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The pros and cons of the death penalty
in the |
Contents. (click on a link to go directly to a particular section)
Background.
The purpose of this article is to
invite you the reader to think about your personal attitude to the death
penalty, rather than tell you what to think, hence why it asks a lot of
questions. Facts and statistics provided
are from reliable sources such as the US Bureau of Justice. In a democratic society it is your views as a
voter, or future voter, that count and help shape the world we live in.
Capital punishment is the lawful infliction
of death as a punishment and has been in use in
As of October 2017, 31
states have the death penalty. The death penalty is also available for Federal
and Military crimes. 18 states, plus the
There have been a total of 1465 executions
from January 1977 to the end of 2017. Lethal injection is now almost universal
in the
Is the death penalty
ethically acceptable?
No state has an absolute right to
put its worst criminals to death although a majority of a state's residents may
wish to confer that right on it. Of course all states do kill people, even
where they do not have the death penalty. Our police are armed (by the state)
and people get killed in shoot outs with them.
Majority opinion is typically in favor of the death penalty, with recent
surveys indicating around a 50 – 55% level of support. Opponents believe that
it is wrong for the state to kill, per se.
A factor that is conveniently overlooked by anti-death penalty campaigners is
that we are all ultimately going to die and in many cases we will know of this
in advance and suffer great pain and emotional anguish in the process. This is
particularly true of those diagnosed as having terminal cancer. It is
apparently socially acceptable to be "sentenced to death" by one's
doctor without having committed any crime at all but totally unacceptable to be
sentenced to death by a jury having been convicted of first degree murder after
due process. Another of the anti-death
penalty fallacies is the implication that the alternative to execution is the
inmate just walking away and resuming their normal everyday life. This is of course not true – they will typically
spend the rest of it behind bars.
So let us examine the merits to both the pro
and anti arguments.
Arguments for the death penalty.
Execution permanently removes the worst
criminals from society and is safer for prison guards, fellow inmates and the
rest of us (in the event of an escape) than long term or permanent
incarceration. It is self evident that dead criminals cannot commit any further
crimes either in prison or after escaping from it. Click here for a list of
inmates who have been released or escaped and then murdered again.
Money is not an inexhaustible commodity and
the state may very well better spend our tax dollars on the old, the young and the
sick rather than the long term imprisonment of murderers, rapists etc.
However in the
Execution is a very real punishment rather
than some form of "rehabilitative" treatment, the criminal is made to
suffer in proportion to the offence. Whether there is a place in a modern
society for the old fashioned principal of "an eye for an eye" is a
matter of personal opinion. Retribution is seen by many as a reason for
favoring the death penalty. It is also felt by many families of murder victims
to be a strong reason for witnessing the execution of their loved one's
murderer, in states that allow this, as it provides closure for them. Anti
capital punishment campaigners are fond of mis-quoting Ghandi’s
saying that "an eye for an eye makes the world go blind". This is nonsense because it wrongly presumes
that we all commit murder, whereas only a tiny proportion of people do. Given a population of around 306 million and
a homicide rate of around 15,200 per annum less than 0.4% of the population actually commit a homicide in any given
year. Or conversely 99.6% of us do not
kill.
Does the death penalty deter? It is
difficult to be certain whether it does or doesn’t. It is certainly not used as a deterrent by
individual states, but rather, purely as a punishment.
In most states, executions are a very rare occurrence. Only a very tiny
proportion of murderers are sentenced to death in the first place - about
1.5%. In 2017 just 39 death sentences
were handed down in the whole country.
Only a small proportion of those sentenced to death are eventually
executed, some may have their sentence reduced on appeal, some will die of
natural causes awaiting execution. In all states, other than
The
Equally the murder rate for states with the death penalty is often higher than
for those without.
It is dangerously simplistic to say that the rise in executions in the 1990’s
was the only factor in the reduction of homicides. There has been a general trend
to a more punitive society (e.g., "Three strikes and your out") over
this period and cities such as
The recent economic problems do not seem to have
impacted the homicide rate which continues to fall along with the rate of all
violent crime.
Case study 1 -
In 1980 alone, 2,392 people died by homicide giving a rate of 16.88 for every
100,000 of the population. (The US average murder rate in
1980 was 10.22, falling to 5.51 per 100,000 by the year 2000.) Over the same period,
A recent study of executions and homicides in
Case study 2 -
A total of 196 people (192 men and
four women) were put to death in
Between 1950 and 1962,
The current death row population is the largest in
The concept of deterrence.
Are you deterred by the death penalty? Do you remember the last execution in your
state? Do you believe that you would actually be executed if you were found
guilty of murder in the first degree? These are a crucial
questions for the deterrence argument. A recent survey of a number of death row
prisoners in several states showed that few of them actually gave much thought
to what would happen to them and most did not expect to get caught in the first
place. Do you believe that even if you were caught, convicted and sentenced to
death that you would ever actually be put to death? Do you hear/read about
executions taking place in the country as a whole and in your state in
particular? If so does this information have any effect on you? If you are not
aware of executions in your state how can you be deterred by them? I live in
Arguments against the death penalty.
There are a number of
incontrovertible arguments against the death penalty.
The most important one is the virtual certainty that genuinely innocent people
will be executed and that there is no possible way of compensating them for
this miscarriage of justice. You may well find claims of 139
"innocent" people having been released from death rows nationwide
over the past 30 years or so but this number needs to be treated with great
caution. Some of them were freed on legal technicalities and others succeeded
at re-trials due to such factors as key witnesses having died. So the incidence
of genuine innocence is much rarer than the anti-death penalty lobby and
television dramas would have us believe.
The individual case details for those “exonerated” from death row can be
read at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row
and a rebuttal of these claims at http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/03/04/fact-checking-issues-on-innocence-and-the-death-penalty.aspx.
Some states are still willing to prosecute on circumstantial evidence alone which is concerning. Another very genuine concern is that a person convicted of the murder may have actually killed the victim and may admit having done so but does not agree that the killing was first degree murder. Often the only people who know what really happened are the accused and the deceased. It then comes down to the skill of the prosecution and defense attorneys as to whether there will be a conviction for murder in the first or the second degree. It is thus highly probable that people have been convicted of first degree murder when they should really have only been convicted of second degree murder or manslaughter.
A second reason is the abysmal administration
of the death penalty in most states.
Appeals take for ever to be heard dimming witness memories of events.
Attorneys on both sides are “drowning” in a sea of unresolved cases. Unelected groups who have no mandate will try
to interfere with a lawful death sentence by going before a sympathetic judge
and arguing for a stay. State Governors
can take arbitrary decisions, as did the governor of
Although racism is claimed in the
administration of the death penalty, statistics show that white prisoners are
more likely to be sentenced to death on conviction for first degree murder and
are also less likely to have their sentences commuted than black
defendants. As July 1, 2017 the racial
mix of condemned inmates was as follows : White = 1,196,
Black = 1,168, Latino = 373, Other (including Asian & American Indian = 80. Anti death penalty groups cite as racist the
disparity between the proportion of black defendants on death row and the
proportion of black people in the population.
However African Americans are six times more likely to be the victim of
homicide than white Americans and seven times more likely to be the
perpetrators. There cannot be quotas for
homicide convictions, the police have to deal with the situation that they
find, irrespective of the ethnic background of the perpetrator. I am willing to believe that there was an
element of racism in the application of the death penalty in former times where
a black defendant would receive the death penalty, particularly for killing or
raping a white victim, but a white person convicted of a similar crime might
well not do so. The true definition of
racism is where a person is treated differently/more severely based solely upon
their ethnic background.
There is no such thing as a totally humane
method of putting a person to death, irrespective of what the state may claim
(see later). Every form of execution causes the prisoner suffering,
some methods perhaps cause less than others. One tends to think of these
methods in terms of physical pain while overlooking the mental anguish that the
person suffers in the time leading up to the execution. How would you feel
knowing that you were going to die tomorrow at a specified minute of a
specified hour?
It is claimed that the murder rate has gone
up in some states in the months following an execution and it is claimed that
there is a brutalizing effect upon society by carrying out executions, although
this is hard to prove one way or the other.
The death penalty is the most final of all punishments It removes the individual's humanity
and with it any chance of rehabilitation and their giving something back to
society. In the case of the worst criminals, this may be acceptable but is more
questionable in the case of less awful crimes.
So how do we feel about the death
penalty?
Should we only execute people just
for the most awful multiple murders as a form of compulsory euthanasia rather
than as a punishment, or should we execute all persons convicted of first
degree murder?
What about crimes such as violent rape, terrorism and drug trafficking - are
these as bad as murder? How should we punish such crimes? (In certain cases,
terrorism and drug trafficking can be punished by death under Federal law.)
Should executions be carried out in such a way as to punish the criminal and
have maximum deterrent effect on the rest of us (e.g. televised or public
executions). Would this be a deterrent or merely
become a morbid show for the voyeuristic?
Or should they be little more than a form of euthanasia carried out in such a
way as to remove from the criminal all physical and as much emotional suffering
as possible?
Does it make any sense to imprison someone for the rest of their life or is it
really more cruel than executing them? This is
becoming an increasing problem, especially with the rising numbers of teenagers
and young people being sentenced to life without parole.
If we do not keep murderers in prison for the rest of their life, will they
come out only to commit other dreadful crimes? A significant number do.
What is the cost to society of keeping people in prison? $500 - 600 per week at
present for an ordinary prisoner which is around $800,000 - £900,000 for a
typical sentence of 30 years served in an ordinary prison. The cost is much
higher for maximum security prisoners.
These questions need to be thought about carefully and a balanced opinion
arrived at.
What does
it take to the death penalty?
Getting the death penalty in any state is no foregone conclusion in any
homicide case. Firstly the District
Attorney has to charge the defendant with first degree murder and seek
the death penalty, not something they do lightly, if only because of the far
greater cost of death penalty cases.
Secondly the defendant may offer a plea bargain where they will plead
guilty in return for the DA not going for the death penalty. If they don’t offer a plea bargain and the
case goes to trial, the jury has to unanimously find that person guilty in the
1st degree. In 2002 the Supreme Court
ruled in the case of Ring v
If the jury does decide to award the death penalty, the defendant has an
automatic right of appeal at State and Federal levels. They are able to
file a writ of habeas corpus in the
The alternatives to the death penalty.
What are the realistic alternatives
to the death penalty?
Any punishment must be fair, just, adequate and most of all, enforceable.
Society still views murder as a particularly heinous crime which should justify
the most severe punishment. Life imprisonment without parole is increasingly
being used as an alternative to the death penalty. Imprisonment, while expensive and largely
pointless, except as means of removing criminals from society for a given
period, is at least enforceable upon anyone who commits a crime.
Improving detection rates is a very good
deterrent to crime. Just look at how
people observe speed limits when they see a police car sitting on the side of
the freeway and yet break the speed limit as soon as the risk is passed. Cold case units have been set up by many police
departments which help reinforce the view that murder does matter and will not
just be forgotten about.
It is estimated that
Life on
Death Row.
As at
October 2017 there were 2817 inmates on death rows in 31 states including 61
sentenced to death for Federal offenses and 5 on Military death row.
Most inmates under sentence to death are
housed in the Segregation Wing of a Maximum Security Prison - i.e. Death Row.
Their world consists of a single occupancy 6’ x 9’ cell where they are confined
for 23 hours a day, 7 days a week. Some of these cells do not have air
conditioning which can make life extremely miserable, especially in southern
states where the temperature can exceed 100 degrees for weeks at a time in
summer.
Some states, e.g.,
Typically prisoners are strip searched and handcuffed before going to and from
their one daily hour of solitary exercise in a concrete run surrounded by a
chain link fence topped with razor wire. They are searched and handcuffed when
escorted to the shower room three times a week and at any other time when they
are out of their cell. Non-contact visitation is, almost without exception, all that is allowed Death Row inmates. It is
usually possible for them to communicate with other condemned inmates.
It is clear that in many states e.g.,
"Life without parole" versus
the death penalty.
Many opponents of the death penalty
put forward life in prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP) as a viable
alternative to execution for the worst offenders and surveys have shown that
LWOP enjoys considerable support amongst those who would otherwise favor the
death penalty. If the sentence is enforced in full it is a sentence of no hope
inflicted on mainly younger people who have a great many years to live in
prison (the average age at arrest for homicide is 29 years old) and who will
often be quickly forgotten by their friends and relatives on the outside and
become totally isolated. As at the end
of 2017 there are over 50,000 people including some 2,300 juveniles are
currently serving LWOP sentences nation-wide.
Of these,
In other words it is a living death but one that spares jurors and prison staff
from being involved in an execution. It
has been argued that imposing this sentence is an easy way out for juries who
then don’t have to have it on their individual consciences that they sent a
person to death row and possible eventual execution. It is also clear that life
without parole sentences are being passed on many prisoners who would not have
got a death sentence in the first place.
The Federal Government was the first to eliminate parole under the
Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984.
State legislators followed suit until by 2005, 49 states and the
LWOP cannot prevent or deter offenders from
killing prison staff or other inmates (299 homicides occurred in state prisons between
2001 and 2006) or taking hostages to further an escape bid, because they have
nothing to lose by so doing.
However good the security of a prison, someone will always try to escape and
occasionally will be successful. If you have endless time to plan an escape and
everything to gain from doing so, there is a very strong incentive.
We have no guarantee that future state administrations will not release
offenders who were imprisoned years previously, on the recommendations of
various professionals who are against any form of punishment in the first
place. Twenty or 30 years later, it is very difficult to remember the awfulness
of an individual's crime and easy to claim that they have reformed.
Juveniles
and the death penalty.
Firstly let us be quite clear,
despite what some of the anti-capital punishment lobby imply
The Supreme Court judgment given in Roper v Simmons in March 2005 effectively
ended the juvenile death penalty in the
The Numbers Game "death versus deterrence".
If we are, however, really serious
in our desire to reduce crime through harsher punishments alone, we must be
prepared to execute every criminal who commits a capital crime, irrespective of
their sex, age (above the minimum) alleged mental state or background. Defenses
to capital charges must be limited by statute to those which are reasonable.
Appeals must be similarly limited and there can be no stays. We must carry out
executions without delay and with sufficient publicity to get the message
across to other criminally minded people.
For the death penalty to really reduce the incidence of the most serious
crimes, everyone of us must realize that we personally will, without doubt, be
executed if we commit particular crimes and that there can be absolutely no
hope of commutation.
"Mad or Bad".
Are criminals, particularly
murderers as we are discussing the death penalty, evil or sick? This is another
very important issue as it would hardly seem reasonable to punish people who
are genuinely insane but more reasonable to use effective punishment against
those who are intentionally evil. As usual, as a society, we have very confused
views on this issue. There are those who seem to believe that there is no such
thing as evil, while the majority of us do not accept that every convicted
murderer should be let off, i.e., excused any responsibility for their actions
due to some alleged mental or emotional condition. Criminologists
analyze what environmental factors, as opposed to genetic predisposition, that contribute to criminal behavior.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on June 20, 2002
in the case of Atkins v
Will we ever find an answer to the "mad
or bad" question and then be able to find effective treatment for those
who turn out to be "mad"? Should we worry about the alleged mental
state of our worst criminals? These are the people who are least likely to
benefit from imprisonment or care in institutions and are most likely to
re-offend. It could, therefore, be argued that killing these people would be a
very good thing.
The death penalty and the media.
The media's attitude to executions
varies widely depending on the age and sex of the criminal, the type of crime
and frequency/rarity of execution. A reasonably attractive woman, Karla Faye Tucker, convicted
of a brutal double murder, receiving a lethal injection got tremendous media
attention worldwide. A man being hanged in
Men being executed in
Executions used to attract pro and anti-capital punishment protesters in large
numbers but these seem to have dwindled down to just a few in most cases.
Lethal injection is the least interesting
(dramatic/sexy?) way of putting a person to death - something that suits the
state very well. The less the public interest, the easier the process becomes.
Probably the majority of people don't much care either way and would rather
watch a ballgame. They may vaguely support capital punishment but do not wish
to be or feel involved in an execution.
It would seem that we have “trial by media”
in this country. There was constant
discussion on national TV of the Jodi Arias who is possibly facing the death
penalty for murder in
Is the death penalty a “cruel
and unusual” punishment?
The
Eighth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the imposition of "cruel
and unusual punishments" and the "infliction of unnecessary pain in
the execution of the death sentence".
However the Constitution and the 8th Amendment to it were never intended
to provide criminals with a pain free death.
The original constitution specified death by hanging which in 1787 was
always painful and usually meant death by strangulation. The concept of a drop
sufficient to break the prisoner’s neck and render them instantly unconscious
had not been invented and would not be for almost a century. Hanging, carried out in public, was seen as
the best available form of execution and the most practical way of executing
criminals at the time.
What the
8th Amendment of 1791 did do was to prohibit cruel and unusual punishments such
as burning at the stake, hanging drawing and quartering, pressing to death and
breaking on the wheel. Burning and
pressing had been used under British rule. Breaking on the wheel had occurred
in
In
Wilkerson v.
In 1890
The gas chamber was first used in
Hanging is still a legal form of execution in
The
concept of evolving standards of decency permitted advances in the execution
process to be incorporated into state protocols.
When the death penalty was allowed to resume by the Supreme Court in 1976,
In the
case of Rees v Baze in 2007, Ralph Baze challenged the three drug lethal injection protocol in
the state of
At the
end of 2017 there were at least four lawful methods of execution in the
Can executions ever be
"humane"?
I have never personally believed
that any form of execution can cause either an instant or totally pain free
death, so which method should a modern "civilized" society use?
Should our worst criminals be given a completely pain free death even if the
technology exists to provide one or should a degree of physical suffering be
part of the punishment?
Whatever method is selected should have some deterrent value while not
deliberately causing a slow or agonizing death.
Obviously
one cannot be inside the brain of a person as they are being out to death to
know what, if any, pain they are feeling.
All we can do is to observe their reaction to the process and carry out
an autopsy afterwards. In lethal
injection, if the person appears to lapse into unconsciousness within seconds
and there is no obvious struggling or movement we conclude that they died a
pain free death. It is equally clear
that when any form of execution is bungled the inmate often exhibits
signs of great suffering. Click the
links below for a detailed history and explanation of the way each method
actually causes death.
Lethal injection may appear to be the most humane but is a very slow process. If the
needle is inserted correctly into a vein it allows the short acting barbiturate
to function properly, causing unconsciousness in less than 30 seconds and death
in under 10 minutes. The biggest single objection to
lethal injection is the length of time required to prepare the prisoner and
carry out their sentence which is usually from 20 to 45 minutes depending on
the ease of finding a vein to inject into. Throughout this period the person
knows that they are being put to death.
All states plus the Federal Government and the US Military mandate lethal
injection but some states allow their previous method if the inmate chooses it.
Electrocution can cause a quick death when all goes well, but seems to have a greater
number of technical problems than any other method. This may in part be due to
the age of the equipment - in some cases, over 90 years old!
The gas chamber seems to possess
no obvious advantage to the state as the equipment is expensive to buy and
maintain, the preparations are lengthy, adding to the prisoner's agonies and it
causes a slow and cruel death even when everything goes to plan. It is also
potentially dangerous to the staff and witnesses.
Shooting
by firing squad (as in Utah) can cause a quick death (2 – 4 minutes) but there
appears to be some initial pain felt by the inmate before they lapse into
unconsciousness.
Hanging when done properly causes virtually instant deep
unconsciousness and also benefits from requiring simple and thus quick
preparation of the inmate.
However, too many hangings have been botched in the last 200 years and many
people perceive it to be the cruelest method.
The time taken in the actual preparations
prior to the execution (e.g., the shaving of the head and legs for
electrocution or finding a suitable vein to inject into) must also cause great
emotional suffering which again may far outweigh the physical pain which at
least has an end.
Conclusion.
At the end of the debate we would
seem to be left with three options.
1) Maintain the status quo by retaining the
death penalty for just a few of the "worst" murderers as a form of
retribution for the terrible crimes they have committed and to permanently
incapacitate them.
2) Not to have the death penalty and accept a potential rise in the murder
rate, while looking for other ways of controlling serious crime.
3) Enforce the death penalty in a really strict format and see a corresponding
drop in serious crime while accepting that there will be a lot of human misery
caused to the innocent families of criminals and that there will be the
occasional, if inevitable, mistakes.
Ultimately the choice is yours!
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