortitude to address such an imperative concern. Is it possible that they directed their attention to the issue because as of August 26, 2008, some 130 death row inmates have been exonerated in 26 states? It had to be, right?

No, the call for social justice had to come from the fact that “82% of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks.” Moreover, this is evident with the number of executions that have occurred since 1976. Wrong again?

Ok, it had to be because the disproportionate rate of Black males to non-Black males on death row caused the ethical and moral bones within their bodies to ache.

In reality, the real cause for the debate over the death penalty surfacing again is not because of moral, ethical, religious, or even statistical evidence that has proven time and time again that the death penalty does not curb the rate of serious malicious crimes from occurring.

Money! Money is the motive for the dialogue. The lack of the almighty dollar within the hands of states during the current U.S. economic crisis, coupled with the millions states utilize to contest years of legal appeals, has made the nation second guess the efficiency of killing another human being.

Amnesty International states that, “a 2003 legislative audit in Kansas found that the estimated cost of a death penalty case was 70% more than the cost of a comparable non-death penalty case.” Moreover, the New York Times wrote a story in which “a judge in a small, poor Ohio county told prosecutors there this month that they could not seek the death penalty in the murder of a college student because the county’s share of the defense costs would be too great.”

I guess it is true as Henry Louis Mencken states, “Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.”