Disadvantages Of Capital Punishment

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Death Penalty \u0026 Anti Death Penalty: Is There Middle Ground? - Middle Ground

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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 s, have not been appreciably altered by the shift from unrestrained discretion to "guided discretion. 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. 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 mids increased to about 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 , the average number of death sentences per year dropped to , reducing the percentage even more. 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 Woodson v. North Carolina , U. 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. 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. 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 l and l, 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 l, and by had sentenced persons to death and carried out two executions.

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 and , 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 were also very active death penalty states : California highest death row population , Texas most executions since , and Florida third highest in executions and death row population. 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 and , inmates were murdered by other prisoners. 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. 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 , 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 prisoners on death row in 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. 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.

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 , 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 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 , 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.

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 and , men were executed for rape, of whom — 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. 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 mids, about half of those on death row at any given time have been black.

More striking is the racial comparison of victims. 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. 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. Baldus et al. 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.

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 In , the U. 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, 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 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. 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 , 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.

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" US 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. 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. 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. 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 to in February The House judged the current system to be "a haphazard maze of unfair practices. In its 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. The ALI, which created the modern legal framework for the death penalty in , 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. Unlike any other criminal punishments, the death penalty is irrevocable. Speaking to the French Chamber of Deputies in , 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.

Since , 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.

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. 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. 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 , the electrocution of John Evans in Alabama was described by an eyewitness as follows:. 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. 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. 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 , the doctors pronounced him dead. The execution of John Evans took fourteen minutes. 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 a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California where the gas chamber has been used since ruled that this method is a "cruel and unusual punishment. 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. 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. This content reflects the personal opinions of the author. Answer: Mainly due to the legal costs being greater. Because there is a life at stake, there are many lawyers, judges, and other people working for a long time to prepare, try and review all of the issues.

Prisoners on death row also cost more to house than general prisoners. Question: Does the death penalty have anything to do with the religious concept that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell? Answer: Religious opinion is divided on the death penalty. Some Christian groups, such as Catholics, see life as precious and that only God can judge whether a life should be taken away, with God's judgment generally coming in the afterlife.

Advocates of the death penalty typically see it as a natural punishment that enforces Christian morality, which also has biblical justification. Answer: No one wishes to be locked up for life. Most prisoners prefer a life sentence to the death penalty, though, firstly, because people generally don't want to die, and secondly, it leaves open a possibility, however tiny, of release. Not all convicts prefer lifelong incarceration; some prefer the idea of execution, a famous example being the female serial killer, Aileen Wuornos. Answer: It's legal in many US states and countries around the world, because it is often perceived by a large proportion of politicians and members of the public to be an effective deterrent and punishment for the worst types of crime.

Proponents argue that the death penalty has moral, practical, cultural, historical, and sometimes religious justification. Question: Could the death penalty substitute life imprisonment? Is there a reason the country doesn't do that? Answer: Arguments used by critics of the death penalty, who prefer life imprisonment, include: 1. Miscarriages of justice cannot be addressed if a person is wrongly executed 2. Religious arguments include the concept that life is a gift from God and only God has the right to take it away, as well as the New Testament assertion that an "eye for an eye" approach is wrong. In the US, some legal scholars argue that the death penalty goes against the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishments. The death penalty can end up costing more than life imprisonment.

It promotes the "two wrongs make a right approach," using violence. Answer: People in favor of the death penalty believe that it is a fitting punishment for the most heinous crimes, such as murder, and also that it acts as a deterrent. Other arguments include that execution can bring a sense of closure for the victims and their families.

Answer: The death penalty is usually only used for the most serious crimes. In the USA this often means first degree murder along with a number of aggravating factors, such as rape, airplane hijacking, or the killing of a police officer. Answer: The three main purposes of the death penalty are: 1. To prevent the worst criminals from ever committing any further crimes. To deter people from committing serious crimes. Achieve justice for the family and friends of the victims of serious crimes. Yes Death penalty should impose for worst criminals. Its a lesson for other criminals that life is how precious.

It is justice for victims family. If the death penalty imposes for criminals who performed capital offences only then everyone know how the LAW is alert. As an ESL teacher, I sometimes use this as a debate topic with my students and it is always interesting to hear what people of different backgrounds and with different experiences have to say. Your article is very detailed and I think that I may begin using it with my students as a supplementary reading task. In that time he gave his life to Jesus, started singing in a church choir, and started a new relationship with his two sons. So I think if we can, we should give criminals a chance before we just sentence them to death! I'm not sure why this argument makes points for one side which are directly opposing to the other side.

The death penalty cannot be both cheaper and more expensive than life imprisonment. Please fact check before posting summaries like these. Someone poses an imminent threat to your life or the life of another and almost everyone immediately becomes a proponent of the death penalty. You either eliminate the threat, lose your life, or allow another life to be taken. December 14th. She was bound with tape, her arms taped behind her back, and her legs tapped together, tape over her mouth so she could not scream. She was Injected with heroin, to the point she would be unconscious but not dead.

They then buried her under a shed, wrapped in a tarp, and a bed sheet, before she was discovered. The killer admitted it, and got 55 years without a chance of parole. He should have gotten the death penalty. I don't think a death penalty is a good option due to the likely hood of an innocent person dying. People usually rebuke "couldn't that logic be used for jailing people in general? One of the arguments against the death penalty is it is cruel and unusual punishment. The victims in these cases also may have endured very cruel and unusual punishment for which they were not given a choice. The victims are never given a choice to vote as to whether the person who killed them should also be killed.

I think death penalty is necessary and indispensable. Im talking about sexual abuse, rape, sodomy of an innocent defenseless child. The Death Penalty should be allowed. If a man kills many people, rapes many children, and or kills inmates. He should be put to death. Also if he killed them violently. Some people r saying that criminals shouldnt sit on death row for so long or people r saying that criminals r killed without a thorough trial. Of all my research they r on death row for so long so courts have a chance to prove the criminal innocent if that's the case or just verify that he is guilty.

Thee criminal will actually be given a very good lawyer to make sure that if there is a chance they r innocent they won't be killed. That is like saying if someone has multiple abortions you kill them. I don't care for abortionists but still come on it is inexplicable. Do you think god wants people to die. They dont even get time to repent and ask to be forgiven.

Just like the president election. You heard donald trumps background why pick him, but one day he could change or be the same. You did you deal with it dont kill people because of their history or what they did. Thats why I cant wait until judgement day when yall will learn. But the world is to stupid to notice that they will die one day and that can change before they do, so why take away their chance. I am for the dearth penalty mainly because regardless of what others think I believe it is a way of cleaning up society regardless of how crude they are.

And if the criminal is mentally unstable then they should be placed in a mental institution for help not be placed in prison for life otherwise thei will suffer much longer for something they couldn't control. The death penalty is only used in extreme cases. It is only used if known for sure that the perpetrator is guilty. Nobody will ever be falsely put to death. I agree with this method. Contrary to what everyone thinks, it is not expensive for lethal injection. For those saying its inhumane, it's not. They don't feel any pain. If someone kills people, then them themselves should be killed.

I don't really mind though. Maybe they should spend the rest of their life in jail. I say this because hopefully they will suffer in jail, maybe death is an easy way out. Nevertheless, they deserve what's coming to them. I agree fully. I do not put deterrence as my first issue but justice and protection as my first two. I used to be an opponent of the DP but became a supporter.

Here is the reason why I changed from an opponent to a supporter of the death penalty. The Death Penalty is illogical. I'll explain why. How can you teach the person not to act criminally if they are dead? Why do people continue to act criminally if the Death Penalty is to show others what will happen if you commit a severe crime? What if fear isn't good enough to teach others? I agree it costs a lot to have a better method, but Sweden seems to be doing a pretty good job at it. America however, is focused on war and does not care much for the pawns in their cruel game of chess. We should not have different ways of "teaching" just to seem unique, we should all strive to have the best way!

Or the better way than everyone else, for now until we as human beings are intelligent enough to know the best way. Interesting hub. I'm against the death penalty and have been for my entire adult life. As a child of someone who was murdered, people are often confused as to why I would want the guilty man to go to prison as opposed to be put to death. I worked at a Kansas prison and know first hand what oppression looks like. It seems that there are several comments here that are more emotional than logical but it's easy to let emotion control you when it's people you love. Nevertheless, great hub. I very much agreed with James Nash. What a concept.