In his book, The Law, Federic Bastiat writes, "humans have inalienable rights that existed outside of and before government. ... A trial for a capital case (which is a case of first-degree murder) is already time consuming and expensive. This type of case usually takes around six weeks and constitutes between 3,000 and 5,000 pages of court records. ... (Jacobs, Landes, and Siegel) The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that in 1998, thirty-seven states and the federal prison system held 3,452 prisoners under sentence of death, all of which had committed murder. ...

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• Grade Level: High School