arguments for death penalty essay

Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty

Click the buttons below to view arguments and testimony on each topic.

The death penalty deters future murders.

Society has always used punishment to discourage would-be criminals from unlawful action. Since society has the highest interest in preventing murder, it should use the strongest punishment available to deter murder, and that is the death penalty. If murderers are sentenced to death and executed, potential murderers will think twice before killing for fear of losing their own life.

For years, criminologists analyzed murder rates to see if they fluctuated with the likelihood of convicted murderers being executed, but the results were inconclusive. Then in 1973 Isaac Ehrlich employed a new kind of analysis which produced results showing that for every inmate who was executed, 7 lives were spared because others were deterred from committing murder. Similar results have been produced by disciples of Ehrlich in follow-up studies.

Moreover, even if some studies regarding deterrence are inconclusive, that is only because the death penalty is rarely used and takes years before an execution is actually carried out. Punishments which are swift and sure are the best deterrent. The fact that some states or countries which do not use the death penalty have lower murder rates than jurisdictions which do is not evidence of the failure of deterrence. States with high murder rates would have even higher rates if they did not use the death penalty.

Ernest van den Haag, a Professor of Jurisprudence at Fordham University who has studied the question of deterrence closely, wrote: “Even though statistical demonstrations are not conclusive, and perhaps cannot be, capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else. They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts. Whatever people fear most is likely to deter most. Hence, the threat of the death penalty may deter some murderers who otherwise might not have been deterred. And surely the death penalty is the only penalty that could deter prisoners already serving a life sentence and tempted to kill a guard, or offenders about to be arrested and facing a life sentence. Perhaps they will not be deterred. But they would certainly not be deterred by anything else. We owe all the protection we can give to law enforcers exposed to special risks.”

Finally, the death penalty certainly “deters” the murderer who is executed. Strictly speaking, this is a form of incapacitation, similar to the way a robber put in prison is prevented from robbing on the streets. Vicious murderers must be killed to prevent them from murdering again, either in prison, or in society if they should get out. Both as a deterrent and as a form of permanent incapacitation, the death penalty helps to prevent future crime.

Those who believe that deterrence justifies the execution of certain offenders bear the burden of proving that the death penalty is a deterrent. The overwhelming conclusion from years of deterrence studies is that the death penalty is, at best, no more of a deterrent than a sentence of life in prison. The Ehrlich studies have been widely discredited. In fact, some criminologists, such as William Bowers of Northeastern University, maintain that the death penalty has the opposite effect: that is, society is brutalized by the use of the death penalty, and this increases the likelihood of more murder. Even most supporters of the death penalty now place little or no weight on deterrence as a serious justification for its continued use.

States in the United States that do not employ the death penalty generally have lower murder rates than states that do. The same is true when the U.S. is compared to countries similar to it. The U.S., with the death penalty, has a higher murder rate than the countries of Europe or Canada, which do not use the death penalty.

The death penalty is not a deterrent because most people who commit murders either do not expect to be caught or do not carefully weigh the differences between a possible execution and life in prison before they act. Frequently, murders are committed in moments of passion or anger, or by criminals who are substance abusers and acted impulsively. As someone who presided over many of Texas’s executions, former Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox has remarked, “It is my own experience that those executed in Texas were not deterred by the existence of the death penalty law. I think in most cases you’ll find that the murder was committed under severe drug and alcohol abuse.”

There is no conclusive proof that the death penalty acts as a better deterrent than the threat of life imprisonment. A 2012 report released by the prestigious National Research Council of the National Academies and based on a review of more than three decades of research, concluded that studies claiming a deterrent effect on murder rates from the death penalty are fundamentally flawed. A survey of the former and present presidents of the country’s top academic criminological societies found that 84% of these experts rejected the notion that research had demonstrated any deterrent effect from the death penalty .

Once in prison, those serving life sentences often settle into a routine and are less of a threat to commit violence than other prisoners. Moreover, most states now have a sentence of life without parole. Prisoners who are given this sentence will never be released. Thus, the safety of society can be assured without using the death penalty.

Ernest van den Haag Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Policy, Fordham University. Excerpts from ” The Ultimate Punishment: A Defense,” (Harvard Law Review Association, 1986)

“Execution of those who have committed heinous murders may deter only one murder per year. If it does, it seems quite warranted. It is also the only fitting retribution for murder I can think of.”

“Most abolitionists acknowledge that they would continue to favor abolition even if the death penalty were shown to deter more murders than alternatives could deter. Abolitionists appear to value the life of a convicted murderer or, at least, his non-execution, more highly than they value the lives of the innocent victims who might be spared by deterring prospective murderers.

Deterrence is not altogether decisive for me either. I would favor retention of the death penalty as retribution even if it were shown that the threat of execution could not deter prospective murderers not already deterred by the threat of imprisonment. Still, I believe the death penalty, because of its finality, is more feared than imprisonment, and deters some prospective murderers not deterred by the thought of imprisonment. Sparing the lives of even a few prospective victims by deterring their murderers is more important than preserving the lives of convicted murderers because of the possibility, or even the probability, that executing them would not deter others. Whereas the life of the victims who might be saved are valuable, that of the murderer has only negative value, because of his crime. Surely the criminal law is meant to protect the lives of potential victims in preference to those of actual murderers.”

“We threaten punishments in order to deter crime. We impose them not only to make the threats credible but also as retribution (justice) for the crimes that were not deterred. Threats and punishments are necessary to deter and deterrence is a sufficient practical justification for them. Retribution is an independent moral justification. Although penalties can be unwise, repulsive, or inappropriate, and those punished can be pitiable, in a sense the infliction of legal punishment on a guilty person cannot be unjust. By committing the crime, the criminal volunteered to assume the risk of receiving a legal punishment that he could have avoided by not committing the crime. The punishment he suffers is the punishment he voluntarily risked suffering and, therefore, it is no more unjust to him than any other event for which one knowingly volunteers to assume the risk. Thus, the death penalty cannot be unjust to the guilty criminal.”

Full text can be found at PBS.org .

Hugo Adam Bedau (deceased) Austin Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University Excerpts from “The Case Against The Death Penalty” (Copyright 1997, American Civil Liberties Union)

“Persons who commit murder and other crimes of personal violence either may or may not premeditate their crimes.

When crime is planned, the criminal ordinarily concentrates on escaping detection, arrest, and conviction. The threat of even the severest punishment will not discourage those who expect to escape detection and arrest. It is impossible to imagine how the threat of any punishment could prevent a crime that is not premeditated….

Most capital crimes are committed in the heat of the moment. Most capital crimes are committed during moments of great emotional stress or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, when logical thinking has been suspended. In such cases, violence is inflicted by persons heedless of the consequences to themselves as well as to others….

If, however, severe punishment can deter crime, then long-term imprisonment is severe enough to deter any rational person from committing a violent crime.

The vast preponderance of the evidence shows that the death penalty is no more effective than imprisonment in deterring murder and that it may even be an incitement to criminal violence. Death-penalty states as a group do not have lower rates of criminal homicide than non-death-penalty states….

On-duty police officers do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide in abolitionist states than they do in death-penalty states. Between l973 and l984, for example, lethal assaults against police were not significantly more, or less, frequent in abolitionist states than in death-penalty states. There is ‘no support for the view that the death penalty provides a more effective deterrent to police homicides than alternative sanctions. Not for a single year was evidence found that police are safer in jurisdictions that provide for capital punishment.’ (Bailey and Peterson, Criminology (1987))

Prisoners and prison personnel do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide from life-term prisoners in abolition states than they do in death-penalty states. Between 1992 and 1995, 176 inmates were murdered by other prisoners; the vast majority (84%) were killed in death penalty jurisdictions. During the same period about 2% of all assaults on prison staff were committed by inmates in abolition jurisdictions. Evidently, the threat of the death penalty ‘does not even exert an incremental deterrent effect over the threat of a lesser punishment in the abolitionist states.’ (Wolfson, in Bedau, ed., The Death Penalty in America, 3rd ed. (1982))

Actual experience thus establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty does not deter murder. No comparable body of evidence contradicts that conclusion.”

Click here for the full text from the ACLU website.

Retribution

A just society requires the taking of a life for a life.

When someone takes a life, the balance of justice is disturbed. Unless that balance is restored, society succumbs to a rule of violence. Only the taking of the murderer’s life restores the balance and allows society to show convincingly that murder is an intolerable crime which will be punished in kind.

Retribution has its basis in religious values, which have historically maintained that it is proper to take an “eye for an eye” and a life for a life.

Although the victim and the victim’s family cannot be restored to the status which preceded the murder, at least an execution brings closure to the murderer’s crime (and closure to the ordeal for the victim’s family) and ensures that the murderer will create no more victims.

For the most cruel and heinous crimes, the ones for which the death penalty is applied, offenders deserve the worst punishment under our system of law, and that is the death penalty. Any lesser punishment would undermine the value society places on protecting lives.

Robert Macy, District Attorney of Oklahoma City, described his concept of the need for retribution in one case: “In 1991, a young mother was rendered helpless and made to watch as her baby was executed. The mother was then mutilated and killed. The killer should not lie in some prison with three meals a day, clean sheets, cable TV, family visits and endless appeals. For justice to prevail, some killers just need to die.”

Retribution is another word for revenge. Although our first instinct may be to inflict immediate pain on someone who wrongs us, the standards of a mature society demand a more measured response.

The emotional impulse for revenge is not a sufficient justification for invoking a system of capital punishment, with all its accompanying problems and risks. Our laws and criminal justice system should lead us to higher principles that demonstrate a complete respect for life, even the life of a murderer. Encouraging our basest motives of revenge, which ends in another killing, extends the chain of violence. Allowing executions sanctions killing as a form of ‘pay-back.’

Many victims’ families denounce the use of the death penalty. Using an execution to try to right the wrong of their loss is an affront to them and only causes more pain. For example, Bud Welch’s daughter, Julie, was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Although his first reaction was to wish that those who committed this terrible crime be killed, he ultimately realized that such killing “is simply vengeance; and it was vengeance that killed Julie…. Vengeance is a strong and natural emotion. But it has no place in our justice system.”

The notion of an eye for an eye, or a life for a life, is a simplistic one which our society has never endorsed. We do not allow torturing the torturer, or raping the rapist. Taking the life of a murderer is a similarly disproportionate punishment, especially in light of the fact that the U.S. executes only a small percentage of those convicted of murder, and these defendants are typically not the worst offenders but merely the ones with the fewest resources to defend themselves.

Louis P. Pojman Author and Professor of Philosophy, U.S. Military Academy. Excerpt from “The Death Penalty: For and Against,” (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998)

“[Opponents of the capital punishment often put forth the following argument:] Perhaps the murderer deserves to die, but what authority does the state have to execute him or her? Both the Old and New Testament says, “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Prov. 25:21 and Romans 12:19). You need special authority to justify taking the life of a human being.

The objector fails to note that the New Testament passage continues with a support of the right of the state to execute criminals in the name of God: “Let every person be subjected to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment…. If you do wrong, be afraid, for [the authority] does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13: 1-4). So, according to the Bible, the authority to punish, which presumably includes the death penalty, comes from God.

But we need not appeal to a religious justification for capital punishment. We can site the state’s role in dispensing justice. Just as the state has the authority (and duty) to act justly in allocating scarce resources, in meeting minimal needs of its (deserving) citizens, in defending its citizens from violence and crime, and in not waging unjust wars; so too does it have the authority, flowing from its mission to promote justice and the good of its people, to punish the criminal. If the criminal, as one who has forfeited a right to life, deserves to be executed, especially if it will likely deter would-be murderers, the state has a duty to execute those convicted of first-degree murder.”

National Council of Synagogues and the Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops Excerpts from “To End the Death Penalty: A Report of the National Jewish/Catholic Consultation” (December, 1999)

“Some would argue that the death penalty is needed as a means of retributive justice, to balance out the crime with the punishment. This reflects a natural concern of society, and especially of victims and their families. Yet we believe that we are called to seek a higher road even while punishing the guilty, for example through long and in some cases life-long incarceration, so that the healing of all can ultimately take place.

Some would argue that the death penalty will teach society at large the seriousness of crime. Yet we say that teaching people to respond to violence with violence will, again, only breed more violence.

The strongest argument of all [in favor of the death penalty] is the deep pain and grief of the families of victims, and their quite natural desire to see punishment meted out to those who have plunged them into such agony. Yet it is the clear teaching of our traditions that this pain and suffering cannot be healed simply through the retribution of capital punishment or by vengeance. It is a difficult and long process of healing which comes about through personal growth and God’s grace. We agree that much more must be done by the religious community and by society at large to solace and care for the grieving families of the victims of violent crime.

Recent statements of the Reform and Conservative movements in Judaism, and of the U.S. Catholic Conference sum up well the increasingly strong convictions shared by Jews and Catholics…:

‘Respect for all human life and opposition to the violence in our society are at the root of our long-standing opposition (as bishops) to the death penalty. We see the death penalty as perpetuating a cycle of violence and promoting a sense of vengeance in our culture. As we said in Confronting the Culture of Violence: ‘We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing.’ We oppose capital punishment not just for what it does to those guilty of horrible crimes, but for what it does to all of us as a society. Increasing reliance on the death penalty diminishes all of us and is a sign of growing disrespect for human life. We cannot overcome crime by simply executing criminals, nor can we restore the lives of the innocent by ending the lives of those convicted of their murders. The death penalty offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life.’1

We affirm that we came to these conclusions because of our shared understanding of the sanctity of human life. We have committed ourselves to work together, and each within our own communities, toward ending the death penalty.” Endnote 1. Statement of the Administrative Committee of the United States Catholic Conference, March 24, 1999.

The risk of executing the innocent precludes the use of the death penalty.

The death penalty alone imposes an irrevocable sentence. Once an inmate is executed, nothing can be done to make amends if a mistake has been made. There is considerable evidence that many mistakes have been made in sentencing people to death. Since 1973, over 180 people have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence emerged. During the same period of time, over 1,500 people have been executed. Thus, for every 8.3 people executed, we have found one person on death row who never should have been convicted. These statistics represent an intolerable risk of executing the innocent. If an automobile manufacturer operated with similar failure rates, it would be run out of business.

Our capital punishment system is unreliable. A study by Columbia University Law School found that two thirds of all capital trials contained serious errors. When the cases were retried, over 80% of the defendants were not sentenced to death and 7% were completely acquitted.

Many of the releases of innocent defendants from death row came about as a result of factors outside of the justice system. Recently, journalism students in Illinois were assigned to investigate the case of a man who was scheduled to be executed, after the system of appeals had rejected his legal claims. The students discovered that one witness had lied at the original trial, and they were able to find another man, who confessed to the crime on videotape and was later convicted of the murder. The innocent man who was released was very fortunate, but he was spared because of the informal efforts of concerned citizens, not because of the justice system.

In other cases, DNA testing has exonerated death row inmates. Here, too, the justice system had concluded that these defendants were guilty and deserving of the death penalty. DNA testing became available only in the early 1990s, due to advancements in science. If this testing had not been discovered until ten years later, many of these inmates would have been executed. And if DNA testing had been applied to earlier cases where inmates were executed in the 1970s and 80s, the odds are high that it would have proven that some of them were innocent as well.

Society takes many risks in which innocent lives can be lost. We build bridges, knowing that statistically some workers will be killed during construction; we take great precautions to reduce the number of unintended fatalities. But wrongful executions are a preventable risk. By substituting a sentence of life without parole, we meet society’s needs of punishment and protection without running the risk of an erroneous and irrevocable punishment.

There is no proof that any innocent person has actually been executed since increased safeguards and appeals were added to our death penalty system in the 1970s. Even if such executions have occurred, they are very rare. Imprisoning innocent people is also wrong, but we cannot empty the prisons because of that minimal risk. If improvements are needed in the system of representation, or in the use of scientific evidence such as DNA testing, then those reforms should be instituted. However, the need for reform is not a reason to abolish the death penalty.

Besides, many of the claims of innocence by those who have been released from death row are actually based on legal technicalities. Just because someone’s conviction is overturned years later and the prosecutor decides not to retry him, does not mean he is actually innocent.

If it can be shown that someone is innocent, surely a governor would grant clemency and spare the person. Hypothetical claims of innocence are usually just delaying tactics to put off the execution as long as possible. Given our thorough system of appeals through numerous state and federal courts, the execution of an innocent individual today is almost impossible. Even the theoretical execution of an innocent person can be justified because the death penalty saves lives by deterring other killings.

Gerald Kogan, Former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Excerpts from a speech given in Orlando, Florida, October 23, 1999 “[T]here is no question in my mind, and I can tell you this having seen the dynamics of our criminal justice system over the many years that I have been associated with it, [as] prosecutor, defense attorney, trial judge and Supreme Court Justice, that convinces me that we certainly have, in the past, executed those people who either didn’t fit the criteria for execution in the State of Florida or who, in fact, were, factually, not guilty of the crime for which they have been executed.

“And you can make these statements when you understand the dynamics of the criminal justice system, when you understand how the State makes deals with more culpable defendants in a capital case, offers them light sentences in exchange for their testimony against another participant or, in some cases, in fact, gives them immunity from prosecution so that they can secure their testimony; the use of jailhouse confessions, like people who say, ‘I was in the cell with so-and-so and they confessed to me,’ or using those particular confessions, the validity of which there has been great doubt. And yet, you see the uneven application of the death penalty where, in many instances, those that are the most culpable escape death and those that are the least culpable are victims of the death penalty. These things begin to weigh very heavily upon you. And under our system, this is the system we have. And that is, we are human beings administering an imperfect system.”

“And how about those people who are still sitting on death row today, who may be factually innocent but cannot prove their particular case very simply because there is no DNA evidence in their case that can be used to exonerate them? Of course, in most cases, you’re not going to have that kind of DNA evidence, so there is no way and there is no hope for them to be saved from what may be one of the biggest mistakes that our society can make.”

The entire speech by Justice Kogan is available here.

Paul G. Cassell Associate Professor of Law, University of Utah, College of Law, and former law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. Statement before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights Concerning Claims of Innocence in Capital Cases (July 23, 1993)

“Given the fallibility of human judgments, the possibility exists that the use of capital punishment may result in the execution of an innocent person. The Senate Judiciary Committee has previously found this risk to be ‘minimal,’ a view shared by numerous scholars. As Justice Powell has noted commenting on the numerous state capital cases that have come before the Supreme Court, the ‘unprecedented safeguards’ already inherent in capital sentencing statutes ‘ensure a degree of care in the imposition of the sentence of death that can only be described as unique.’”

“Our present system of capital punishment limits the ultimate penalty to certain specifically-defined crimes and even then, permit the penalty of death only when the jury finds that the aggravating circumstances in the case outweigh all mitigating circumstances. The system further provides judicial review of capital cases. Finally, before capital sentences are carried out, the governor or other executive official will review the sentence to insure that it is a just one, a determination that undoubtedly considers the evidence of the condemned defendant’s guilt. Once all of those decisionmakers have agreed that a death sentence is appropriate, innocent lives would be lost from failure to impose the sentence.”

“Capital sentences, when carried out, save innocent lives by permanently incapacitating murderers. Some persons who commit capital homicide will slay other innocent persons if given the opportunity to do so. The death penalty is the most effective means of preventing such killers from repeating their crimes. The next most serious penalty, life imprisonment without possibility of parole, prevents murderers from committing some crimes but does not prevent them from murdering in prison.”

“The mistaken release of guilty murderers should be of far greater concern than the speculative and heretofore nonexistent risk of the mistaken execution of an innocent person.”

Full text can be found here.

Arbitrariness & Discrimination

The death penalty is applied unfairly and should not be used.

In practice, the death penalty does not single out the worst offenders. Rather, it selects an arbitrary group based on such irrational factors as the quality of the defense counsel, the county in which the crime was committed, or the race of the defendant or victim.

Almost all defendants facing the death penalty cannot afford their own attorney. Hence, they are dependent on the quality of the lawyers assigned by the state, many of whom lack experience in capital cases or are so underpaid that they fail to investigate the case properly. A poorly represented defendant is much more likely to be convicted and given a death sentence.

With respect to race, studies have repeatedly shown that a death sentence is far more likely where a white person is murdered than where a Black person is murdered. The death penalty is racially divisive because it appears to count white lives as more valuable than Black lives. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 296 Black defendants have been executed for the murder of a white victim, while only 31 white defendants have been executed for the murder of a Black victim. Such racial disparities have existed over the history of the death penalty and appear to be largely intractable.

It is arbitrary when someone in one county or state receives the death penalty, but someone who commits a comparable crime in another county or state is given a life sentence. Prosecutors have enormous discretion about when to seek the death penalty and when to settle for a plea bargain. Often those who can only afford a minimal defense are selected for the death penalty. Until race and other arbitrary factors, like economics and geography, can be eliminated as a determinant of who lives and who dies, the death penalty must not be used.

Discretion has always been an essential part of our system of justice. No one expects the prosecutor to pursue every possible offense or punishment, nor do we expect the same sentence to be imposed just because two crimes appear similar. Each crime is unique, both because the circumstances of each victim are different and because each defendant is different. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a mandatory death penalty which applied to everyone convicted of first degree murder would be unconstitutional. Hence, we must give prosecutors and juries some discretion.

In fact, more white people are executed in this country than black people. And even if blacks are disproportionately represented on death row, proportionately blacks commit more murders than whites. Moreover, the Supreme Court has rejected the use of statistical studies which claim racial bias as the sole reason for overturning a death sentence.

Even if the death penalty punishes some while sparing others, it does not follow that everyone should be spared. The guilty should still be punished appropriately, even if some do escape proper punishment unfairly. The death penalty should apply to killers of black people as well as to killers of whites. High paid, skillful lawyers should not be able to get some defendants off on technicalities. The existence of some systemic problems is no reason to abandon the whole death penalty system.

Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. President and Chief Executive Officer, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Inc. Excerpt from “Legal Lynching: Racism, Injustice & the Death Penalty,” (Marlowe & Company, 1996)

“Who receives the death penalty has less to do with the violence of the crime than with the color of the criminal’s skin, or more often, the color of the victim’s skin. Murder — always tragic — seems to be a more heinous and despicable crime in some states than in others. Women who kill and who are killed are judged by different standards than are men who are murderers and victims.

The death penalty is essentially an arbitrary punishment. There are no objective rules or guidelines for when a prosecutor should seek the death penalty, when a jury should recommend it, and when a judge should give it. This lack of objective, measurable standards ensures that the application of the death penalty will be discriminatory against racial, gender, and ethnic groups.

The majority of Americans who support the death penalty believe, or wish to believe, that legitimate factors such as the violence and cruelty with which the crime was committed, a defendant’s culpability or history of violence, and the number of victims involved determine who is sentenced to life in prison and who receives the ultimate punishment. The numbers, however, tell a different story. They confirm the terrible truth that bias and discrimination warp our nation’s judicial system at the very time it matters most — in matters of life and death. The factors that determine who will live and who will die — race, sex, and geography — are the very same ones that blind justice was meant to ignore. This prejudicial distribution should be a moral outrage to every American.”

Justice Lewis Powell United States Supreme Court Justice excerpts from McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987) (footnotes and citations omitted)

(Mr. McCleskey, a black man, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1978 for killing a white police officer while robbing a store. Mr. McCleskey appealed his conviction and death sentence, claiming racial discrimination in the application of Georgia’s death penalty. He presented statistical analysis showing a pattern of sentencing disparities based primarily on the race of the victim. The analysis indicated that black defendants who killed white victims had the greatest likelihood of receiving the death penalty. Writing the majority opinion for the Supreme Court, Justice Powell held that statistical studies on race by themselves were an insufficient basis for overturning the death penalty.)

“[T]he claim that [t]his sentence rests on the irrelevant factor of race easily could be extended to apply to claims based on unexplained discrepancies that correlate to membership in other minority groups, and even to gender. Similarly, since [this] claim relates to the race of his victim, other claims could apply with equally logical force to statistical disparities that correlate with the race or sex of other actors in the criminal justice system, such as defense attorneys or judges. Also, there is no logical reason that such a claim need be limited to racial or sexual bias. If arbitrary and capricious punishment is the touchstone under the Eighth Amendment, such a claim could — at least in theory — be based upon any arbitrary variable, such as the defendant’s facial characteristics, or the physical attractiveness of the defendant or the victim, that some statistical study indicates may be influential in jury decision making. As these examples illustrate, there is no limiting principle to the type of challenge brought by McCleskey. The Constitution does not require that a State eliminate any demonstrable disparity that correlates with a potentially irrelevant factor in order to operate a criminal justice system that includes capital punishment. As we have stated specifically in the context of capital punishment, the Constitution does not ‘plac[e] totally unrealistic conditions on its use.’ (Gregg v. Georgia)”

The entire decision can be found here.

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The Death Penalty Can Ensure ‘Justice Is Being Done’

A top Justice Department official says for many Americans the death penalty is a difficult issue on moral, religious and policy grounds. But as a legal issue, it is straightforward.

By Jeffrey A. Rosen

Mr. Rosen is the deputy attorney general.

This month, for the first time in 17 years , the United States resumed carrying out death sentences for federal crimes.

On July 14, Daniel Lewis Lee was executed for the 1996 murder of a family, including an 8-year-old girl, by suffocating and drowning them in the Illinois Bayou after robbing them to fund a white-supremacist organization. On July 16, Wesley Purkey was executed for the 1998 murder of a teenage girl, whom he kidnapped, raped, killed, dismembered and discarded in a septic pond. The next day, Dustin Honken was executed for five murders committed in 1993, including the execution-style shooting of two young girls, their mother, and two prospective witnesses against him in a federal prosecution for methamphetamine trafficking.

The death penalty is a difficult issue for many Americans on moral, religious and policy grounds. But as a legal issue, it is straightforward. The United States Constitution expressly contemplates “capital” crimes, and Congress has authorized the death penalty for serious federal offenses since President George Washington signed the Crimes Act of 1790. The American people have repeatedly ratified that decision, including through the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 signed by President Bill Clinton, the federal execution of Timothy McVeigh under President George W. Bush and the decision by President Barack Obama’s Justice Department to seek the death penalty against the Boston Marathon bomber and Dylann Roof .

The recent executions reflect that consensus, as the Justice Department has an obligation to carry out the law. The decision to seek the death penalty against Mr. Lee was made by Attorney General Janet Reno (who said she personally opposed the death penalty but was bound by the law) and reaffirmed by Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder.

Mr. Purkey was prosecuted during the George W. Bush administration, and his conviction and sentence were vigorously defended throughout the Obama administration. The judge who imposed the death sentence on Mr. Honken, Mark Bennett, said that while he generally opposed the death penalty, he would not lose any sleep over Mr. Honken’s execution.

In a New York Times Op-Ed essay published on July 17 , two of Mr. Lee’s lawyers criticized the execution of their client, which they contend was carried out in a “shameful rush.” That objection overlooks that Mr. Lee was sentenced more than 20 years ago, and his appeals and other permissible challenges failed, up to and including the day of his execution.

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Should the Death Penalty Be Legal?

• History of the Death Penalty

Practiced for much, if not all, of human history, the death penalty (also called capital punishment) is the “execution of an offender sentenced to death after conviction by a court of law of a criminal offense,” according to Roger Hood, professor at the Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Oxford.

Amnesty International lists the United States as just one of 55 countries globally with a legal death penalty for ordinary crimes as of May 2023. Another nine countries reserve the death penalty for “exceptional crimes such as crimes under military law or crimes committed in exceptional circumstances,” according to Amnesty International. Meanwhile, 112 countries have abolished the death penalty legally and 23 have abolished the punishment in practice. Read more history…

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1 The death penalty provides the justice and closure families and victims deserve. Many relatives of murder victims believe the death penalty is just and necessary for their lives to move forward. Jason Johnson, whose father was sentenced to death for killing his mother, states: “[I will go to see him executed] not to see him die [but] just to see my family actually have some closure… He’s an evil human being. He can talk Christianity and all that. That is all my father is. That’s all he’s ever been, is a con man… If he found redemption, that doesn’t matter, that’s between him and God. His forgiveness is to come from the Lord and his redemption is to come from the Lord, not the government. The Bible also says, ‘An eye for an eye.’” [ 17 ] Phyllis Loya, mother of police officer Larry Lasater who was killed in the line of duty, states, “I will live to see the execution of my son’s murderer. People [need] closure, and I think it means different things to different people. What it would mean for me is that my fight for justice for my son would be complete when his sentence, which was [handed down] by a Contra Costa County jury and by a Contra Costa County judge, would be carried out as it should be.” [ 18 ] While some argue that there is no “closure” to be had in such tragedies and via the death penalty, victim families think differently. Often the families of victims have to endure for years detailed accounts in the press and social media of their loved one’s gory murder while the murderer sits out a life sentence or endlessly appeals their conviction. A just execution puts an end to that cycle. As Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor explains, “The family of each murder victim suffers unspeakable pain when their loved one is murdered. Those wounds are torn open many times during the following decades, as the investigations, trials, appeals, and pardon and parole board hearings occur. Each stage brings torment and yet a desire for justice for the heinous treatment of their family member. The family feels that the suffering and loss of life of the victim and their own pain are forgotten when the murderer is portrayed in the media as a sympathetic character. The family knows that the execution of the murderer cannot bring their loved one back. They suspect it will not bring them ‘closure’ or ‘finality’ or ‘peace,’ but there is justice and perhaps an end to the ongoing wounding by ‘the murderer and then the system.’” [ 19 ] Read More

Pro 2 The death penalty prevents additional crime. If not a deterrent to would-be murderers, at the very least, when carried out, the death penalty prevents convicted murderers from repeating their crimes. “Perhaps the most straightforward argument for the death penalty is that it saves innocent lives by preventing convicted murderers from killing again. If the abolitionists had not succeeded in obtaining a temporary moratorium on death penalties from 1972 to 1976, [Kenneth Allen] McDuff would have been executed, and Colleen Reed and at least eight other young women would be alive today,” explains Paul Cassell, former U.S. District Judge. [ 15 ] Kenneth Allen McDuff was convicted and sentenced to death in 1966 for the murders of three teenagers and the rape of one. However, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty nationwide in 1972 ( Furman v. Georgia ), leading to a reduced sentence and McDuff being released on parole in 1989. An estimated three days later, he began a crime spree: torturing, raping, and murdering at least six women in Texas before being arrested again on May 4, 1992, and sentenced to death a second time. Had McDuff been executed as justice demanded for the first three murders, at least six murders would have been prevented. [ 15 ] [ 16 ] Considering recidivism rates, how many more murders and associated crimes of kidnaping, rape, and torture, among others could have been deterred had the death penalty been imposed on any number of murderers? Read More

Pro 3 The death penalty is the only moral and just punishment for the worst crimes. Talion law ( lex talionis in Latin), or retributive law, is perhaps best known as the Biblical imperative: “Anyone who inflicts a permanent injury on his or her neighbor shall receive the same in return: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The same injury that one gives another shall be inflicted in return.” [ 8 ] [ 9 ] The word “retribution” comes from the Latin re + tribuo , or “I pay back.” In order for those who commit the worst crimes to pay their debts to society, the death penalty must be employed as punishment, or the debt has not been paid. [ 10 ] “ Retribution is an expression of society’s right to make a moral judgment by imposing a punishment on a wrongdoer befitting the crime he has committed,” says Charles Stimson of the Heritage Foundation. Therefore, “the death penalty should be available for the worst of the worst,” regardless of the race or gender of the victim or perpetrator. [ 11 ] Thus, “retributionists who support the death penalty typically do not wish to expand the list of offenses for which it may be imposed. Their support for the death penalty is only for crimes defined as particularly heinous, because only such criminals deserve to be put to death. Under lex talionis it is impermissible to execute those whose crimes do not warrant the ultimate sanction,” explains Jon’a F. Meyer, professor at Rutgers University. “The uniform application of retributive punishment is central to the philosophy.” [ 12 ] As Robert Blecker, professor emeritus at New York Law School, further clarifies, “retribution is not simply revenge . Revenge may be limitless and misdirected at the undeserving, as with collective punishment. Retribution, on the other hand, can help restore a moral balance. It demands that punishment must be limited and proportional. Retributivists like myself just as strongly oppose excessive punishment as we urge adequate punishment: as much, but no more than what’s deserved. Thus I endorse capital punishment only for the worst of the worst criminals.” [ 13 ] “Sometimes, justice is dismissing a charge, granting a plea bargain, expunging a past conviction, seeking a prison sentence, or — in a very few cases, for the worst of the worst murderers — sometimes, justice is death…A drug cartel member who murders a rival cartel member faces life in prison without parole. What if he murders two, three, or 12 people? Or the victim is a child or multiple children? What if the murder was preceded by torture or rape? How about a serial killer? Or a terrorist who kills dozens, hundreds or thousands?” asks George Brauchler, District Attorney of the 18th Judicial District in Colorado. The nature of the crime, and the depth of its depravity, should matter. [ 14 ] Read More

Con 1 Not only is the death penalty not a deterrent to crime, it is very expensive. Advocates for capital punishment long argued that it deters crime, other criminal acts, but according to the ACLU, “There is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than states without such laws. And states that have abolished capital punishment show no significant changes in either crime or murder rates.” [24] “People commit murders largely in the heat of passion, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or because they are mentally ill, giving little or no thought to the possible consequences of their acts,” the ACLU continues. “The few murderers who plan their crimes beforehand… intend and expect to avoid punishment altogether by not getting caught. Some self-destructive individuals may even hope they will be caught and executed.” [ 24 ] Further, the death penalty is significantly more expensive than life-without-parole, the oft-shunned alternative penalty. The death penalty system costs California $137 million per year while a system with lifelong imprisonment as the maximum penalty would cost $11.5 million, an almost 92% decrease in expense. The statistics are lower but comparable across other states including Kansas, Tennessee, and Maryland. [ 25 ] And this money has to come from somewhere, most often at the expense of taxpayers. In Texas, executions are funded “by raising property tax rates and by reducing public safety expenditure. Property crime rises as a consequence of the latter,” explains Jeffrey Miron of the Cato Institute. [ 26 ] Read More

Con 2 The death penalty is steeped in poor legal assistance and racial bias. The Equal Justice Initiative explains that the “death penalty system treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent,” resulting in the punishment being ”mostly imposed on poor people who cannot afford to hire an effective lawyer” while “people of color are more likely to be prosecuted for capital murder, sentenced to death, and executed, especially if the victim in the case is white.” [ 20 ] The American Bar Association sets minimum qualifications for capital case lawyers, yet most death penalty states do not require lawyers to meet even those requirements, leaving defendants without the means to hire a private lawyer to face the court with inadequate counsel. [ 20 ] Further, erroneous eyewitness identifications, false and coerced confessions, false or misleading forensic evidence, misconduct by police, prosecutors, or other officials, and incentivized witnesses taint death row cases. [ 21 ] For every eight people on death row, one of them has later been found innocent. [ 20 ] The death penalty is inconsistently applied and most often applied to Black men who have killed a white person. While Black people made up only 13% of the American population in 2018, 41% of people on death row and 34% of those executed were Black. [ 20 ] This inequality should not be surprising considering the roots of the death penalty. Bryan Stevenson, capital defense attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, refers to the death penalty as the “stepchild of lynching .” [ 22 ] As journalist Josh Marcus explains, “Following the end of the Reconstruction period, which saw federal troops occupy the former Confederate states and enforce new legal and constitutional protections for Black people, lynching surged in the late 1800s, until it became all but a daily occurrence across America. Lynchings sometimes involved government officials like local law enforcement, and government officials began arguing for capital punishment as an alternative. It would still satiate the public’s appetite for violence against Black people, but under the auspices of the law, which at the time allowed for explicit racial segregation in all areas of life.” [ 22 ] A survey of executions found that 80% of executions occur in former Confederate states and mirror historic lynching sites. [ 22 ] [ 23 ] “We should be beyond the point of killing people for killing people. It’s so archaic,” concludes Rachel Sutphin, whose father Eric, a Deputy Sheriff in Virginia, was killed by an escaped prisoner who was, in turn, executed by lethal injection. [ 23 ] Read More

Con 3 The death penalty is immoral and amounts to torture. Many religions , from Catholicism to Judaism, not only oppose the death penalty but also call for its worldwide abolition. “Murder is calculated, unjustified and intentional taking of life. When we, under the supposed color of law, deliberate, decide, and plan the purposeful extinguishing of human life, we commit murder. The death penalty is murder,” explains Rabbi and former Assistant Ohio Public Defender Benjamin Zober. “We are commanded, ‘justice, justice, shall you pursue.’ (Deut. 16:20) We cannot do this by taking lives, acting in anger, or vengeance, or by creating more bloodshed, trauma, and pain…. There is a world in every person, every life…. ‘Anyone who destroys a life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world.’ (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5).” [ 27 ] Robert Schentrup, brother of 16-year-old Carmen who died in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 says, “This is the part where pundits on TV will invoke the name of my sister to support the murder of another human being. This is the part where people try to convince me that vengeance should make me feel better and that it will bring me ‘closure’ so that ‘I can continue to heal. But I do not … care, because my sister is dead, and killing someone else will not bring her back.” [ 28 ] Further, while the death penalty ultimately takes a life, the condemned person is subjected to what is otherwise considered physical and psychological torture before death. As law professor John Bessler explains “The death penalty, in fact, always and inevitably inflicts severe pain and suffering rising to the level of torture. That’s because capital charges and death sentences systematically threaten individuals with death (and, when death warrants against individuals are carried out, kill), with torture—prohibited by various domestic laws in addition to the bar in international law—considered to be the aggravated form of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” [ 29 ] Certain methods of execution are especially tortuous: consider the 2024 nitrogen hypoxia execution of Kenneth Smith, which inflicted an intense struggle for air before he died 22 minutes after the execution began. In the United States, cruel punishment is explicitly banned by the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment . [ 29 ] [ 30 ] Read More

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Home Essay Samples Social Issues Death Penalty

Examining the Death Penalty: An Argumentative Perspective

Table of contents, death penalty arguments: deterrence and prevention, ethical considerations: the value of human life, implementation complexities: ensuring fairness, conclusion: weighing the arguments.

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• Introduction

Historical considerations

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• Capital punishment in the early 21st century

capital punishment

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capital punishment , execution of an offender sentenced to death after conviction by a court of law of a criminal offense. Capital punishment should be distinguished from extrajudicial executions carried out without due process of law . The term death penalty is sometimes used interchangeably with capital punishment , though imposition of the penalty is not always followed by execution (even when it is upheld on appeal), because of the possibility of commutation to life imprisonment.

Capital punishment for murder , treason , arson , and rape was widely employed in ancient Greece under the laws of Draco (fl. 7th century bce ), though Plato argued that it should be used only for the incorrigible . The Romans also used it for a wide range of offenses, though citizens were exempted for a short time during the republic. It also has been sanctioned at one time or another by most of the world’s major religions. Followers of Judaism and Christianity, for example, have claimed to find justification for capital punishment in the biblical passage “Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” ( Genesis 9:6). Yet capital punishment has been prescribed for many crimes not involving loss of life, including adultery and blasphemy . The ancient legal principle Lex talionis ( talion )—“an eye for an eye , a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life”—which appears in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi , was invoked in some societies to ensure that capital punishment was not disproportionately applied.

The prevalence of capital punishment in ancient times is difficult to ascertain precisely, but it seems likely that it was often avoided, sometimes by the alternative of banishment and sometimes by payment of compensation . For example, it was customary during Japan’s peaceful Heian period (794–1185) for the emperor to commute every death sentence and replace it with deportation to a remote area, though executions were reinstated once civil war broke out in the mid-11th century.

In Islamic law , as expressed in the Qurʾān , capital punishment is condoned . Although the Qurʾān prescribes the death penalty for several ḥadd (fixed) crimes—including robbery, adultery, and apostasy of Islam —murder is not among them. Instead, murder is treated as a civil crime and is covered by the law of qiṣās (retaliation), whereby the relatives of the victim decide whether the offender is punished with death by the authorities or made to pay diyah (wergild) as compensation.

Death was formerly the penalty for a large number of offenses in England during the 17th and 18th centuries, but it was never applied as widely as the law provided. As in other countries, many offenders who committed capital crimes escaped the death penalty, either because juries or courts would not convict them or because they were pardoned, usually on condition that they agreed to banishment; some were sentenced to the lesser punishment of transportation to the then American colonies and later to Australia. Beginning in the Middle Ages, it was possible for offenders guilty of capital offenses to receive benefit of clergy , by which those who could prove that they were ordained priests (clerks in Holy Orders) as well as secular clerks who assisted in divine service (or, from 1547, a peer of the realm) were allowed to go free, though it remained within the judge’s power to sentence them to prison for up to a year, or from 1717 onward to transportation for seven years. Because during medieval times the only proof of ordination was literacy, it became customary between the 15th and 18th centuries to allow anyone convicted of a felony to escape the death sentence by proving that he (the privilege was extended to women in 1629) could read. Until 1705, all he had to do was read (or recite) the first verse from Psalm 51 of the Bible—“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions”—which came to be known as the “ neck verse” (for its power to save one’s neck). To ensure that an offender could escape death only once through benefit of clergy, he was branded on the brawn of the thumb ( M for murder or T for theft). Branding was abolished in 1779, and benefit of clergy ceased in 1827.

From ancient times until well into the 19th century, many societies administered exceptionally cruel forms of capital punishment. In Rome the condemned were hurled from the Tarpeian Rock ( see Tarpeia ); for parricide they were drowned in a sealed bag with a dog, cock, ape, and viper; and still others were executed by forced gladiatorial combat or by crucifixion . Executions in ancient China were carried out by many painful methods, such as sawing the condemned in half, flaying him while still alive, and boiling . Cruel forms of execution in Europe included “breaking” on the wheel, boiling in oil, burning at the stake , decapitation by the guillotine or an axe, hanging , drawing and quartering , and drowning. Although by the end of the 20th century many jurisdictions (e.g., nearly every U.S. state that employs the death penalty, Guatemala, the Philippines , Taiwan , and some Chinese provinces) had adopted lethal injection , offenders continued to be beheaded in Saudi Arabia and occasionally stoned to death (for adultery) in Iran and Sudan . Other methods of execution were electrocution , gassing, and the firing squad.

Historically, executions were public events, attended by large crowds, and the mutilated bodies were often displayed until they rotted. Public executions were banned in England in 1868, though they continued to take place in parts of the United States until the 1930s. In the last half of the 20th century, there was considerable debate regarding whether executions should be broadcast on television, as has occurred in Guatemala. Since the mid-1990s public executions have taken place in some 20 countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria , though the practice has been condemned by the United Nations Human Rights Committee as “incompatible with human dignity.”

In many countries death sentences are not carried out immediately after they are imposed; there is often a long period of uncertainty for the convicted while their cases are appealed. Inmates awaiting execution live on what has been called “ death row ”; in the United States and Japan, some prisoners have been executed more than 15 years after their convictions . The European Union regards this phenomenon as so inhumane that, on the basis of a binding ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (1989), EU countries may extradite an offender accused of a capital crime to a country that practices capital punishment only if a guarantee is given that the death penalty will not be sought.

The pros and cons of the death penalty

Despite global progress towards abolition, public opinion remains divided as executions increase

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Pro: public support

Con: wrongful execution risk, pro: could reduce crime, con: not a deterrent, pro: sense of retribution, con: extremely expensive.

 The number of executions is rising around the world, even as many countries move towards abolishing or limiting the use of capital punishment.

According to the latest figures from Amnesty International – compiled from official statistics, media reports and information passed on from individuals sentenced to death – there were 883 executions worldwide in 2022. This total excludes China, which does not release details of those killed by the state but is believed to execute thousands of people a year. The global figure is up 53% from 2021 and is the highest number since 2017.

Amnesty said that at the end of 2022 there were more than 28,000 people under sentence of death in 52 countries.

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In the past half century capital punishment has increasingly been viewed as a human-rights issue. More than 120 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, according to The Death Penalty Project . Now, executions are most commonly carried out in China, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (although there is little reliable data for countries such as Afghanistan, North Korea and Syria).

Although use of the death penalty is gradually declining in the US, a 2021 survey by Gallup found a majority of Americans (54%) said they were "in favour of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder".

In France, which abolished death by guillotine only in 1981, presidential frontrunner Marine Le Pen has vowed to hold a referendum on restoring capital punishment, which is backed by a huge majority of her supporters .

A YouGov poll in 2022 found 40% of Britons were still in favour of the death penalty, with Conservative voters far more likely to support it (58%), and those aged over 65 more than twice as likely as those aged 18-24.

One of the most "compelling forces" driving worldwide opinions against the death penalty has been "the increasing recognition of the potential for error in its use", wrote criminology professor Carolyn Hoyle and Saul Lehrfreund, co-director of the London-based NGO The Death Penalty Project, in a blog for the University of Oxford’s Death Penalty Research Unit . With justice systems prone to error, bias and coercion, wrongful executions are, in fact, "inevitable".

Since 1993, Washington-based non-profit organisation The Death Penalty Information Center has been tracking wrongful executions in the US, going back to the Supreme Court ruling in 1972. In a 2021 report, "The Innocence Epidemic", it concluded that at least 185 people had been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death since 1972. Nearly 70% of those cases involved "official misconduct by police, prosecutors or other government officials" – more so in cases involving a defendant of colour.

"The death penalty has always been, and continues to be, disproportionately wielded against black people and other people of colour," explained the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers , regarding the US. As of 2019, "black and Hispanic people represent 31% of the US population, but 53% of death-row inmates".

The "commonest justification" for the death penalty is that it functions as a "unique deterrent" for others, wrote Lehrfreund.

"Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed," Lee Anderson, the former Tory party deputy chairman, told The Spectator last year, backing calls to bring back the death penalty in Britain. A subsequent poll by Omnisis found 43% of British respondents agreed capital punishment would be an effective deterrent.

"When the UK first suspended the death penalty in 1965, many hoped that removing violence from the top end of justice would trickle down through society, making us more civilised," wrote Tim Stanley in The Telegraph . "Instead, crime went up, and today, as predators exploit our liberality, a state without the death penalty resembles a lion tamer without a whip."

The death penalty has "no deterrent effect", said the American Civil Liberties Union . "Claims that each execution deters a certain number of murders have been thoroughly discredited by social science research." 

Most murders are committed either in the heat of passion, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or because of mental illness. The few murderers who plan their crimes "intend and expect to avoid punishment altogether by not getting caught". 

The Death Penalty Project concluded after a review of multiple studies that capital punishment "does not deter murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat or application of life imprisonment". In 2021, the Human Rights Council cited studies which showed that some member states that had abolished the death penalty saw their murder rates stay the same, or even decline.

Of the "four major justifications for punishment" – deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation and retribution – it is the last of these that has "often been scorned by academics and judges", said Robert Blecker, a professor emeritus at New York Law School, in The New York Times . But "ultimately, it provides capital punishment with its only truly moral foundation".

Supporters often point to religious justification based on the Bible, citing "an eye for an eye". But retribution is "not simply revenge", said Blecker. "Revenge may be limitless and misdirected at the undeserving, as with collective punishment. Retribution, on the other hand, can help restore a moral balance. It demands that punishment must be limited and proportional."

Many supporters of the death penalty argue that it is more cost-effective than feeding and housing an inmate for the whole of a life-without-parole sentence . But in countries with arduous appeals processes and strong human-rights organisations, the death penalty is – counterintuitively – far more expensive than imprisonment for life.

More than a dozen US states found in 2007 that death penalty cases were up to 10 times more expensive than comparable non-death penalty cases. That year, New Jersey became the first state to ban executions for reasons of "time and money", said NBC News .

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Harriet Marsden is a writer for The Week, mostly covering UK and global news and politics. Before joining the site, she was a freelance journalist for seven years, specialising in social affairs, gender equality and culture. She worked for The Guardian, The Times and The Independent, and regularly contributed articles to The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The New Statesman, Tortoise Media and Metro, as well as appearing on BBC Radio London, Times Radio and “Woman’s Hour”. She has a master’s in international journalism from City University, London, and was awarded the "journalist-at-large" fellowship by the Local Trust charity in 2021. 

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Finding Sources for Death Penalty Research

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One of the most popular topics for an argument essay is the death penalty . When researching a topic for an argumentative essay , accuracy is important, which means the quality of your sources is important.

If you're writing a paper about the death penalty, you can start with this list of sources, which provide arguments for all sides of the topic.

Amnesty International Site

Amnesty International views the death penalty as "the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights." This website provides a gold mine of statistics and the latest breaking news on the subject.

Mental Illness on Death Row

Death Penalty Focus is an organization that aims to bring about the abolition of capital punishment and is a great resource for information. You will find evidence that many of the people executed over the past decades are affected by a form of mental illness or disability.

Pros and Cons of the Death Penalty

This extensive article provides an overview of arguments for and against the death penalty and offers a history of notable events that have shaped the discourse for activists and proponents.

Pro-Death Penalty Links

This page comes from ProDeathPenalty and contains a state-by-state guide to capital punishment resources. You'll also find a list of papers written by students on topics related to capital punishment. 

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5 Death Penalty Essays Everyone Should Know

Capital punishment is an ancient practice. It’s one that human rights defenders strongly oppose and consider as inhumane and cruel. In 2019, Amnesty International reported the lowest number of executions in about a decade. Most executions occurred in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt . The United States is the only developed western country still using capital punishment. What does this say about the US? Here are five essays about the death penalty everyone should read:

“When We Kill”

By: Nicholas Kristof | From: The New York Times 2019

In this excellent essay, Pulitizer-winner Nicholas Kristof explains how he first became interested in the death penalty. He failed to write about a man on death row in Texas. The man, Cameron Todd Willingham, was executed in 2004. Later evidence showed that the crime he supposedly committed – lighting his house on fire and killing his three kids – was more likely an accident. In “When We Kill,” Kristof puts preconceived notions about the death penalty under the microscope. These include opinions such as only guilty people are executed, that those guilty people “deserve” to die, and the death penalty deters crime and saves money. Based on his investigations, Kristof concludes that they are all wrong.

Nicholas Kristof has been a Times columnist since 2001. He’s the winner of two Pulitizer Prices for his coverage of China and the Darfur genocide.

“An Inhumane Way of Death”

By: Willie Jasper Darden, Jr.

Willie Jasper Darden, Jr. was on death row for 14 years. In his essay, he opens with the line, “Ironically, there is probably more hope on death row than would be found in most other places.” He states that everyone is capable of murder, questioning if people who support capital punishment are just as guilty as the people they execute. Darden goes on to say that if every murderer was executed, there would be 20,000 killed per day. Instead, a person is put on death row for something like flawed wording in an appeal. Darden feels like he was picked at random, like someone who gets a terminal illness. This essay is important to read as it gives readers a deeper, more personal insight into death row.

Willie Jasper Darden, Jr. was sentenced to death in 1974 for murder. During his time on death row, he advocated for his innocence and pointed out problems with his trial, such as the jury pool that excluded black people. Despite worldwide support for Darden from public figures like the Pope, Darden was executed in 1988.

“We Need To Talk About An Injustice”

By: Bryan Stevenson | From: TED 2012

This piece is a transcript of Bryan Stevenson’s 2012 TED talk, but we feel it’s important to include because of Stevenson’s contributions to criminal justice. In the talk, Stevenson discusses the death penalty at several points. He points out that for years, we’ve been taught to ask the question, “Do people deserve to die for their crimes?” Stevenson brings up another question we should ask: “Do we deserve to kill?” He also describes the American death penalty system as defined by “error.” Somehow, society has been able to disconnect itself from this problem even as minorities are disproportionately executed in a country with a history of slavery.

Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, and author. He’s argued in courts, including the Supreme Court, on behalf of the poor, minorities, and children. A film based on his book Just Mercy was released in 2019 starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx.

“I Know What It’s Like To Carry Out Executions”

By: S. Frank Thompson | From: The Atlantic 2019

In the death penalty debate, we often hear from the family of the victims and sometimes from those on death row. What about those responsible for facilitating an execution? In this opinion piece, a former superintendent from the Oregon State Penitentiary outlines his background. He carried out the only two executions in Oregon in the past 55 years, describing it as having a “profound and traumatic effect” on him. In his decades working as a correctional officer, he concluded that the death penalty is not working . The United States should not enact federal capital punishment.

Frank Thompson served as the superintendent of OSP from 1994-1998. Before that, he served in the military and law enforcement. When he first started at OSP, he supported the death penalty. He changed his mind when he observed the protocols firsthand and then had to conduct an execution.

“There Is No Such Thing As Closure on Death Row”

By: Paul Brown | From: The Marshall Project 2019

This essay is from Paul Brown, a death row inmate in Raleigh, North Carolina. He recalls the moment of his sentencing in a cold courtroom in August. The prosecutor used the term “closure” when justifying a death sentence. Who is this closure for? Brown theorizes that the prosecutors are getting closure as they end another case, but even then, the cases are just a way to further their careers. Is it for victims’ families? Brown is doubtful, as the death sentence is pursued even when the families don’t support it. There is no closure for Brown or his family as they wait for his execution. Vivid and deeply-personal, this essay is a must-read for anyone who wonders what it’s like inside the mind of a death row inmate.

Paul Brown has been on death row since 2000 for a double murder. He is a contributing writer to Prison Writers and shares essays on topics such as his childhood, his life as a prisoner, and more.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Criminal Law and Procedure

Historical development of criminal law, difference between legal and social parameters in criminal law, elements of a crime.

In most nations, there are two or three sorts of courts that have authority over criminal cases. A single expert judge typically handles petty offenses, but two or more lay justices in England may sit in a Magistrates’ Court. In many nations, more severe cases are heard by panels of two or more judges (Lee, 2022). Such panels are frequently made up of attorneys and lay magistrates, as in Germany, where two laypeople sit alongside one to three jurists. The French cour d’assises comprises three professional judges and nine lay assessors who hear severe criminal cases. Such mixed courts of professionals and ordinary residents convene and make decisions by majority voting, with lawyers and laypeople having one vote.

The United States Constitution permits every defendant in a non-petty matter the right to be prosecuted before a jury; the defendant may forgo this privilege and have the decision decided by a professional court judge. To guarantee the court’s fairness, the defense and prosecution can dismiss or challenge members whom they prove to be prejudiced (Lee, 2022). Furthermore, the defense and, in the United States, the prosecution has the right of vexatious challenge, which allows it to confront several participants without providing a reason.

One of the most primitive texts illustrating European illegitimate law appeared after 1066, when William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, conquered England. By the eighteenth century, European law addressed criminal behavior specifically, and the idea of trying lawbreakers in a courtroom context began to transpire (Zalewski, 2019). The English administration recognized a scheme referred to as common law, which is the method through which regulations that regulate a group of people are established and updated. Corporate law relates to public and illegal cases and is grounded on the establishment, adjustment, and expansion of laws by adjudicators as they make permissible judgments. These decisions become standards, prompting the consequences of impending cases.

Misdemeanors, offences, and sedition are the three types of unlawful offenses presented before the courts. Misdemeanors are petty infringements decided by penalties or confiscation of property; some are penalized by less than a year in prison. Offences are meaningfully more heinous felonies with heavier consequences, such as incarceration in a federal or state prison for a year or more. Treason is characterized as anything that breaches the country’s allegiance. Felonious law changes and is often susceptible to modification based on the ethics and standards of the period.

Parameters are values with changing attributes, principles, or dimensions that may be defined and monitored. A parameter is usually picked from a data set because it is critical to understanding the situation. A parameter aids in comprehending a situation, whereas a parameter defines the situation’s bounds (Doorn et al., 2018). The critical concept of the Legal parameter is that behaviors are restricted by unspoken criteria of deviance that are agreeable to both the controlled and those that govern them. Impartiality, fairness, and morality are all ideals conveyed by social justice, and they all have their origins in the overarching concept of law (Doorn et al., 2018). From a social standpoint, it involves various topics such as abortion, cremation, bio-genetics, human decency, racial justice, worker’s rights, economic freedom, and environmental concerns.

All crimes in the United States may be subdivided into distinct aspects under criminal law. These components of an offense must then be established beyond possible suspicion in a court of law to convict the offender (Ormerod & Laird, 2021). Many delinquencies need the manifestation of three crucial rudiments: a criminal act, criminal intent, and the concurrence of the initial two. Depending on the offense, a fourth factor called causality may be present.

First is the criminal act (Actus Reus): actus reus, which translates as “guilty act,” refers to any criminal act of an act that occurs. To be considered an unlawful act, an act must be intentional and controlled by the defendant (Ormerod & Laird, 2021). If an accused act on nature, they may not be held responsible for their conduct. Words can be deemed illegal activities and result in accusations such as perjury, verbal harassment, conspiracy, or incitement. On the contrary, concepts are not considered illegal acts but might add to the second component: intent.

Second is crime intent (Mens Rea): for a felonious offense to be categorized as a misconduct, the culprit’s mental circumstance must be reflected. According to the code of mens rea, a suspect can only be considered remorseful if there is felonious intent (Ormerod & Laird, 2021). Third is concurrence, which refers to the coexistence of intent to commit a crime and illicit behavior. If there is proof that the mens rea preceded or happened simultaneously with the actus reus, the burden of proving it is met. Fourth is causation: this fourth ingredient of an offense is present in most criminal cases, but not all. The link concerning the defendant’s act and the final consequence is called causation. The trial must establish outside a possible suspicion that the perpetrator’s acts triggered the resultant criminality, which is usually detriment or damage.

The risk of executing an innocent man cannot be entirely removed despite precautions and protection to prevent capital punishment. If the death penalty was replaced with a statement of life imprisonment, the money saved as a result of abolishing capital punishment may be spent in community development programs. The harshness of the penalty is not as efficient as the guarantee that the penalty will be given in discouraging crime. In other terms, if the penalty dissuades crime, there is no incentive to prefer the stiffer sentence.

Doorn, N., Gardoni, P., & Murphy, C. (2018). A multidisciplinary definition and evaluation of resilience: The role of social justice in defining resilience . Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure , 4 (3), pp. 112–123. Web.

Lee, S.-O. (2022). Analysis of the major criminal procedure cases in 2021 . The Korean Association of Criminal Procedure Law , 14 (1), pp. 139–198. Web.

Ormerod, D., & Laird, K. (2021). 2. The elements of a crime: Actus reus . Smith, Hogan, and Ormerod’s Criminal Law , pp 26–87. Web.

Rancourt, M. A., Ouellet, C., & Dufresne, Y. (2020). Is the death penalty debate really dead? contrasting capital punishment support in Canada and the United States . Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy , 20 (1), 536–562. Web.

Stetler, R. (2020). The history of mitigation in death penalty cases . Social Work, Criminal Justice, and the Death Penalty , pp. 34–45. Web.

Wheeler, C. H. (2018). Rights in conflict: The clash between abolishing the death penalty and delivering justice to the victims . International Criminal Law Review , 18 (2), 354–375. Web.

Zalewski, W. (2019). Double-track system in Polish criminal law. Political and criminal assumptions, history, contemporary references . Acta Poloniae Historica , 118 , pp 39. Web.

• Death Penalty: Arguments For and Against
• Restorative Justice and the Death Penalty
• Constructive, Reckless and Gross Negligence Manslaughter
• Crimes Against Property, Persons, and Public Order
• Criminal Law, Immunity and Conviction
• Capital Punishment Is Morally and Legally Wrong
• The Significance of Capital Punishment in the UAE
• “Dead Man Walking” by Sister Helen Prejean
• The Legality and the Processes of the Death Penalty
• Criminal Sentencing and the Eighth Amendment
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, December 17). Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty. https://ivypanda.com/essays/capital-punishment-and-the-death-penalty/

"Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty." IvyPanda , 17 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/capital-punishment-and-the-death-penalty/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty'. 17 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty." December 17, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/capital-punishment-and-the-death-penalty/.

1. IvyPanda . "Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty." December 17, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/capital-punishment-and-the-death-penalty/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty." December 17, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/capital-punishment-and-the-death-penalty/.

The Case Against the Death Penalty

The American Civil Liberties Union believes the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantees of due process of law and of equal protection under the law. Furthermore, we believe that the state should not give itself the right to kill human beings – especially when it kills with premeditation and ceremony, in the name of the law or in the name of its people, and when it does so in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion.

Capital punishment is an intolerable denial of civil liberties and is inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system. The death penalty is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice. Through litigation, legislation, and advocacy against this barbaric and brutal institution, we strive to prevent executions and seek the abolition of capital punishment.

The ACLU’s opposition to capital punishment incorporates the following fundamental concerns:

The death penalty system in the US is applied in an unfair and unjust manner against people, largely dependent on how much money they have, the skill of their attorneys, race of the victim and where the crime took place . People of color are far more likely to be executed than white people, especially if thevictim is white

The death penalty is a waste of taxpayer funds and has no public safety benefit. The vast majority of law enforcement professionals surveyed agree that capital punishment does not deter violent crime; a survey of police chiefs nationwide found they rank the death penalty lowest among ways to reduce violent crime. They ranked increasing the number of police officers, reducing drug abuse, and creating a better economy with more jobs higher than the death penalty as the best ways to reduce violence. The FBI has found the states with the death penalty have the highest murder rates.

Innocent people are too often sentenced to death. Since 1973, over 156 people have been released from death rows in 26 states because of innocence. Nationally, at least one person is exonerated for every 10 that are executed.

INTRODUCTION TO THE “MODERN ERA” OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED STATES

In 1972, the Supreme Court declared that under then-existing laws "the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty… constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." ( Furman v. Georgia , 408 U.S. 238). The Court, concentrating its objections on the manner in which death penalty laws had been applied, found the result so "harsh, freakish, and arbitrary" as to be constitutionally unacceptable. Making the nationwide impact of its decision unmistakable, the Court summarily reversed death sentences in the many cases then before it, which involved a wide range of state statutes, crimes and factual situations.

But within four years after the Furman decision, several hundred persons had been sentenced to death under new state capital punishment statutes written to provide guidance to juries in sentencing. These statutes require a two-stage trial procedure, in which the jury first determines guilt or innocence and then chooses imprisonment or death in the light of aggravating or mitigating circumstances.

In 1976, the Supreme Court moved away from abolition, holding that "the punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution." The Court ruled that the new death penalty statutes contained "objective standards to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing the sentence of death." ( Gregg v. Georgia , 428 U.S. 153). Subsequently 38 state legislatures and the Federal government enacted death penalty statutes patterned after those the Court upheld in Gregg. Congress also enacted and expanded federal death penalty statutes for peacetime espionage by military personnel and for a vast range of categories of murder.

Executions resumed in 1977. In 2002, the Supreme Court held executions of mentally retarded criminals are “cruel and unusual punishments” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. Since then, states have developed a range of processes to ensure that mentally retarded individuals are not executed. Many have elected to hold proceedings prior to the merits trial, many with juries, to determine whether an accused is mentally retarded. In 2005, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed, resulting in commutation of death sentences to life for dozens of individuals across the country. As of August 2012, over 3,200 men and women are under a death sentence and more than 1,300 men, women and children (at the time of the crime) have been executed since 1976 .

ACLU OBJECTIONS TO THE DEATH PENALTY

Despite the Supreme Court's 1976 ruling in Gregg v. Georgia , et al, the ACLU continues to oppose capital punishment on moral, practical, and constitutional grounds:

Capital punishment is cruel and unusual . It is cruel because it is a relic of the earliest days of penology, when slavery, branding, and other corporal punishments were commonplace. Like those barbaric practices, executions have no place in a civilized society. It is unusual because only the United States of all the western industrialized nations engages in this punishment. It is also unusual because only a random sampling of convicted murderers in the United States receive a sentence of death.

Capital punishment denies due process of law. Its imposition is often arbitrary, and always irrevocable – forever depriving an individual of the opportunity to benefit from new evidence or new laws that might warrant the reversal of a conviction, or the setting aside of a death sentence.

The death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection . It is applied randomly – and discriminatorily. It is imposed disproportionately upon those whose victims are white, offenders who are people of color, and on those who are poor and uneducated and concentrated in certain geographic regions of the country.

The death penalty is not a viable form of crime control. When police chiefs were asked to rank the factors that, in their judgment, reduce the rate of violent crime, they mentioned curbing drug use and putting more officers on the street, longer sentences and gun control. They ranked the death penalty as least effective . Politicians who preach the desirability of executions as a method of crime control deceive the public and mask their own failure to identify and confront the true causes of crime.

Capital punishment wastes limited resources . It squanders the time and energy of courts, prosecuting attorneys, defense counsel, juries, and courtroom and law enforcement personnel. It unduly burdens the criminal justice system, and it is thus counterproductive as an instrument for society's control of violent crime. Limited funds that could be used to prevent and solve crime (and provide education and jobs) are spent on capital punishment.

Opposing the death penalty does not indicate a lack of sympathy for murder victims . On the contrary, murder demonstrates a lack of respect for human life. Because life is precious and death irrevocable, murder is abhorrent, and a policy of state-authorized killings is immoral. It epitomizes the tragic inefficacy and brutality of violence, rather than reason, as the solution to difficult social problems. Many murder victims do not support state-sponsored violence to avenge the death of their loved one. Sadly, these victims have often been marginalized by politicians and prosecutors, who would rather publicize the opinions of pro-death penalty family members.

Changes in death sentencing have proved to be largely cosmetic. The defects in death-penalty laws, conceded by the Supreme Court in the early 1970s, have not been appreciably altered by the shift from unrestrained discretion to "guided discretion." Such so-called “reforms” in death sentencing merely mask the impermissible randomness of a process that results in an execution.

A society that respects life does not deliberately kill human beings . An execution is a violent public spectacle of official homicide, and one that endorses killing to solve social problems – the worst possible example to set for the citizenry, and especially children. Governments worldwide have often attempted to justify their lethal fury by extolling the purported benefits that such killing would bring to the rest of society. The benefits of capital punishment are illusory, but the bloodshed and the resulting destruction of community decency are real.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS NOT A DETERRENT TO CAPITAL CRIMES

Deterrence is a function not only of a punishment's severity, but also of its certainty and frequency. The argument most often cited in support of capital punishment is that the threat of execution influences criminal behavior more effectively than imprisonment does. As plausible as this claim may sound, in actuality the death penalty fails as a deterrent for several reasons.

A punishment can be an effective deterrent only if it is consistently and promptly employed. Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet these conditions .

The proportion of first-degree murderers who are sentenced to death is small, and of this group, an even smaller proportion of people are executed. Although death sentences in the mid-1990s increased to about 300 per year , this is still only about one percent of all homicides known to the police . Of all those convicted on a charge of criminal homicide, only 3 percent – about 1 in 33 – are eventually sentenced to death. Between 2001-2009, the average number of death sentences per year dropped to 137 , reducing the percentage even more. This tiny fraction of convicted murderers do not represent the “worst of the worst”.

Mandatory death sentencing is unconstitutional. The possibility of increasing the number of convicted murderers sentenced to death and executed by enacting mandatory death penalty laws was ruled unconstitutional in 1976 ( Woodson v. North Carolina , 428 U.S. 280).

A considerable time between the imposition of the death sentence and the actual execution is unavoidable, given the procedural safeguards required by the courts in capital cases. Starting with selecting the trial jury, murder trials take far longer when the ultimate penalty is involved. Furthermore, post-conviction appeals in death-penalty cases are far more frequent than in other cases. These factors increase the time and cost of administering criminal justice.

We can reduce delay and costs only by abandoning the procedural safeguards and constitutional rights of suspects, defendants, and convicts – with the attendant high risk of convicting the wrong person and executing the innocent. This is not a realistic prospect: our legal system will never reverse itself to deny defendants the right to counsel, or the right to an appeal.

Persons who commit murder and other crimes of personal violence often do not premeditate their crimes.

Most capital crimes are committed in the heat of the moment. Most capital crimes are committed during moments of great emotional stress or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, when logical thinking has been suspended. Many capital crimes are committed by the badly emotionally-damaged or mentally ill. In such cases, violence is inflicted by persons unable to appreciate the consequences to themselves as well as to others.

Even when crime is planned, the criminal ordinarily concentrates on escaping detection, arrest, and conviction. The threat of even the severest punishment will not discourage those who expect to escape detection and arrest. It is impossible to imagine how the threat of any punishment could prevent a crime that is not premeditated. Furthermore, the death penalty is a futile threat for political terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh, because they usually act in the name of an ideology that honors its martyrs.

Capital punishment doesn't solve our society's crime problem. Threatening capital punishment leaves the underlying causes of crime unaddressed, and ignores the many political and diplomatic sanctions (such as treaties against asylum for international terrorists) that could appreciably lower the incidence of terrorism.

Capital punishment has been a useless weapon in the so-called "war on drugs." The attempt to reduce murders in the drug trade by threat of severe punishment ignores the fact that anyone trafficking in illegal drugs is already risking his life in violent competition with other dealers. It is irrational to think that the death penalty – a remote threat at best – will avert murders committed in drug turf wars or by street-level dealers.

If, however, severe punishment can deter crime, then permanent imprisonment is severe enough to deter any rational person from committing a violent crime.

The vast preponderance of the evidence shows that the death penalty is no more effective than imprisonment in deterring murder and that it may even be an incitement to criminal violence. Death-penalty states as a group do not have lower rates of criminal homicide than non-death-penalty states. Use of the death penalty in a given state may actually increase the subsequent rate of criminal homicide. Why? Perhaps because "a return to the exercise of the death penalty weakens socially based inhibitions against the use of lethal force to settle disputes…. "

In adjacent states – one with the death penalty and the other without it – the state that practices the death penalty does not always show a consistently lower rate of criminal homicide. For example, between l990 and l994, the homicide rates in Wisconsin and Iowa (non-death-penalty states) were half the rates of their neighbor, Illinois – which restored the death penalty in l973, and by 1994 had sentenced 223 persons to death and carried out two executions . Between 2000-2010, the murder rate in states with capital punishment was 25-46% higher than states without the death penalty.

On-duty police officers do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide in abolitionist states than they do in death-penalty states. Between 1976 and 1989, for example, lethal assaults against police were not significantly more or less frequent in abolitionist states than in death-penalty states. Capital punishment did not appear to provide officers added protection during that time frame. In fact, the three leading states in law enforcement homicide in 1996 were also very active death penalty states : California (highest death row population), Texas (most executions since 1976), and Florida (third highest in executions and death row population). The South, which accounts for more than 80% of the country’s executions, also has the highest murder rate of any region in the country. If anything, the death penalty incited violence rather than curbed it.

Prisoners and prison personnel do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide from life-term prisoners in abolition states than they do in death-penalty states. Between 1992 and 1995, 176 inmates were murdered by other prisoners. The vast majority of those inmates (84%) were killed in death penalty jurisdictions. During the same period, about 2% of all inmate assaults on prison staff were committed in abolition jurisdictions . Evidently, the threat of the death penalty "does not even exert an incremental deterrent effect over the threat of a lesser punishment in the abolitionist states." Furthermore, multiple studies have shown that prisoners sentenced to life without parole have equivalent rates of prison violence as compared to other inmates.

Actual experience thus establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty does not deter murder. No comparable body of evidence contradicts that conclusion.

Furthermore, there are documented cases in which the death penalty actually incited the capital crimes it was supposed to deter. These include instances of the so-called suicide-by-execution syndrome – persons who wanted to die but feared taking their own lives, and committed murder so that the state would kill them. For example, in 1996, Daniel Colwell , who suffered from mental illness, claimed that he killed a randomly-selected couple in a Georgia parking lot so that the state would kill him – he was sentenced to death and ultimately took his own life while on death row.

Although inflicting the death penalty guarantees that the condemned person will commit no further crimes, it does not have a demonstrable deterrent effect on other individuals. Further, it is a high price to pay when studies show that few convicted murderers commit further crimes of violence. Researchers examined the prison and post-release records of 533 prisoners on death row in 1972 whose sentences were reduced to incarceration for life by the Supreme Court's ruling in Furman. This research showed that seven had committed another murder. But the same study showed that in four other cases, an innocent man had been sentenced to death. (Marquart and Sorensen, in Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 1989)

Recidivism among murderers does occasionally happen, but it occurs less frequently than most people believe; the media rarely distinguish between a convicted offender who murders while on parole, and a paroled murderer who murders again. Government data show that about one in 12 death row prisoners had a prior homicide conviction . But as there is no way to predict reliably which convicted murderers will try to kill again, the only way to prevent all such recidivism is to execute every convicted murderer – a policy no one seriously advocates. Equally effective but far less inhumane is a policy of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS UNFAIR

Constitutional due process and elementary justice both require that the judicial functions of trial and sentencing be conducted with fundamental fairness, especially where the irreversible sanction of the death penalty is involved. In murder cases (since 1930, 88 percent of all executions have been for this crime), there has been substantial evidence to show that courts have sentenced some persons to prison while putting others to death in a manner that has been arbitrary, racially biased, and unfair.

Racial Bias in Death Sentencing

Racial discrimination was one of the grounds on which the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in Furman . Half a century ago, in his classic American Dilemma (1944), Gunnar Myrdal reported that "the South makes the widest application of the death penalty, and Negro criminals come in for much more than their share of the executions." A study of the death penalty in Texas shows that the current capital punishment system is an outgrowth of the racist "legacy of slavery." Between 1930 and the end of 1996, 4,220 prisoners were executed in the United States; more than half (53%) were black .

Our nation's death rows have always held a disproportionately large population of African Americans, relative to their percentage of the total population. Comparing black and white offenders over the past century, the former were often executed for what were considered less-than-capital offenses for whites, such as rape and burglary. (Between 1930 and 1976, 455 men were executed for rape, of whom 405 – 90 percent – were black.) A higher percentage of the blacks who were executed were juveniles; and the rate of execution without having one's conviction reviewed by any higher court was higher for blacks. (Bowers, Legal Homicide 1984; Streib, Death Penalty for Juveniles 1987)

In recent years, it has been argued that such flagrant racial discrimination is a thing of the past. However, since the revival of the death penalty in the mid-1970s, about half of those on death row at any given time have been black . More striking is the racial comparison of victims . Although approximately 49% of all homicide victims are white, 77% of capital homicide cases since 1976 have involved a white victim.

Between 1976 and 2005 , 86% of white victims were killed by whites (14% by other races) while 94% of black victims were killed by blacks (6% by other races). Blacks and whites are murder victims in almost equal numbers of crimes – which is a very high percentage given that the general US population is 13% black. African-Americans are six times as likely as white Americans to die at the hands of a murderer, and roughly seven times as likely to murder someone. Young black men are fifteen times as likely to be murdered as young white men.

So given this information, when those under death sentence are examined more closely, it turns out that race is a decisive factor after all.

Further, studies like that commissioned by the Governor of Maryland found that “black offenders who kill white victims are at greater risk of a death sentence than others, primarily because they are substantially more likely to be charged by the state’s attorney with a capital offense.”

The classic statistical study of racial discrimination in capital cases in Georgia presented in the McCleskey case showed that "the average odds of receiving a death sentence among all indicted cases were 4.3 times higher in cases with white victims." (David C. Baldus et al., Equal Justice and the Death Penalty 1990) In 1987 these data were placed before the Supreme Court in McCleskey v. Kemp and while the Court did not dispute the statistical evidence, it held that evidence of an overall pattern of racial bias was not sufficient. Mr. McCleskey would have to prove racial bias in his own case – a virtually impossible task. The Court also held that the evidence failed to show that there was "a constitutionally significant risk of racial bias...." (481 U.S. 279) Although the Supreme Court declared that the remedy sought by the plaintiff was "best presented to the legislative bodies," subsequent efforts to persuade Congress to remedy the problem by enacting the Racial Justice Act were not successful. (Don Edwards & John Conyers, Jr., The Racial Justice Act – A Simple Matter of Justice, in University of Dayton Law Review 1995)

In 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office reported to the Congress the results of its review of empirical studies on racism and the death penalty. The GAO concluded : "Our synthesis of the 28 studies shows a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty after the Furman decision" and that "race of victim influence was found at all stages of the criminal justice system process..."

Texas was prepared to execute Duane Buck on September 15, 2011. Mr. Buck was condemned to death by a jury that had been told by an expert psychologist that he was more likely to be dangerous because he was African American. The Supreme Court stayed the case, but Mr. Buck has not yet received the new sentencing hearing justice requires.

These results cannot be explained away by relevant non-racial factors, such as prior criminal record or type of crime, as these were factored for in the Baldus and GAO studies referred to above. They lead to a very unsavory conclusion: In the trial courts of this nation, even at the present time, the killing of a white person is treated much more severely than the killing of a black person . Of the 313 persons executed between January 1977 and the end of 1995, 36 had been convicted of killing a black person while 249 (80%) had killed a white person. Of the 178 white defendants executed, only three had been convicted of murdering people of color . Our criminal justice system essentially reserves the death penalty for murderers (regardless of their race) who kill white victims.

Another recent Louisiana study found that defendants with white victims were 97% more likely to receive death sentences than defendants with black victims. [1]

Both gender and socio-economic class also determine who receives a death sentence and who is executed. Women account for only two percent of all people sentenced to death , even though females commit about 11 percent of all criminal homicides. Many of the women under death sentence were guilty of killing men who had victimized them with years of violent abuse . Since 1900, only 51 women have been executed in the United States (15 of them black).

Discrimination against the poor (and in our society, racial minorities are disproportionately poor) is also well established. It is a prominent factor in the availability of counsel.

Fairness in capital cases requires, above all, competent counsel for the defendant. Yet "approximately 90 percent of those on death row could not afford to hire a lawyer when they were tried.") Common characteristics of death-row defendants are poverty, the lack of firm social roots in the community, and inadequate legal representation at trial or on appeal. As Justice William O. Douglas noted in Furman , "One searches our chronicles in vain for the execution of any member of the affluent strata in this society"(408 US 238).

Failure of Safeguards

The demonstrated inequities in the actual administration of capital punishment should tip the balance against it in the judgment of fair-minded and impartial observers. "Whatever else might be said for the use of death as a punishment, one lesson is clear from experience: this is a power that we cannot exercise fairly and without discrimination."(Gross and Mauro, Death and Discrimination 1989)

Justice John Marshall Harlan, writing for the Court in Furman , noted "… the history of capital punishment for homicides … reveals continual efforts, uniformly unsuccessful, to identify before the fact those homicides for which the slayer should die…. Those who have come to grips with the hard task of actually attempting to draft means of channeling capital sentencing discretion have confirmed the lesson taught by history…. To identify before the fact those characteristics of criminal homicides and their perpetrators which call for the death penalty, and to express these characteristics in language which can be fairly understood and applied by the sentencing authority, appear to be tasks which are beyond present human ability." (402 U.S. 183 (1971))

Yet in the Gregg decision, the majority of the Supreme Court abandoned the wisdom of Justice Harlan and ruled as though the new guided-discretion statutes could accomplish the impossible. The truth is that death statutes approved by the Court "do not effectively restrict the discretion of juries by any real standards, and they never will. No society is going to kill everybody who meets certain preset verbal requirements, put on the statute books without awareness of coverage of the infinity of special factors the real world can produce."

Evidence obtained by the Capital Jury Project has shown that jurors in capital trials generally do not understand the judge's instructions about the laws that govern the choice between imposing the death penalty and a life sentence. Even when they do comprehend, jurors often refuse to be guided by the law. "Juror comprehension of the law… is mediocre. The effect [of this relative lack of comprehension of the law]… is to reduce the likelihood that capital defendants will benefit from the safeguards against arbitrariness built into the… law."

Even if the jury's sentencing decision were strictly governed by the relevant legal criteria, there remains a vast reservoir of unfettered discretion: the prosecutor's decision to prosecute for a capital or lesser crime, the court's willingness to accept or reject a guilty plea, the jury's decision to convict for second-degree murder or manslaughter rather than capital murder, the determination of the defendant's sanity, and the governor's final clemency decision, among others.

Discretion in the criminal justice system is unavoidable. The history of capital punishment in America clearly demonstrates the social desire to mitigate the harshness of the death penalty by narrowing the scope of its application. Whether or not explicitly authorized by statutes, sentencing discretion has been the main vehicle to this end. But when sentencing discretion is used – as it too often has been – to doom the poor, the friendless, the uneducated, racial minorities, and the despised, it becomes injustice.

Mindful of such facts, the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association (including 20 out of 24 former presidents of the ABA) called for a moratorium on all executions by a vote of 280 to 119 in February 1997 . The House judged the current system to be "a haphazard maze of unfair practices."

In its 1996 survey of the death penalty in the United States, the International Commission of Jurists reinforced this point. Despite the efforts made over the past two decades since Gregg to protect the administration of the death penalty from abuses, the actual "constitutional errors committed in state courts have gravely undermined the legitimacy of the death penalty as a punishment for crime." (International Commission of Jurists, Administration of the Death Penalty in the United States 1996)

In 2009, the American Law Institute (ALI), the leading independent organization in the U.S. producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize and improve the law, removed capital punishment from its Model Penal Code. The ALI, which created the modern legal framework for the death penalty in 1962, indicated that the punishment is so arbitrary, fraught with racial and economic disparities, and unable to assure quality legal representation for indigent capital defendants, that it can never be administered fairly.

Thoughtful citizens, who might possibly support the abstract notion of capital punishment, are obliged to condemn it in actual practice.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS IRREVERSIBLE

Unlike any other criminal punishments, the death penalty is irrevocable. Speaking to the French Chamber of Deputies in 1830, years after having witnessed the excesses of the French Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette said, "I shall ask for the abolition of the punishment of death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me." Although some proponents of capital punishment would argue that its merits are worth the occasional execution of innocent people, most would hasten to insist that there is little likelihood of the innocent being executed.

Since 1900, in this country, there have been on the average more than four cases each year in which an entirely innocent person was convicted of murder. Scores of these individuals were sentenced to death. In many cases, a reprieve or commutation arrived just hours, or even minutes, before the scheduled execution. These erroneous convictions have occurred in virtually every jurisdiction from one end of the nation to the other. Nor have they declined in recent years, despite the new death penalty statutes approved by the Supreme Court.

Disturbingly, and increasingly, a large body of evidence from the modern era shows that innocent people are often convicted of crimes – including capital crimes – and that some have been executed.

In 2012, a new report in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review chronicled the horrifying case of Carlos DeLuna, a man executed in Texas in 1989 for a murder that it was “common knowledge” had been committed by another man. [2] DeLuna’s story demonstrates so many of the factors that can go wrong in a capital case: faulty eyewitness identification, prosecutorial misconduct, police misconduct, a botched crime scene, destroyed DNA evidence, a poor person represented by ineffective by an ineffective inexperienced defense attorney overmatched by a professional prosecutor, and insufficient oversight from the bench. [3] In its case against DeLuna, the State presented no blood or DNA evidence, no crime scene fingerprints, and no proof of hair or fibers from the victim having been found on the defendant. He was convicted largely based on eyewitness testimony made from the back of a police car in a dimly lit lot near the crime scene. Meanwhile, a violent criminal named Carlos Hernandez—a man who not only shared DeLuna’s name, but also looked like him—repeatedly boasted about how he had committed the murder and gotten away with it. [4] These disturbing facts about DeLuna’s case, brought to light more than two decades after his execution, refute the claim, made by some proponents of capital punishment, that the United States has never executed an innocent person. [5]

Consider this additional handful of cases of innocent people sentenced to die – some executed and some spared:

• In 2011, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis, a Black man who was almost certainly innocent of the murder of a white off-duty police officer. The circumstances of his execution raised an international outcry, for good reason. Davis was convicted based on eyewitness testimony, since there was no murder weapon or physical evidence presented by the prosecution. Seven of the nine eyewitnesses recanted or contradicted their trial testimony, many of them saying they were pressured or threatened by police at the time. Troy Davis came close to execution three previous times, because of the difficulty of getting any court to listen to new evidence casting doubt on his conviction. After passage of a federal law in 1996, petitioners are very limited in their ability to appeal death sentences, and courts routinely refuse to hear new testimony, even evidence of innocence. When Troy Davis finally did get a hearing on his evidence, the judge required “proof of innocence” – an impossibly high standard which he ruled that Mr. Davis did not meet. Despite the overwhelming call for clemency, supposed to be the “fail-safe” of the death penalty system, the Georgia Board of Pardons refused to commute the sentence to life and Mr. Davis was executed. Only one day after Troy Davis was executed, two men were freed by the special Innocence Commission of North Carolina after a decade apiece in prison. The two men had actually pled guilty to a crime they did not commit, because they were threatened with the death penalty.
• In Texas in 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed for the arson-murder of his three children. Independent investigations by a newspaper, a nonprofit organization using top experts in the field of fire science, and an independent expert hired by the State of Texas all found that accident, not arson was the cause of the fire. There simply was no reliable evidence that the children were murdered. Yet even with these reports in hand, the state of Texas executed Mr. Willingham. Earlier this year, the Texas Forensic Science Commission was poised to issue a report officially confirming these conclusions until Texas Governor Rick Perry replaced the Commission’s chair and some of its members. Cameron Todd Willingham, who claimed innocence all along, was executed for a crime he almost certainly did not commit. As an example of the arbitrariness of the death penalty, another man, Ernest Willis, also convicted of arson-murder on the same sort of flimsy and unscientific testimony, was freed from Texas death row six months after Willingham was executed.
• In 1985, in Maryland, Kirk Bloodsworth was sentenced to death for rape and murder, despite the testimony of alibi witnesses. In 1986 his conviction was reversed on grounds of withheld evidence pointing to another suspect; he was retried, re-convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. In 1993, newly available DNA evidence proved he was not the rapist-killer, and he was released after the prosecution dismissed the case. A year later he was awarded $300,000 for wrongful punishment. Years later the DNA was matched to the real killer.
• In Mississippi, in 1990, Sabrina Butler was sentenced to death for killing her baby boy. She claimed the child died after attempts at resuscitation failed. On technical grounds her conviction was reversed in 1992. At retrial, she was acquitted when a neighbor corroborated Butler's explanation of the child's cause of death and the physician who performed the autopsy admitted his work had not been thorough.
• In 1990, Jesse Tafero was executed in Florida. He had been convicted in 1976 along with his wife, Sonia Jacobs, for murdering a state trooper. In 1981 Jacobs' death sentence was reduced on appeal to life imprisonment, and 11 years later her conviction was vacated by a federal court. The evidence on which Tafero and Jacobs had been convicted and sentenced was identical; it consisted mainly of the perjured testimony of an ex-convict who turned state's witness in order to avoid a death sentence. Had Tafero been alive in 1992, he no doubt would have been released along with Jacobs. Tafero’s execution went horribly wrong, and his head caught on fire during the electrocution.
• In Alabama, Walter McMillian was convicted of murdering a white woman in 1988. Despite the jury's recommendation of a life sentence, the judge sentenced him to death. The sole evidence leading the police to arrest McMillian was testimony of an ex-convict seeking favor with the prosecution. A dozen alibi witnesses (all African Americans, like McMillian) testified on McMillian's behalf that they were together at a neighborhood gathering, to no avail. On appeal, after tireless efforts by his attorney Bryan Stevenson, McMillian's conviction was reversed by the Alabama Court of Appeals. Stevenson uncovered prosecutorial suppression of exculpatory evidence and perjury by prosecution witnesses, and the new district attorney joined the defense in seeking dismissal of the charges.
• In 1985, in Illinois, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez were convicted of abduction, rape, and murder of a young girl and were sentenced to death. Shortly after, another man serving a life term in prison for similar crimes confessed that he alone was guilty; but his confession was inadmissible because he refused to repeat it in court unless the state waived the death penalty against him. Awarded a new trial in 1988, Cruz was again convicted and sentenced to death; Hernandez was also re-convicted, and sentenced to 80 years in prison. In 1992 the assistant attorney general assigned to prosecute the case on appeal resigned after becoming convinced of the defendants' innocence. The convictions were again overturned on appeal after DNA tests exonerated Cruz and implicated the prisoner who had earlier confessed. In 1995 the court ordered a directed verdict of acquittal, and sharply criticized the police for their unprofessional handling of the case. Hernandez was released on bail and the prosecution dropped all charges.
• In 1980 in Texas a black high school janitor, Clarence Brandley, and his white co-worker found the body of a missing 16-year-old white schoolgirl. Interrogated by the police, they were told, "One of you two is going to hang for this." Looking at Brandley, the officer said, "Since you're the nigger, you're elected." In a classic case of rush to judgment, Brandley was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The circumstantial evidence against him was thin, other leads were ignored by the police, and the courtroom atmosphere reeked of racism. In 1986, Centurion Ministries – a volunteer group devoted to freeing wrongly convicted prisoners – came to Brandley's aid. Evidence had meanwhile emerged that another man had committed the murder for which Brandley was awaiting execution. Brandley was not released until 1990. (Davies, White Lies 1991)

This sample of freakish and arbitrary innocence determinations also speaks directly to the unceasing concern that there are many more innocent people on death rows across the country – as well as who have been executed. Several factors seen in the above sample of cases help explain why the judicial system cannot guarantee that justice will never miscarry: overzealous prosecution, mistaken or perjured testimony, race, faulty police work, coerced confessions, the defendant's previous criminal record, inept and under-resourced defense counsel, seemingly conclusive circumstantial evidence, and community pressure for a conviction, among others. And when the system does go wrong, it is often volunteers from outside the criminal justice system – journalists, for example – who rectify the errors, not the police or prosecutors. To retain the death penalty in the face of the demonstrable failures of the system is unacceptable, especially since there are no strong overriding reasons to favor the death penalty.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS BARBARIC

Prisoners are executed in the United States by any one of five methods; in a few jurisdictions the prisoner is allowed to choose which one he or she prefers:

The traditional mode of execution, hanging , is an option still available in Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington. Death on the gallows is easily bungled: If the drop is too short, there will be a slow and agonizing death by strangulation. If the drop is too long, the head will be torn off.

Two states, Idaho and Utah, still authorize the firing squad . The prisoner is strapped into a chair and hooded. A target is pinned to the chest. Five marksmen, one with blanks, take aim and fire.

Throughout the twentieth century, electrocution has been the most widely used form of execution in this country, and is still utilized in eleven states, although lethal injection is the primary method of execution. The condemned prisoner is led – or dragged – into the death chamber, strapped into the chair, and electrodes are fastened to head and legs. When the switch is thrown the body strains, jolting as the voltage is raised and lowered. Often smoke rises from the head. There is the awful odor of burning flesh. No one knows how long electrocuted individuals retain consciousness. In 1983, the electrocution of John Evans in Alabama was described by an eyewitness as follows:

"At 8:30 p.m. the first jolt of 1900 volts of electricity passed through Mr. Evans' body. It lasted thirty seconds. Sparks and flames erupted … from the electrode tied to Mr. Evans' left leg. His body slammed against the straps holding him in the electric chair and his fist clenched permanently. The electrode apparently burst from the strap holding it in place. A large puff of grayish smoke and sparks poured out from under the hood that covered Mr. Evans' face. An overpowering stench of burnt flesh and clothing began pervading the witness room. Two doctors examined Mr. Evans and declared that he was not dead.

"The electrode on the left leg was re-fastened. …Mr. Evans was administered a second thirty second jolt of electricity. The stench of burning flesh was nauseating. More smoke emanated from his leg and head. Again, the doctors examined Mr. Evans. [They] reported that his heart was still beating, and that he was still alive. At that time, I asked the prison commissioner, who was communicating on an open telephone line to Governor George Wallace, to grant clemency on the grounds that Mr. Evans was being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. The request …was denied.

"At 8:40 p.m., a third charge of electricity, thirty seconds in duration, was passed through Mr. Evans' body. At 8:44, the doctors pronounced him dead. The execution of John Evans took fourteen minutes." Afterwards, officials were embarrassed by what one observer called the "barbaric ritual." The prison spokesman remarked, "This was supposed to be a very clean manner of administering death."

The introduction of the gas chamber was an attempt to improve on electrocution. In this method of execution the prisoner is strapped into a chair with a container of sulfuric acid underneath. The chamber is sealed, and cyanide is dropped into the acid to form a lethal gas. Execution by suffocation in the lethal gas chamber has not been abolished but lethal injection serves as the primary method in states which still authorize it. In 1996 a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California (where the gas chamber has been used since 1933) ruled that this method is a "cruel and unusual punishment." Here is an account of the 1992 execution in Arizona of Don Harding, as reported in the dissent by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens:

"When the fumes enveloped Don's head he took a quick breath. A few seconds later he again looked in my direction. His face was red and contorted as if he were attempting to fight through tremendous pain. His mouth was pursed shut and his jaw was clenched tight. Don then took several more quick gulps of the fumes.

"At this point Don's body started convulsing violently.... His face and body turned a deep red and the veins in his temple and neck began to bulge until I thought they might explode. After about a minute Don's face leaned partially forward, but he was still conscious. Every few seconds he continued to gulp in. He was shuddering uncontrollably and his body was racked with spasms. His head continued to snap back. His hands were clenched.

"After several more minutes, the most violent of the convulsions subsided. At this time the muscles along Don's left arm and back began twitching in a wavelike motion under his skin. Spittle drooled from his mouth.

"Don did not stop moving for approximately eight minutes, and after that he continued to twitch and jerk for another minute. Approximately two minutes later, we were told by a prison official that the execution was complete.

“Don Harding took ten minutes and thirty one seconds to die." ( Gomez v. U.S. District Court , 112 S.Ct. 1652)

The latest mode of inflicting the death penalty, enacted into law by more than 30 states, is lethal injection , first used in 1982 in Texas. It is easy to overstate the humaneness and efficacy of this method; one cannot know whether lethal injection is really painless and there is evidence that it is not. As the U.S. Court of Appeals observed, there is "substantial and uncontroverted evidence… that execution by lethal injection poses a serious risk of cruel, protracted death…. Even a slight error in dosage or administration can leave a prisoner conscious but paralyzed while dying, a sentient witness of his or her own asphyxiation." ( Chaney v. Heckler , 718 F.2d 1174, 1983).

Its veneer of decency and subtle analogy with life-saving medical practice no doubt makes killing by lethal injection more acceptable to the public. Journalist Susan Blaustein, reacting to having witnessed an execution in Texas, comments:

"The lethal injection method … has turned dying into a still life, thereby enabling the state to kill without anyone involved feeling anything…. Any remaining glimmers of doubt – about whether the man received due process, about his guilt, about our right to take life – cause us to rationalize these deaths with such catchwords as ‘heinous,’ ‘deserved,’ ‘deterrent,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘painless.’ We have perfected the art of institutional killing to the degree that it has deadened our natural, quintessentially human response to death."

Botched Lethal Injections

Nor does execution by lethal injection always proceed smoothly as planned. In 1985 "the authorities repeatedly jabbed needles into … Stephen Morin, when they had trouble finding a usable vein because he had been a drug abuser." In 1988, during the execution of Raymond Landry, "a tube attached to a needle inside the inmate's right arm began leaking, sending the lethal mixture shooting across the death chamber toward witnesses."

Although the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the current method of lethal injection used is constitutional, several people have suffered because of this form of execution. In Ohio, Rommel Broom was subjected to 18 attempts at finding a vein so that he could be killed by lethal injection. The process to try to execute him took over two hours. Finally, the governor had to stop the execution and grant the inmate a one week reprieve. Mr. Broom has not been executed because he is challenging the state’s right to hold a second execution attempt. Nor was he the only Ohio inmate so maltreated. During his 2006 execution Joseph Clark screamed, “it don’t work” and requested to take something by mouth so the torture would end when his executioners took thirty minutes to find a vein. Christopher Newton’s execution took over two hours – so long that he had to be given a bathroom break.

Lethal Injection Protocol Issues

Most lethal injections in the United States use a “cocktail” consisting of three drugs that sequentially render an inmate unconscious, cause paralysis and cease breathing, and stop an inmate’s heart. [6] But in 2011, the sole American manufacturer of sodium thiopental, a vital part of the three-drug cocktail, decided to discontinue production, forcing states to adapt their lethal injection methodology. [7] Some states have replaced the three-drug cocktail with a single substance, [8] while others have replaced thiopental in the three-drug sequence with another anesthetic. [9] Both three-drug and single-drug executions raise vital concerns: the three-drug cocktail’s paralyzing sedative may mask the inmate’s pain and suffering, while the single-drug method takes about 25 minutes to end a life (if there are no complications), compared with the ten-minute three-drug process. [10]

Although the Supreme Court held in 2008 that Kentucky’s three-drug lethal injection procedure did not violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, [11] it is unclear whether states’ adapted procedures pass muster. Indeed, in February 2012, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals admonished the Arizona Department of Corrections, stating that its approach to execution “cannot continue” and questioning the “regularity and reliability” of protocols that give complete discretion to the corrections director to determine which and how many drugs will be used for each execution. [12] In Georgia, the state Supreme Court stayed the execution of Warren Hill hours before he was scheduled to die in July 2012 in order to review the Department of Corrections’ new single-drug lethal injection procedure. [13] The Missouri Supreme Court imposed a temporary moratorium on executions in August 2012, declaring that it would be “premature” to set execution dates for death row inmates given a pending lawsuit about whether the state’s lethal injection procedures are humane. The state had amended its injection protocol to use a single drug, propofol, which advocates say causes severe pain upon injection. [14]

Although similar suits are pending in other states, [15] not all protocol-based challenges have succeeded; in Texas and Oklahoma, executions have continued despite questions about the potential cruelty of lethal injection and the type or number of chemicals used. [16]

Regardless of whether states use one or three drugs for an execution, all of the major lethal injection drugs are in short supply due to manufacturers’ efforts to prevent the use of their products for executions [17] and European Union restrictions on the exportation of drugs that may be used to kill. [18] As a result, some state executioners have pursued questionable means of obtaining the deadly chemicals from other states and foreign companies, including a pharmaceutical wholesaler operating out of the back of a London driving school. [19] These backroom deals—which, astoundingly, have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—are now the subject of federal litigation that could impact the legitimacy of the American death penalty system. In March 2012, six death row inmates argued that the FDA had shirked its duty to regulate lethal substances and raised concerns about the “very real risk that unapproved thiopental will not actually render a condemned prisoner unconscious.” [20] A federal district judge agreed and ordered the FDA to confiscate the imported thiopental, but the agency has appealed. [21]

Witnessing the Execution

Most people who have observed an execution are horrified and disgusted. "I was ashamed," writes sociologist Richard Moran, who witnessed an execution in Texas in 1985. "I was an intruder, the only member of the public who had trespassed on [the condemned man's] private moment of anguish. In my face he could see the horror of his own death."

Revulsion at the duty to supervise and witness executions is one reason why so many prison wardens – however unsentimental they are about crime and criminals – are opponents of capital punishment. Don Cabana, who supervised several executions in Missouri and Mississippi reflects on his mood just prior to witnessing an execution in the gas chamber:

"If [the condemned prisoner] was some awful monster deemed worthy of extermination, why did I feel so bad about it, I wondered. It has been said that men on death row are inhuman, cold-blooded killers. But as I stood and watched a grieving mother leave her son for the last time, I questioned how the sordid business of executions was supposed to be the great equalizer…. The 'last mile' seemed an eternity, every step a painful reminder of what waited at the end of the walk. Where was the cold-blooded murderer, I wondered, as we approached the door to the last-night cell. I had looked for that man before… and I still had not found him – I saw, in my grasp, only a frightened child. [Minutes after the execution and before] heading for the conference room and a waiting press corps, I… shook my head. 'No more. I don't want to do this anymore.'" 1996)

Recently, Allen Ault, former executioner for the State of Georgia, wrote , “The men and women who assist in executions are not psychopaths or sadists. They do their best to perform the impossible and inhumane job with which the state has charged them. Those of us who have participated in executions often suffer something very much like posttraumatic stress. Many turn to alcohol and drugs. For me, those nights that weren’t sleepless were plagued by nightmares.”

For some individuals, however, executions seem to appeal to strange, aberrant impulses and provide an outlet for sadistic urges. Warden Lewis Lawes of Sing Sing Prison in New York wrote of the many requests he received to watch electrocutions, and told that when the job of executioner became vacant. "I received more than seven hundred applications for the position, many of them offering cut-rate prices." (Life and Death in Sing Sing 1928)

Public executions were common in this country during the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the last ones occurred in 1936 in Kentucky, when 20,000 people gathered to watch the hanging of a young African American male. (Teeters, in Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society 1960)

Delight in brutality, pain, violence and death may always be with us. But surely we must conclude that it is best for the law not to encourage such impulses. When the government sanctions, commands, and ceremoniously carries out the execution of a prisoner, it lends support to this destructive side of human nature.

More than two centuries ago the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria, in his highly influential treatise On Crimes and Punishment (1764), asserted: "The death penalty cannot be useful, because of the example of barbarity it gives men." Beccaria's words still ring true – even if the death penalty were a "useful" deterrent, it would still be an "example of barbarity." No society can safely entrust the enforcement of its laws to torture, brutality, or killing. Such methods are inherently cruel and will always mock the attempt to cloak them in justice. As Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg wrote, "The deliberate institutionalized taking of human life by the state is the greatest conceivable degradation to the dignity of the human personality."(Boston Globe, August 16, 1976)

Death Row Syndrome

Capital appeals are not only costly; they are also time-consuming. The average death row inmate waits 12 years between sentencing and execution, and some sit in anticipation of their executions on death row for up to 30 years. [22] For these prisoners, most of whom are housed in solitary confinement, this wait period may cause “Death Row Phenomenon” or “Death Row Syndrome.” Although the terms are often used interchangeably, “Death Row Phenomenon” refers to the destructive consequences of long-term solitary confinement [23] and the inevitable anxiety that results from awaiting one’s own death, while “Death Row Syndrome” refers to the severe psychological illness that often results from Death Row Phenomenon. [24]

In solitary confinement, inmates are often isolated for 23 hours each day without access to training or educational programs, recreational activities, or regular visits. Such conditions have been demonstrated to provoke agitation, psychosis, delusions, paranoia, and self-destructive behavior. [25] To inflict this type of mental harm is inhumane, but it also may prove detrimental to public safety. When death row inmates successfully appeal their sentences, they are transferred into the general inmate population, and when death row inmates are exonerated, they are promptly released into the community. [26] Death Row Syndrome needlessly risks making these individuals dangerous to those around them.

Neither Death Row Syndrome nor Death Row Phenomenon has received formal recognition from the American Psychiatric Association or the American Psychological Association. [27] In 1995, however, Justices Stevens and Breyer, in a memorandum regarding the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari to death row inmate Clarence Lackey, highlighted the “importance and novelty” of the question “whether executing a prisoner who has already spent some 17 years on death row violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.” [28] Further, as some scholars and advocates have noted, the mental deterioration symptomatic of Death Row Syndrome may render an inmate incompetent to participate in their own post-conviction proceedings. [29]

Death Row Syndrome gained international recognition during the 1989 extradition proceedings of Jens Soering, a German citizen arrested in England and charged with committing murder on American soil. [30] Soering argued, and the European Court of Human Rights agreed, that extraditing him to the United States would violate Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. [31] The Court explained that, in the United States, “the condemned prisoner has to endure for many years the conditions on death row and the anguish and mounting tension of living in the ever-present shadow of death” such that extraditing Soering would violate protections against “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” [32] Similar conclusions have been reached by the United Kingdom’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and the Canadian Supreme Court. [33]

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS UNJUSTIFIED RETRIBUTION

Justice, it is often insisted, requires the death penalty as the only suitable retribution for heinous crimes. This claim does not bear scrutiny, however. By its nature, all punishment is retributive. Therefore, whatever legitimacy is to be found in punishment as just retribution can, in principle, be satisfied without recourse to executions.

Moreover, the death penalty could be defended on narrowly retributive grounds only for the crime of murder, and not for any of the many other crimes that have frequently been made subject to this mode of punishment (rape, kidnapping, espionage, treason, drug trafficking). Few defenders of the death penalty are willing to confine themselves consistently to the narrow scope afforded by retribution. In any case, execution is more than a punishment exacted in retribution for the taking of a life. As Nobel Laureate Albert Camus wrote, "For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life." (Reflections on the Guillotine, in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death 1960)

It is also often argued that death is what murderers deserve, and that those who oppose the death penalty violate the fundamental principle that criminals should be punished according to their just desserts – "making the punishment fit the crime." If this rule means punishments are unjust unless they are like the crime itself, then the principle is unacceptable: It would require us to rape rapists, torture torturers, and inflict other horrible and degrading punishments on offenders. It would require us to betray traitors and kill multiple murderers again and again – punishments that are, of course, impossible to inflict. Since we cannot reasonably aim to punish all crimes according to this principle, it is arbitrary to invoke it as a requirement of justice in the punishment of murder.

If, however, the principle of just deserts means the severity of punishments must be proportional to the gravity of the crime – and since murder is the gravest crime, it deserves the severest punishment – then the principle is no doubt sound. Nevertheless, this premise does not compel support for the death penalty; what it does require is that other crimes be punished with terms of imprisonment or other deprivations less severe than those used in the punishment of murder.

Criminals no doubt deserve to be punished, and the severity of the punishment should be appropriate to their culpability and the harm they have caused the innocent. But severity of punishment has its limits – imposed by both justice and our common human dignity. Governments that respect these limits do not use premeditated, violent homicide as an instrument of social policy.

Murder Victims Families Oppose the Death Penalty

Some people who have lost a loved one to murder believe that they cannot rest until the murderer is executed. But this sentiment is by no means universal. Coretta Scott King has observed, "As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder and assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder." (Speech to National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Washington, D.C., September 26, 1981)

Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, daughter of the slain Senator Robert Kennedy, has written:

"I was eight years old when my father was murdered. It is almost impossible to describe the pain of losing a parent to a senseless murder.…But even as a child one thing was clear to me: I didn't want the killer, in turn, to be killed. I remember lying in bed and praying, 'Please, God. Please don't take his life too.' I saw nothing that could be accomplished in the loss of one life being answered with the loss of another. And I knew, far too vividly, the anguish that would spread through another family – another set of parents, children, brothers, and sisters thrown into grief."(Foreword to Gray and Stanley, A Punishment in Search of A Crime 1989)

Across the nation, many who have survived the murder of a loved one have joined Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation or Murder Victims Families for Human Rights, in the effort to replace anger and hate toward the criminal with a restorative approach to both the offender and the bereaved survivors.

Groups of murder victims family members have supported campaigns for abolition of the death penalty in Illinois, Connecticut, Montana and Maryland most recently.

Barbara Anderson Young, the sister of James Anderson, who was allegedly run over by a white teenager in Mississippi in 2011, who reportedly wanted to hurt him because he was Black, wrote a letter to the local prosecutor on behalf of their family indicating the family’s opposition to the death penalty, which is “deeply rooted in our religious faith, a faith that was central in James’ life as well.” The letter also eloquently asks that the defendant be spared execution because the death penalty “historically has been used in Mississippi and the South primarily against people of color for killing whites.” It continues, “[e]xecuting James' killers will not help balance the scales. But sparing them may help to spark a dialogue that one day will lead to the elimination of capital punishment."

Lawrence Brewer, convicted of the notorious dragging death of James Byrd in Texas, was executed in 2011. Members of Mr. Byrd’s family opposed the death penalty, despite the racist and vicious nature of the killing. Of Brewer’s remorseless – he said he had no regrets the day he was executed – Byrd’s sister, Betty Boatner, said, “If I could say something to him, I would let him know that I forgive him and then if he still has no remorse, I just feel sorry for him.” Byrd’s daughter shared that she didn’t want Brewer to die because “it’s easy . . .(a)ll he’s going to do it go to sleep” rather than live every day with what he did and perhaps one day recognize the humanity of his victim. James Byrd’s son, Ross, points out "You can't fight murder with murder . . .(l)ife in prison would have been fine. I know he can't hurt my daddy anymore. I wish the state would take in mind that this isn't what we want."

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT COSTS MORE THAN INCARCERATION

It is sometimes suggested that abolishing capital punishment is unfair to the taxpayer, on the assumption that life imprisonment is more expensive than execution. If one takes into account all the relevant costs, however, just the reverse is true. "The death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a more economical alternative to life imprisonment.") A murder trial normally takes much longer when the death penalty is at issue than when it is not. Litigation costs – including the time of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and court reporters, and the high costs of briefs – are mostly borne by the taxpayer. The extra costs of separate death row housing and additional security in court and elsewhere also add to the cost. A 1982 study showed that were the death penalty to be reintroduced in New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more than double the cost of a life term in prison. (N.Y. State Defenders Assn., "Capital Losses" 1982)

The death penalty was eventually reintroduced in New York and then found unconstitutional and not reintroduced again, in part because of cost.

In Maryland, a comparison of capital trial costs with and without the death penalty for the years concluded that a death penalty case costs "approximately 42 percent more than a case resulting in a non-death sentence." In 1988 and 1989 the Kansas legislature voted against reinstating the death penalty after it was informed that reintroduction would involve a first-year cost of more than $11 million. 59 Florida, with one of the nation's most populous death rows, has estimated that the true cost of each execution is approximately $3.2 million, or approximately six times the cost of a life-imprisonment sentence." (David von Drehle, "Capital Punishment in Paralysis," Miami Herald, July 10, 1988)

A 1993 study of the costs of North Carolina's capital punishment system revealed that litigating a murder case from start to finish adds an extra $163,000 to what it would cost the state to keep the convicted offender in prison for 20 years. The extra cost goes up to $216,000 per case when all first-degree murder trials and their appeals are considered, many of which do not end with a death sentence and an execution.

In 2011 in California, a broad coalition of organizations called Taxpayers for Justice put repeal of the death penalty on the ballot for 2012 in part because of the high cost documented by a recent study that found the state has already spent $4 billion on capital punishment resulting in 13 executions. The group includes over 100 law enforcement leaders, in addition to crime-victim advocates and exonerated individuals. Among them is former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, whose office pursued dozens of capital cases during his 32 years as a prosecutor. He said, "My frustration is more about the fact that the death penalty does not serve any useful purpose and it's very expensive." Don Heller, a Republican and former prosecutor, wrote "I am convinced that at least one innocent person may have been executed under the current death penalty law. It was not my intent nor do I believe that of the voters who overwhelmingly enacted the death penalty law in 1978. We did not consider that horrific possibility." Heller emphasized that he is not "soft on crime," but that "life without parole protects public safety better than a death sentence." Additionally, he said the money spent on the death penalty could be better used elsewhere, as California cuts funding for police officers and prosecutors. "Paradoxically, the cost of capital punishment takes away funds that could be used to enhance public safety." [34]

From one end of the country to the other public officials decry the additional cost of capital cases even when they support the death penalty system. "Wherever the death penalty is in place, it siphons off resources which could be going to the front line in the war against crime…. Politicians could address this crisis, but, for the most part they either endorse executions or remain silent." The only way to make the death penalty more "cost effective" than imprisonment is to weaken due process and curtail appellate review, which are the defendant's (and society's) only protection against the most aberrant miscarriages of justice. Any savings in dollars would, of course, be at the cost of justice : In nearly half of the death-penalty cases given review under federal habeas corpus provisions, the murder conviction or death sentence was overturned .

In 1996, in response to public clamor for accelerating executions, Congress imposed severe restrictions on access to federal habeas corpus and also ended all funding of the regional death penalty "resource centers" charged with providing counsel on appeal in the federal courts. (Carol Castenada, "Death Penalty Centers Losing Support Funds," USA Today, Oct. 24, 1995) These restrictions virtually guarantee that the number and variety of wrongful murder convictions and death sentences will increase. The savings in time and money will prove to be illusory.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS LESS POPULAR THAN THE ALTERNATIVES

It is commonly reported that the American public overwhelmingly approves of the death penalty. More careful analysis of public attitudes, however, reveals that most Americans prefer an alternative; they would oppose the death penalty if convicted murderers were sentenced to life without parole and were required to make some form of financial restitution. In 2010, when California voters were asked which sentence they preferred for a first-degree murderer, 42% of registered voters said they preferred life without parole and 41% said they preferred the death penalty. In 2000, when voters were asked the same question, 37% chose life without parole while 44% chose the death penalty . A 1993 nationwide survey revealed that although 77% of the public approves of the death penalty, support drops to 56% if the alternative is punishment with no parole eligibility until 25 years in prison. Support drops even further, to 49%, if the alternative is no parole under any conditions. And if the alternative is no parole plus restitution, it drops still further, to 41% . Only a minority of the American public would favor the death penalty if offered such alternatives.

INTERNATIONALLY, CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS WIDELY VIEWED AS INHUMANE AND ANACHRONISTIC

An international perspective on the death penalty helps us understand the peculiarity of its use in the United States. As long ago as 1962, it was reported to the Council of Europe that "the facts clearly show that the death penalty is regarded in Europe as something of an anachronism…." 1962)

Today, either by law or in practice, all of Western Europe has abolished the death penalty. In Great Britain, it was abolished (except for cases of treason) in 1971; France abolished it in 1981. Canada abolished it in 1976. The United Nations General Assembly affirmed in a formal resolution that throughout the world, it is desirable to "progressively restrict the number of offenses for which the death penalty might be imposed, with a view to the desirability of abolishing this punishment." By mid-1995, eighteen countries had ratified the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, outlawing the death penalty in peacetime.

Underscoring worldwide support for abolition was the action of the South African constitutional court in 1995, barring the death penalty as an "inhumane" punishment. Between 1989 and 1995, two dozen other countries abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Since 1995, 43 more abolished it. All told, 71% of the world’s nation’s have abolished the death penalty in law or practice; only 58 of 197 retain it .

International Law

A look at international trends and agreements sheds light on the peculiarity of the United States’ continued imposition of capital punishment. Today, over 140 nations have abolished the death penalty either by law or in practice and, of the 58 countries that have retained the death penalty, only 21 carried out known executions in 2011. [35] Furthermore, capital punishment has compelled the United States to abstain from signing or ratifying several major international treaties and perhaps to violate international agreements to which it is a party:

In 1989, the General Assembly adopted the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), one of the UN’s primary human rights treaties. [36] Parties to the Protocol must take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty and protect their citizens’ right not to be executed, although signatories may reserve the right to apply the death penalty for serious military criminals during wartime. [37] The United States has yet to join the 35 signatories or 75 parties to the Protocol, trailing behind the world’s leading democracies in the protection of human rights.

Although the Second Protocol to the ICCPR is the only worldwide instrument calling for death penalty abolition, there are three such instruments with regional emphases. Adopted by the Council of Europe in 1982 and ratified by eighteen nations by mid-1995, the Sixth Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) provides for the abolition of capital punishment during peacetime. In 2002, the Council adopted the Thirteenth Protocol to the ECHR, which provides for the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances, including times of war or imminent threat of war. In 1990, the Organization of American States adopted the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty, which provides for total abolition but allows states to reserve the right to apply the death penalty during wartime. [38]

The United States has ratified the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR), an international treaty setting forth a framework for consular relations among independent countries. Under Article 36 of the VCCR, local authorities are obligated to inform all detained foreigners “without delay” of their right to request consular notification of their detention and their right to demand and access opportunities to communicate with their consular representatives. [39] Local authorities have repeatedly disregarded this obligation, resulting in the International Court of Justice holding in 2004 that states had violated the VCCR by failing to inform 51 named Mexican nationals of their rights. All 51 were sentenced to death. When the State of Texas refused to honor this judgment and provide relief for the 15 death-row inmates whose VCCR rights it had violated, President George W. Bush sought to intervene on the prisoners’ behalf, taking the case to the United States Supreme Court. The Court denied the President’s appeal, and Texas has gone on to execute inmates whose VCCR rights it had failed to honor.

In 1994, the United States signed the United Nations (UN) Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). [40] The treaty, which has now been ratified or signed by 176 nations, outlaws the imposition of physical or psychological abuse on people in detention. While it does not explicitly prohibit capital punishment, the treaty does forbid the intentional infliction of pain. Since 1976, however, more than 20 executions in the United States have involved prolonged, painful, or shocking errors, such as an inmate’s head catching fire or a lengthy and torturous search for a vein suitable for lethal injection. Additionally, accidents aside, our methods of execution—lethal injection, electrocution, firing squad, gas chamber, and hanging—may be inherently painful. The CAT also forbids the infliction of pain and suffering “based on discrimination of any kind,” [41] yet racial inequality is endemic to our death rows .

Also in 1994, the United States ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), a treaty intended to protect against racial discrimination, whether intentional or resulting from seemingly neutral state policies. To meet its obligations as a party to ICERD, the United States must take steps to review and amend policies and procedures that create or perpetuate racial discrimination, including capital punishment. [42]

Once in use everywhere and for a wide variety of crimes, the death penalty today is generally forbidden by law and widely abandoned in practice, in most countries outside the United States. Indeed, the unmistakable worldwide trend is toward the complete abolition of capital punishment. In the United States, opposition to the death penalty is widespread and diverse. Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant religious groups are among the more than 50 national organizations that constitute the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The Case Against the Death Penalty was first published by the ACLU as a pamphlet in 1973. The original text was written by Hugo Adam Bedau, Ph.D., who also contributed to several subsequent editions of the pamphlet. This version was most recently revised by the ACLU in 2012.

[1] Glenn L. Pierce & Michael L. Radelet, Death Sentencing in East Baton Rouge Parish, 1990-2008 , 71 La. L. Rev. 647, 671 (2011), available at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/PierceRadeletStudy.pdf .

[2] Liebman et. al, Los Tocayos Carlos , 43 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 711, 1104 (2012).

[3] See Andrew Cohen, Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man , Atlantic, May 14, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/yes-america-we-have-executed-an-innocent-man/257106/ .

[4] See id.

[5] See id. ; Carlos DeLuna Case: The Fight to Prove an Innocent Man Was Executed , PBS Newshour, May 24, 2012, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june12/deathpenalty_05-24.html .

[6] A Three-Drug Cocktail , WashingtonPost.com, Sep. 26, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2007/09/26/GR2007092600116.html ; see also Victoria Gill, The Search for a Humane Way to Kill , BBC News, Aug. 7, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19060961 .

[7] See Carol J. Williams, Maker of Anesthetic Used in Executions is Discontinuing Drug, L.A. Times, Jan. 22, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/22/local/la-me-execution-drug-20110122 ; John Schwartz, Death Penalty Drug Raises Legal Questions , N.Y. Times, Apr. 13, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/us/14lethal.html?pagewanted=all .

[8] See Brandi Grissom, Texas Will Change its Lethal Injection Protocol , Tex. Tribune, July 10, 2012, www.texastribune.org/texas-dept-criminal-justice/death-penalty/texas-changing-its-lethal-injection-protocol/ ; Rob Stein, Ohio Executes Inmate Using New, Single-Drug Method for Death Penalty , Wash. Post, Mar. 11, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/10/AR2011031006250.html ; David Beasley, Georgia Delays Execution Amid Drug Protocol Change , Reuters, July, 17, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/17/us-usa-execution-georgia-idUSBRE86G14L20120717 ; Rhonda Cook & Bill Rankin, State Changes Lethal Injection Protocol, Reschedules Execution , Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 17, 2012, http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/state-changes-lethal-injection-1479424.html ; Steve Eder, A Texas First: Single-Drug Used to Execute Inmate , WSJ Law Blog, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/07/19/a-texas-first-single-drug-used-to-execute-inmate/ ; Idaho Switches Execution Protocol to Single-Drug Lethal Injection , Spokesman.com, May 18, 2012, http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise/2012/may/18/idaho-switches-execution-protocol-single-drug-lethal-injection/ .

[9] See Carol J. Williams, California’s New Lethal Injection Protocol Tossed By Judge, L.A. Times, Dec. 17, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/17/local/la-me-executions-20111217 ; Kathy Lohr, New Lethal Injection Drug Raises Concerns , NPR, Jan. 29, 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/01/29/133302950/new-lethal-injection-drug-raises-concerns ; Steve Eder, Virginia Adds New Drug for Lethal Injections , WSJ Law Blog, July 27, 2012, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/07/27/virginia-adds-new-drug-for-lethal-injections/ .

[10] Laura Vozzella, Virginia opts for One-Drug Lethal Injection Protocol , Wash. Post, July 27, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/virginia-opts-for-one-drug-lethal-injection-protocol/2012/07/27/gJQA8jxiEX_story.html .

[11] See Linda Greenhouse, Supreme Court Allows Lethal Injection for Execution , N.Y. Times, Apr. 17, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/us/16cnd-scotus.html?pagewanted=all .

[12] See Michael Kiefer, State is Sued Again Over Its Lethal-Injection Procedure , USA Today, Feb. 7, 2012, http://www.usatoday.com/USCP/PNI/Valley%20&%20State/2012-02-07-PNI0207met--executionsART_ST_U.htm ; Court Gives Arizona Warning About Execution Protocol , Associated Press, Feb. 28, 2012, available at http://www.azcentral.com/community/pinal/articles/2012/02/28/20120228arizona-moorman-execution-death-row-inmate-lawyers-seek-stays.html . Notably, however, the panel did not halt Arizona’s scheduled executions. Id.

[13] David Beasley, Georgia Inmate Gets Stay Hours Before Scheduled Execution , Reuters, July 23, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/23/us-usa-execution-georgia-idUSBRE86M1F720120723 .

[14] Steve Eder, Missouri Executions on Hold Amid Concerns About New Drug , Aug. 15, 2012, WSJ Law Blog, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/15/missouri-executions-on-hold-amid-concerns-about-new-drug/ .

[15] Melissa Anderson, ACLU Challenges Montana’s Lethal Injection Protocol , KXLH.com, Aug. 1, 2012, http://www.kxlh.com/news/aclu-challenges-montana-s-lethal-injection-protocol/ .

[16] See Eder, supra note 3; Steve Olfason, Oklahoma to Execute Man Who Killed Ex-Girlfriend and Her Two Kids , Chicago Tribune, Aug. 14, 2012, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-14/news/sns-rt-us-usa-execution-oklahomabre87d0s8-20120814_1_jerry-massie-method-of-lethal-injection-three-drug-protocol ; Steve Eder, Oklahoma Execution Set After Lethal Injection Challenge Fails , Aug. 13, 2012, WSJ Law Blog, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/13/oklahoman-set-for-executution-after-lethal-injection-challenge-fails/ .

[17] See Grissom, supra note 3; Ed Pilkington, Texas Executions Threatened As Stocks of Death Penalty Drug Run Low , Guardian, Feb. 14, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/14/texas-executions-threatened-stocks-run-low ; John Schwartz, Seeking Execution Drug, States Cut Legal Corners , N.Y. Times, Apr. 13, 2011,

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/us/14lethal.html?pagewanted=all ; Kiefer, supra note 7.

[18] EU Imposes Strict Controls on ‘Execution Drug’ Exports, BBC News, Dec. 20, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16281016 ; Matt McGrath, FDA Goes to Court to Secure Drugs for Lethal Injections , BBC World, June 1, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18253578 .

[19] See Jeremy Pelofsky, U.S. Wants Lawsuit Over Execution Drug Dismissed , Reuters, Apr. 20, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/us-usa-execution-lawsuit-idUSTRE73J7MH20110420 ; Michael Kiefer, Execution Drugs: Arizona Inmate Lawsuit Seeks FDA Policing , Ariz. Republic, Feb. 3, 2011, http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/02/02/20110202arizona-execution-drug-fda-lawsuit-brk02-ON.htm l; Kevin Johnson, Lawsuit Seeks to Block Imports of Key Execution Drug , USA Today, Feb. 2, 2011, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/02/lawsuit-seeks-to-block-imports-of-key-execution-drug/1#.UA2pmKBCzGc ; Ryan Gabrielson, Lethal Injection Drug Tied to London Wholesaler , California Watch, Jan. 7, 2011, http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/lethal-injection-drug-tied-london-wholesaler-7888 ; Ryan Gabrielson, California Lethal Injection: Prison Officials Refuse to Hand Over Lethal Injection Drug , California Watch, May 30, 2012, available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/30/california-lethal-injection_n_1556155.html .

[20] Pelofsky, supra note 14.

[21] See Raymond Bonner, FDA’s Immoral Stance on Lethal Injection Drugs , Bloomberg, July 29, 2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-29/fda-s-immoral-stance-on-lethal-injection-drugs.html .

[22] See Elizabeth Rapaport , A Modest Proposal: The Aged of Death Row Should be Deemed Too Old to Execute, 77 Brook. L. Rev. 1089 (Spring 2012); Michael J. Carter, Wanting to Die: The Cruel Phenomenon of “Death Row Syndrome”, Alternet, Nov. 7, 2008, http://www.alternet.org/rights/106300/waiting_to_die%3A_the_cruel_phenomenon_of_%22death_row_syndrome%22/ ; Dr. Karen Harrison and Anouska Tamony, Death Row Phenomenon, Death Row Syndrome, and Their Affect [sic.] on Capital Cases in the U.S. , Internet Journal of Criminology 2010, available at http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Harrison_Tamony_%20Death_Row_Syndrome%20_IJC_Nov_2010.pdf .

[23] See Stop Solitary – The Dangerous Overuse of Solitary Confinement in the United States, ACLU.org, https://www.aclu.org/stop-solitary-dangerous-overuse-solitary-confinement-united-states-0 .

[24] See Harrison and Tamony, supra note 25.

[25] See Carter, supra note 25; Death Penalty Information Center, Time on Death Row (2006), at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/time-death-row .

[26] See id.

[27] Amy Smith, Not “Waiving” But Drowning: The Anatomy of Death Row Syndrome and Volunteering for Execution , 17 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 237, 243, available at http://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/pilj/vol17no2/documents/17-2SmithArticle.pdf .

[28] Lackey v. Texas, 115 S. Ct. 1421, 1421 (1995) (Stevens, J., concurring in the denial of certiorari).

[29] Stephen Blank, Killing Time: The Process of Waiving Appeal – The Michael Ross Death Penalty Cases , 14 J.L. & Pol’y 735, 738-39 (2006).

[30] Soering v. UK , App. No. 14038/88, 11 Eur. H.R. Rep. 439 (1989), available at http://eji.org/eji/files/Soering%20v.%20United%20Kingdom.pdf .

[31] See David Wallace-Wells, What is Death Row Syndrome? , Slate, Feb. 1, 2005, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2005/02/what_is_death_row_syndrome.html ; Smith supra note 30.

[32] Smith supra note 30. (quoting Soering , 11 Eur. H. R. Rep. at 475-76).

[33] Id. at 239.

[34] Carol J. Williams, Death Penalty: Exhaustive Study Finds Death Penalty Costs California $184 Million a Year , L.A. Times, June 20, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/20/local/la-me-adv-death-penalty-costs-20110620 .

[35] Figures on the Death Penalty , Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty/numbers .

[36] UN General Assembly, Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty , Dec. 15, 1989, A/RES/44/128, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b3a70.html [accessed 15 August 2012] [ hereinafter Second Optional Protocol].

[37] See Pierre Desert, Second Optional Protocol: Frequently Asked Questions , World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, June 27, 2008, http://www.worldcoalition.org/Second-Optional-Protocol-Frequently-Asked-Questions.html ; Pierre Desert, Second Optional Protocol: The Only Global Treaty Aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty , World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, June 24, 2008, www.worldcoalition.org/UN-Protocol-the-only-global-treaty-aiming-at-the-abolition-of-the-death-penalty.html ; Second Optional Protocol, supra note 21.

[38] Desert, Second Optional Protocol: Frequently Asked Questions , supra note 22.

[39] Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, Mar. 19, 1967, 596 U.N.T.S. 261, available at http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_2_1963.pdf .

[40] United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Dec. 10, 1984, 1465 U.N.T.S. 85, available at http://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/UNTS/Volume%201465/v1465.pdf .

[41] Richard C. Dieter, Introduction: Ford Foundation Symposium, Nov. 12, 1998, available at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/us-death-penalty-and-international-law-us-compliance-torture-and-race-conventions .

[42] International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Mar. 7, 1966, 660 U.N.T.S. 195, available at http://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/UNTS/Volume%20660/v660.pdf .

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Argumentative essay on The death penalty

2016, Argumentative essay on The death penalty

Related Papers

Gerardette Philips

Brendan Beech

Mary Blakelock

charity mae dacut

Society has always used punishment to discourage would-be criminals from unlawful action. Since society has the highest interest in preventing murder, it should use the strongest punishment available to deter murder, and that is the death penalty. If murderers are sentenced to death and executed, potential murderers will think twice before killing for fear of losing their own life. For years, criminologists analyzed murder rates to see if they fluctuated with the likelihood of convicted murderers being executed, but the results were inconclusive. Then in 1973 Isaac Ehrlich employed a new kind of analysis which produced results showing that for every inmate who was executed, 7 lives were spared because others were deterred from committing murder. Similar results have been produced by disciples of Ehrlich in follow-up studies. Moreover, even if some studies regarding deterrence are inconclusive, that is only because the death penalty is rarely used and takes years before an execution is actually carried out. Punishments which are swift and sure are the best deterrent. The fact that some states or countries which do not use the death penalty have lower murder rates than jurisdictions which do is not evidence of the failure of deterrence. States with high murder rates would have even higher rates if they did not use the death penalty. Ernest van den Haag, a Professor of Jurisprudence at Fordham University who has studied the question of deterrence closely, wrote: "Even though statistical demonstrations are not conclusive, and perhaps cannot be, capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else. They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts. Whatever people fear most is likely to deter most. Hence, the threat of the death penalty may deter some murderers who otherwise might not have been deterred. And surely the death penalty is the only penalty that could deter prisoners already serving a life sentence and tempted to kill a guard, or offenders about to be arrested and facing a life sentence. Perhaps they will not be deterred. But they would certainly not be deterred by anything else. We owe all the protection we can give to law enforcers exposed to special risks." Finally, the death penalty certainly "deters" the murderer who is executed. Strictly speaking, this is a form of incapacitation, similar to the way a robber put in prison is prevented from robbing on the streets. Vicious murderers must be killed to prevent them from murdering again, either in

Meray Maddah

" No crime goes unpunished " ; we are probably familiar with this quote where anyone who is guilty of any committed crime they should be prosecuted for it before the law and be held responsible for the actions that generated such crime. What people are also familiar with is the Universal Deceleration of Human Rights and the number of articles that it calls for, but distinctively the right to liberty, freedom and personal security. This right something that states and their sovereigns, at least most of them, aspire to accomplish in respect to their nationals' own security, well-being and livelihood; because after all what good is a state if it is not able to make its citizens enjoy the type of life that every human being is entitled on the expense of a certain political agenda from the state's part. In this sense, the state in such scenario will be the responsible party for not only distributing these rights but also following up with the citizens' utilization of these rights and making that each one does have the bare minimum of each right; meaning the entire right itself and not to settle with anything less. That said, what if the state in this case was the party that not only did it not allow the enjoyment of the before mentioned right; but also was the reason why that person is no longer alive? Capital punishment or the application of the different methods of death penalty are still part of many states' judiciary systems and are still until the present day categorically practiced based upon the crime committed by the defendant. No matter how heinous a crime maybe or the fact that numerous of these crimes claim other people's lives, but in the process what good and what type of benefit can we justify ourselves with when we are producing the same end result, that is death, through different procedures that fall under the label of " law application " ? Most importantly, how can we distinguish ourselves from these same criminals and why is acceptable to kill in the name of a perceived justice if such death penalty is agreed upon by a judiciary commission, than to reject

Joseph U C H E Anyebe

The issues as touching death penalty is as topical as they come. This Work seeks to address some of those issues and proffer solutions to some of those identified therein

Charadine Pich

Indian Journal of Legal Philosophy, ISSN:2347-4963,

Ashay Anand

Since the ancient ages ‘Death Penalty’ has been used as a means of deterring crime and eliminating criminals, but it has always been fraught with issues that have been hotly debated between its supporters and antagonists. In the contemporary era ‘Death Penalty’ faces severe challenges mainly regarding the shadow of arbitrariness looming over its applicability, its ability to be an effective deterrent and the serious issue of innocent people continuously in a danger of being sentenced to capital punishment under questionable circumstances which are still an integral part of this process. Moreover it also faces a continual threat of acting as a tool of retribution under pressure of public opinion and mass media. As such should death penalty be scrapped or should it be allowed to function as a necessary evil or an invisible scepter that keeps the perverse from doing heinous acts is an issue worth consideration.

Ines Manoylova

David Von Drehle

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Death Penalty — Against the Death Penalty: A Persuasive Argument for Abolition

Against The Death Penalty: a Persuasive Argument for Abolition

• Categories: Capital Punishment Death Penalty

About this sample

Words: 919 |

Published: Mar 18, 2021

Words: 919 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited

• Dieter, R. C. (2010). The death penalty in decline: From error to arbitrariness. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 99(3), 1005-1032.
• National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. (n.d.). Innocence and the death penalty. Retrieved from https://www.ncadp.org/pages/innocence
• National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. (n.d.). Costs of the death penalty. Retrieved from https://www.ncadp.org/pages/costs
• Baumgartner, F. R., De Boef, S., & Boydstun, A. E. (2008). The decline of the death penalty and the discovery of innocence. Cambridge University Press.
• Bedau, H. A., & Cassell, P. G. (Eds.). (2004). Debating the death penalty: Should America have capital punishment? Oxford University Press.
• Schabas, W. A. (2013). The abolition of the death penalty in international law. Cambridge University Press.
• Benjet, C., González-Rodríguez, R., Orellana, Y., Borges, G., & Medina-Mora, M. E. (2007). Descriptive epidemiology of homicide in Mexico: 1990-1999. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 85(5), 364-371.
• Bright, S. H. (2009). Counsel for the poor: The death penalty not for the worst crime but for the worst lawyer. Yale Law Journal, 103(8), 1835-1882.
• Shepherd, J. M. (2017). Serial killers: Evolution, antisocial personality disorder and psychological interventions. Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, 28(6), 723-740.
• Poveda, T. (2014). The death penalty in Latin America: A comparative analysis of the struggle for abolition in Mexico and Colombia. Journal of Latin American Studies, 46(4), 755-781.

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Essay: Arguments against the Death Penalty

• Essay: Arguments against the Death…

The idea of putting another human to death is hard to completely fathom. The physical mechanics involved in the act of execution are easy to grasp, but the emotions involved in carrying out a death sentence on another person, regardless of how much they deserve it, is beyond my own understanding. However, this act is sometimes necessary and it is our responsibility as a society to see that it is done. Opponents of capital punishment have basically four arguments.

The first is that there is a possibility of error. However, the chance that there might be an error is separate from the issue of whether the death penalty can be justified or not. If an error does occur, and an innocent person is executed, then the problem lies in the court system, not in the death penalty.

Furthermore, most activities in our world, in which humans are involved, possess a possibility of injury or death. Construction, sports, driving, and air travel all offer the possibility of accidental death even though the highest levels of precautions are taken. 

These activities continue to take place and continue to occasionally take human lives, because we have all decided, as a society, that the advantages outweigh the unintended loss. We have also decided that the advantages of having dangerous murderers removed from our society outweigh the losses of the offender.

The second argument against capital punishment is that it is unfair in its administration. Statistics show that the poor and minorities are more likely to receive the death penalty. Once again, this is a separate issue. 

It can’t be disputed sadly, the rich are more likely to get off with a lesser sentence, and this bias is wrong. However, this is yet another problem with our current court system. The racial and economic bias is not a valid argument against the death penalty. It is an argument against the courts and their unfair system of sentencing.

The third argument is actually a rebuttal to a claim made by some supporters of the death penalty. The claim is that the threat of capital punishment reduces violent crimes. Opponents of the death penalty do not agree and have a valid argument when they say, “The claims that capital punishment reduces violent crime is inconclusive and certainly not proven.”

The fourth argument is that the length of stay on death row, with its endless appeals, delays, technicalities, and retrials, keep a person waiting for death for years on end. It is both cruel and costly. This is the least credible argument against capital punishment. The main cause of such inefficiencies is the appeals process, which allows capital cases to bounce back and forth between state and federal courts for years on end.

If supporting a death row inmate for the rest their life costs less than putting them to death, and ending their financial burden on society, then the problem lies in the court system, not in the death penalty. As for the additional argument, that making a prisoner wait for years to be executed is cruel, then would not waiting for death in prison for the rest of your life be just as cruel, as in the case of life imprisonment without parole.

Many Americans will tell you why they are in favor of the death penalty. It is what they deserve. It prevents them from ever murdering again. It removes the burden from taxpayers. We all live in a society with the same basic rights and guarantees. We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness with equal opportunities.

This is the basis of our society. It is the foundation on which everything else is built upon. When someone willfully and flagrantly attacks this foundation by murdering another, robbing them of all they are, and all they will ever be, then that person can no longer be a part of this society. The only method that completely separates cold blooded murderers from our society is the death penalty.

As the 20th century comes to a close, it is evident that our justice system is in need of reform. This reform will shape the future of our country, and we cannot jump to quick solutions such as the elimination of the death penalty. As of now, the majority of American supports the death penalty as an effective solution of punishment.

“An eye for an eye,” is what some Americans would say concerning the death penalty. Supporters of the death penalty ask the question, “Why should I, an honest hardworking taxpayer, have to pay to support a murderer for the rest of their natural life? Why not execute them and save society the cost of their keep?” Many Americans believe that the death penalty is wrong. However, it seems obvious to some Americans that the death penalty is a just and proper way to handle convicted murderers.

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10 Comments

The title is Arguments against the Death Penalty yet the author spent the whole time counterclaiming any arguments brought up rather than explaining the logistics behind the arguments. No side was taken in this essay however the title clearly states that the essay should be on arguments against.

Who is the Author?

I agree with y’all the death penalty is wrong because why make them die really quick when you can make them suffer for what they did?

I disagree entirely

I agree with you!

Are you Gonna pay for them to be alive then? We are wasting money that could be spent helping the homeless or retired vetrans.

more money is spent on actually executing prisoners ? so how that makes any sense i dont know?

Whatever henious crime one does,we are not uncivilised and barbaric to take the lives of others.If we ought to give them death sentence as punishment,then what distinguishes us from the criminals?Also I don’t think that giving death sentence would deter the other criminals from doing the same and reduce the number of crimes.If insecurity is the major issue behind demanding capital punishment,then the best solution is framing the punishment in such a way that the culprit would never be a threat to the society,not hanging to death.

what distinguishes us from murderers is that we ONLY kill when necessary, if for example there was a serial killer arrested a death penalty is necessary because 1. if said killer ever breaks out they could kill many more people, and 2. the government is already pouring enough money into the prisons right now. more people means more money needed. money that could go to our military or police.

now there is also (as said above) problems with the current situation in the courts, a rich man will get a great lawyer while a poor man gets the best they can afford, though the reasoning behind the long wait I do understand, it is to reduce the likelihood of an innocent man or woman from being put to death.

by the way we don’t hang people anymore we give them painless deaths

also, in response to your idea of a different punishment to stop a criminal from committing crime again do YOU have any ideas because if you do I please post them. I AM willing to have a actual debate if you are willing to calmly do so.

It’s been proven that it costs more to put a prisoner to death by death penalty than letting them sit in jail for the rest of their life. The death penalty is funded by the taxes we pay to the government. As a taxpayer, i don’t want to spend extra money that i make to put a murdered etc. to death when they could sit in jail for the rest of their life and this is just as much punishment for them. They have time to think about their actions and hopefully get their mind right, get some help, and get right with God or whatever faith they believe in if they do. Some cases may be acceptable for the death penalty, but it should be the absolute worse ones, or if the prisoner breaks out as stated before.

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