The study also showed that raising the number of death sentences by one percent would prevent 105 murders. However, only 38 percent of all murder cases result in a death sentence, and of those, only 0.1 percent are actually executed. Retentionists believe that once a convicted murderer is executed and buried there are no further maintenance costs to the state. When in all actuality, the average cost of executing a prisoner is 2-3.5 million dollars. The maximum cost of imprisoning a criminal for life is 1 million dollars ("By the Numbers"). There is refutation for the arguments of those who favor capital punishment. How do capital punishment supporters respond to these arguments? Phelps notes, "People these days want revenge." (Prejean 105). Van den Haag notes "Justice requires punishing the guilty - as many of the guilty as possible.and sparing the innocent - as many of the innocent as possible, even if not all are spared" (van den Haag 224). He also responds to Radelet, "All human activities.cause innocent people to suffer wrongful death, but we don't give them up". In carrying out capital punishment, Van den Haag concludes that even if innocents are executed, ".a net gain in justice is being done" (Prejean 221). .
Abolitionists of capital punishment argue in terms of the issue as cruel and unusual punishment. The strongest argument against capital punishment for retributive purposes is the argument that capital punishment is cruel and unusual punishment. The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, condemning cruel and unusual punishment, is used to protest capital punishment. The fallacy of this argument is that the argument appears to be a decoy argument; the argument attempts to take attention away from the facts of the case. When the constitution was drafted, capital punishment was practiced widely in this country, yet the punishment was not specified as wrong or as cruel and unusual.