arguments for and against the death penalty essay

Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty

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The death penalty deters future murders.

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 .

“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.

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.

Death Penalty: Arguments For and Against Essay

Introduction, arguments against death penalty, arguments for death penalty, death penalty policies around the world.

The area of the current research concerns the death penalty and whether it might be abolished in the future. Various experts have argued against the lethal sentence policies claiming that they are unethical, barbaric, and economically unfavorable. However, in the academic field, some authorities continue to justify this punishment method. The current research reviews various articles and websites concerning the lethal sentence controversies and establishes the correlation between the existing works. As a result, the main flaws within the present scholarship are the unresolved issue of whether death penalty policies are effective or not and whether there are any benefits to society from the lethal sentence. The authorities do not seem to find a consensus on this issue, but there is a prospect that this problem will be resolved in future works.

The first argument against the lethal sentence is a lack of deterrence among criminals. According to Amnesty International Australia (2019), there is no evidence that the prospect of death prevents potential perpetrators. Furthermore, some authorities state that the lethal sentence does not decline the number of crimes and is only used as an instrument of vengeance (Amnesty International, 1997). Another reason to cancel the death penalty is the unnecessary brutality of the process. Despite the introduction of less gruesome methods of killing, such as lethal injection, Deshwal (2017) claims that “sterilized and depersonalized methods of execution do not eliminate the brutality of the penalty” (para. 5). Finally, the majority of the population generally believes that lethal sentences are merely unethical and should be abolished (Jouet, 2020). Ultimately, most experts refer to the mentioned-above arguments to illustrate the obligation to cancel death penalties.

On the contrary, some authorities believe that the lethal sentence is necessary and is a useful tool to prevent potential crimes. The first argument supporting this perspective is retribution for the illegal activity. From the philosophical point of view, as mentioned by Immanuel Kant, the murderer should atone by giving up their own life (Flanders, 2013). Another reason for the lethal sentence is the probability that the perpetrator would kill again after prison. According to Radelet and Borg (2000), after the cancellation of most death penalties in America in 1972, about one percent of the criminals killed again. It might seem as an insignificant number, but ultimately the lethal sentence would have prevented it. As previously mentioned, the death penalty policy does not have evidence to deter people from criminal activity. However, public opinion frequently differs from the statistics gathered by experts. According to Seal (2017), throughout the twentieth-century people extensively considered that the death penalty is obligatory to prevent illegal activity. Therefore, some individuals would only feel safe and secure if the government practices the lethal sentence.

The attitude toward the death penalty varies depending on the regions of the world. In America, the lethal sentence for most crimes was canceled in 1972 by the Supreme Court (Nice, 1992). However, in multiple other countries, the death penalty policies still exist. For instance, while some regions ease restrictions and reduce the number of crimes that are punishable with the lethal sentence, China does the opposite (Lehmann, 2012). Up until the twenty-first century, the Chinese government has purposefully used the death penalty even for non-violent crimes, such as theft or bribes (Lehmann, 2012). Nevertheless, the overall number of countries that have abolished the lethal sentence is continually growing (Hood & Hoyle, 2009). Ultimately, the perspectives regarding the death penalty depend on the region, but more and more governments reject this type of punishment.

Summing up, the opinions about the death penalty vary vastly depending on the countries and the academic experts. Overall, this subject is extremely complicated since the effectiveness of death penalties in terms of criminal deterrence and prevention of potential crimes is almost impossible to prove, and, thus, various perspectives emerge. However, despite the complexity and sensitivity of the topic, most countries have discontinued this policy due to ethical and economical reasons.

Amnesty International. (1997). The death penalty: Criminality, justice and human rights . Refworld. Web.

Amnesty International Australia. (2019). Five reasons to abolish death penalty . Web.

Deshwal, S. (n.d.). Death penalty: Contemporary issues . Indian National Bar Association. Web.

Flanders, C. (2013). The case against the case against the death penalty. New Criminal Law Review: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal, 16 (4), 595-620.

Hood, R., & Hoyle, C. (2009). Abolishing the death penalty worldwide: The impact of a “new dynamic”. Crime and Justice, 38 (1), 1-63.

Jouet, M. (2020). Death penalty abolitionism from the enlightenment to modernity. American Journal of Comparative Law . Web.

Lehmann, E. (2012). The death penalty in a changing socialist state: Reflections on ‘modernity’ from the Mao Era to contemporary China. Honor Theses, 6 , 1-86.

Nice, C. D. (1992). The States and the death penalty. The Western Political Quarterly, 45 (4), 1037-1048.

Radelet, M. L., & Borg, M. J. (2000). The changing nature of death penalty debates. Annual Review of Sociology, 26 , 43-61.

Seal, L. (2017). Perceptions of safety, fear and social change in the public’s pro-death penalty discourse in mid twentieth-century Britain. Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, 21 (1), 1-24.

Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, July 12). Death Penalty: Arguments For and Against. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-penalty-arguments-for-and-against/

"Death Penalty: Arguments For and Against." IvyPanda , 12 July 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/death-penalty-arguments-for-and-against/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Death Penalty: Arguments For and Against'. 12 July.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Death Penalty: Arguments For and Against." July 12, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-penalty-arguments-for-and-against/.

1. IvyPanda . "Death Penalty: Arguments For and Against." July 12, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-penalty-arguments-for-and-against/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Death Penalty: Arguments For and Against." July 12, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-penalty-arguments-for-and-against/.

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Fifty-five percent of Americans support the death penalty, according to a 2017 Gallup poll . A survey the polling organization took two years later found that 56% of Americans support capital punishment for convicted murderers, down 4% from a similar poll taken in 2016. While the exact number of poll respondents in favor of the death penalty has fluctuated over the years, a slight majority of those surveyed continue to back capital punishment based on arguments ranging from religious dogma to the cost of covering a life prison sentence. Depending on one's perspective, however, the death penalty may not actually represent justice for victims.

"The Death Penalty Is an Effective Deterrent"

This is probably the most common argument in favor of capital punishment, and there's actually some evidence that the death penalty may be a deterrent to homicide, but it's a very expensive deterrent . As such, the question is not just whether the death penalty prevents crime but whether capital punishment is the most economically efficient deterrent. The death penalty, after all, requires considerable funds and resources, making it extremely costly to implement. Moreover, traditional law enforcement agencies and community violence prevention programs have a much stronger track record vis-a-vis deterrence, and they remain underfunded due, in part, to the expense of the death penalty.

"The Death Penalty is Cheaper Than Feeding a Murderer for Life"

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, independent studies in several states, including Oklahoma, reveal that capital punishment is actually far more expensive to administer than life imprisonment. This is due in part to the lengthy appeals process, which still sends innocent people to death row on a fairly regular basis.

In 1972, citing the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments , the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty due to arbitrary sentencing. Justice Potter Stewart wrote for the majority:

"These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual ... [T]he Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed."

The Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, but only after states reformed their legal statutes to better protect the rights of the accused. As of 2019, 29 states continue to use capital punishment , while 21 prohibit the death penalty.

"Murderers Deserve to Die"

Many Americans share this view, while others oppose the death penalty no matter the crime committed. Death penalty opponents also note that the government is an imperfect human institution and not an instrument of divine retribution. Therefore, it lacks the power, the mandate, and the competence to make sure that good is always proportionally rewarded and evil always proportionally punished. In fact, organizations such as the Innocence Project exist solely to advocate for the wrongfully convicted, and some of the convicted felons it has represented have been on death row.

"The Bible Says 'An Eye for an Eye'"

Actually, there is little support in the Bible for the death penalty. Jesus, who himself was sentenced to death and legally executed, had this to say (Matthew 5:38-48):

"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. "You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

What about the Hebrew Bible? Well, ancient Rabbinic courts almost never enforced the death penalty due to the high standard of evidence required. The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), which represents the majority of American Jews, has called for the total abolition of the death penalty since 1959.

"Families Deserve Closure"

Families find closure in many different ways, and many never find closure at all. Regardless, "closure" is not a euphemism for vengeance, the desire for which is understandable from an emotional point of view but not from a legal perspective. Vengeance is not justice.

The friends and family of murder victims will live with that loss for the rest of their lives, with or without controversial policy objectives such as the death penalty. Providing and funding long-term mental health care and other services to the families of murder victims is one way to support them.

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"The Penalty of Death" by H.L. Mencken
Finding Sources for Death Penalty Research
Famous Criminals' Last Words
The Main Classifications of Criminal Offenses

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Argumentative essay on The death penalty

2016, Argumentative essay on The death penalty

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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

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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.

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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.

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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Death Penalty Essays

Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty Essay

The use of death penalty or capital punishment is one of the most controversial issues in Social Science studies. Scholars in social sciences are divided on whether or not the use of death penalty as a mean of punishing offenders is justifiable. One group of the scholars contend that death penalty is the most effective form of punishment for the criminals who have committed heinous crimes like murder and robbery with violence (Macdonald, 88). The other group of scholars, on the other hand, argue that death penalty is not an effective method of punishing the offenders and that the punishment does not lead to the intended objectives. A review of these arguments in favour of and against death penalty shows that death penalty is, indeed, an efficacious mean of punishing criminals guilty of serious and heinous crimes. This paper, therefore, evaluates the debates in favour of and against capital punishment and presents a coherent and logical debate in favour of death punishment. In the presentation of the arguments in favour of death penalty, Stephen Toulmin’s model of argumentation is applied (Stephen Toulmin, online). The application of the Toulmin’s model of argumentation helps in presenting the arguments in a coherent and logical manner.

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There are three main arguments in support of death penalty as an effective mean of punishing the offenders who are guilty of crimes of high magnitude. The first argument is based on the claim that death penalty deters crime. Death penalty as a deterrent mean to further commission of crime is one of the main reasons why death penalty is practiced in many jurisdictions. As a mean of punishing the criminals for their offences, death penalty deters further commission of crime in two ways.

In the first way, by killing the offenders of crimes of high magnitude, for instance a murderer, the murderer will have no further opportunity to commit the crime again (Maulsby, 28). This in effect means that the crimes of murder will drastically reduce in that particular area. Although there are some studies that tend to refute this fact, there are, however numerous studies that corroborate this fact. For instance in the study by Erhlich, carried out in USA in an attempt to find out whether, really, capital punishments lead to reduction in crime rate, it was found that, there is, indeed, a strong correlation between death penalty and the rate of crimes, especially crimes of high magnitude like murder ( Arguments for and against Death Penalty, online). The study showed a significant reduction in crime, in places where death penalty is practiced as compared to other places where different means of punishing such criminals is practiced. But, apart from the studies that tend to support the view that death penalty can lead to reduction in crime, it is also, a matter of common sense that, when the people who are committing crimes are abolished or killed, then the rate of crimes will significantly reduce because they will not have another opportunity to commit the crimes.

The second reason why death penalty leads to reduction in crime is due to the fact that by killing the offenders of serious crimes, other people with the intent to kill will be afraid of doing so for fear of the consequences that would befall them(Goel, 2008). People, naturally, fear severe punishments, especially death, and so, when the law prescribes death penalty for serious crimes, then many people, utterly out of fear for the death, will refrain from committing such crimes. Although there are some studies contradicting this fact, arguing that death penalty does not deter criminals from committing crimes( Arguments for and Against Death Penalty, online) there are contrary studies supporting the view that death penalty instils fear among the criminals and, therefore, prevents them from committing crimes. But it is a fact that some people commit crimes due to psychological problems and for these kinds of people, death penalty cannot prevent them from committing crimes because, they commit crimes out of uncontrollable strong psychological impulse. But it is not true that all people who commit crimes do so out of psychological disorder. This therefore shows that use of death penalty as a mean of punishing the criminals can lead to reduction of crimes.

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The third reason why death penalty can act as a deterrent, is due to the fact by killing criminals, you break the chain of crimes. It is a fact that some criminals have organised themselves into an elaborate network and that operates from a central command point. These groups of organised criminals also do recruitments for new members. In order to effectively dismantle such criminal organisations, it is necessary to eliminate, through killing, the think tanks and the commanders of such criminal gangs. By dismantling such organised criminals, through killing, you will have broken the chain of crimes and by that; the killing of the criminals will have deterred more crimes from being committed.

Apart from deterrence, the second ground on which death penalty can be justified is on the retribution ground. The proponents of this position hold that criminals deserve to be punished because they deserve punishment. By committing crimes, retribution theory of justice holds, the criminals are inviting upon themselves punishment that is proportionate to the crime that they commit (Bowers, 4). Punishing the criminals therefore on this ground is justifiable since it is giving the offenders their just and fair deserts. On this ground, therefore, death penalty is a just and fair to the criminals who have committed serious crimes like murder or robbery with violence. There are two reasons to support this position.

First, when criminals commit felony (Serious crimes like murder), they do so freely without compulsion from anybody, otherwise the criminals wouldn’t be held culpable for their actions. This means that the person is free either to commit the offence or not to commit it. Secondly, for the criminal to be regarded as responsible for their actions, the criminal must be mentally sound, they shouldn’t be insane. This means that the criminal knew very well of the consequences of their actions, including the consequence of them being punished for their crimes. But the punishments that they should be subjected to should be proportionate to the magnitude of the crimes that they commit, the higher the crime in magnitude the higher the punishment.

The above facts mean that by choosing to commit crime, the criminals have freely, without compulsion and with full knowledge of the consequences, chosen to commit crime, and therefore this means that they have freely chosen to be punished for their crimes. And with death penalty being the most severe form of punishment that one can be subjected to, the offenders who commit serious crimes that threaten or take away the lives of other people should be killed. For example, a serial murderer should be killed because by killing other people deliberately, they should also be killed because by killing other people, they are wishing, as it were, to be also killed. This is the only punishment that befits this kind of crimes. While some people would argue that life imprisonment without any possibility of parole is the harshest type of punishment compared with death penalty, death penalty is the punishment that is proportionate to the punishment of taking away another person’s life. Also, death punishment is the most feared form of punishment and this shows that it is, indeed, the most severe and the most effective form of punishment for the offenders of serious crimes.

This position that criminals commit crime deliberately and with full knowledge of the consequences for their crimes is severely criticized by the people who oppose death penalty as a form of punishment for the offenders guilty of serious crimes. In their arguments, they contend that it is not true that people who commit crimes do so willingly, and by so doing, they wish upon themselves the bad consequences of their actions (crimes) to befall them. This group or scholars, who mainly understand crime as having originated from the society, or as being some form of psychological disorder, argue that criminals do not cause crime willingly and intentionally. And for this reason, they contend that the primary reason for punishing criminals should be to reform them but not to punish them for the sake of their actions. This group of scholars, therefore, are greatly opposed to the use of death penalty as a form of punishment for the criminals who commit crimes of highest magnitude.

But a critical look at this position that criminals should not be punished because of their crimes shows that the position is wrong and misleading. The only group of people who can be claimed to commit crimes unintentionally and without knowledge of the consequences for their actions are the mentally incapacitated criminals. But in all the jurisdictions of the world, this concern has been taken care of by the principle of mens rea (The Intention to commit a wrongful act, online). But for the mentally sound criminals, who commit crime without any form of compulsion, they should account for their crimes and they should be punished for the crimes. This will help in making people responsible and will rid the society of the criminals.

The second reason to support death penalty on retribution ground is that death penalty restores the moral balance that has been disturbed by the felonious crimes (Burleigh, chapter 1). All crimes bring about a certain moral imbalance, and this therefore calls for a restoration of the disturbed moral balance. This can be achieved through appropriate punishment that is proportionate to the crime committed. And for this reason, some severe crimes like murder, which is actually the severest form of crime, requires the most severe form of punishment. And since death penalty is the most dreaded form of punishment, death penalty is the most severe form of punishment. Death penalty, therefore, is an effective form of punishment for the serious crimes. Unless this form of punishment is administered for the serious crimes that threaten other human beings life, the moral imbalance that is brought about by crimes of this sort will remain uncorrected. For instance, when a terrorist kills innocent people for religious or any other reason, moral balance is affected by the injustice that the terrorist has done to the innocent people. To counter or to assuage this injustice, the terrorist also must be killed. And by the killing of the terrorist, moral balance that had been offset by the terrorist’s offences will be restored. Death penalty, therefore, is a necessary and just form of punishment.

The main criticism that is directed against this position is that death penalty does not serve any good purpose, since it does neither lead to the reform of the criminal nor does it give back /pay back to the offended what the offender had deprived of them ( Bedau, online). For this reason, the anti-death penalty proponents contend that death penalty is an ineffective form of punishment, and that it does not lead to the restoration of the moral balance that had been offset by the criminal acts. There are scholars who contend that death penalty, actually, leads to increase in crime in the society (Ross, 626). The view that death penalty brings about restoration of the moral balance is also criticised on the ground that, it is very difficult to determine exactly the kind of punishment that would be proportionate to the crime committed. Owing to this fact, the anti-death penalty proponents argue that death penalty doesn’t in any way bring about restoration of justice. It is also claimed that due to human errors and inability to do thorough investigations and to know exactly whether a person is guilty for an offence of high magnitude or not, some innocent people have been executed and for this reason, death penalty in such a case doesn’t bring about any restoration of justice. Hence, it is argued that death penalty should be abolished.

But, although, as a matter of fact it is quite difficult to determine precisely the exact amount of punishment that would match the crime committed and thus restore the moral balance that has been offset by the crime, we can, however, approximate the amount of punishment that would be proportionate to the crime committed. And in some instances like in the case of murder, it is possible to determine the exact amount of punishment that would be proportionate to the crime committed. In the case of murder, the murderer is also executed just as they murdered other people. And this, of course, will bring about the restoration of justice. And on the claim that death penalty is a useless form of punishment because it doesn’t bring about reformation of the criminal or restoration of justice, I would respond that the purpose of punishment is not merely to bring about reformation of the criminal. While indeed the restoration of the offender is one of the main objectives of punishing criminals, it is, however, not the only aim of punishing the offenders. And for this reason, death penalty shouldn’t be discarded only because it does not bring about reformation of the offender. Death penalty, therefore, should be practiced for it brings about restoration of justice, although, sometimes it is hard to determine with exactness the correct form or amount of punishment that would be proportionate to the crime committed. On human error and execution of innocent people, thorough investigations should be done, and there should be enough evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, before holding a person culpable of a crime deserving death penalty as its punishment.

The third reason why death penalty should be practiced is that it brings about closure and vindication for the offender’s family. Once a member of a family commits a crime, all the other members of the family feel psychologically disturbed by the misconduct of one of their member, this psychological torture continues till when the whole issue is brought to a closure. But some form of punishments takes a very long time before the issue is brought to a closure. For instance in life imprisonment, the offender is imprisoned for life, and the offender undergoes sufferings throughout their lives. This kind of punishment haunts the members of the offender family till when the offender dies. But with death penalty, the whole matter is brought to closer when the offender is executed. The family, although, will be greatly affected psychologically by the execution of one of their member, the psychological torture, however, will last for a short time as compared to the lifelong torture that they would have to undergo in case of life imprisonment. This therefore shows that in terms of saving the other members of the family from the embarrassment and the psychological torture that goes with one of their member being prosecuted and punished for their wrong doing, death penalty is far better than life imprisonment for in death penalty the whole matter is brought to closure within a very short time.

One of the obvious criticism that would be levelled against this point is that death penalty brings about far more psychological torture and shame to the members of the executed person’s family, as compared to the life imprisonment. Critics would contend that execution of an offender brings about a permanent shame and psychological torture to the members of the offender’s family, as compared to life imprisonment of one of their family member.

A critical look at these two opposing positions shows that in terms of bringing vindication and closer of the whole matter to the family members of the offender, death penalty is far better as compared to life imprisonment. While it is true that death penalty will lead to an awful psychological torture to the family members of the offender, the executed criminal, the psychological torture will, nonetheless, not be life long as the critics of death penalty would argue, but it will wane away after some time. But in case of life imprisonment, the shame and the psychological torture for a having one member of a family in prison throughout their lives, will be a lifelong experience. This is because the memory and the futile hope that somehow one day in future their imprisoned family member will be set free, keeps torturing them throughout their lives. And for this reason, death penalty should be practiced for it brings abound vindication and closer of the matter to the members of the offender’s family.

In conclusion, we can say that, despite the fact that death penalty has a number of short comings, its advantages, however, far outweighs its disadvantages. Death penalty helps to maintain law and order in the society by serving as a lesson and instilling fear upon the potential criminals. Death penalty also restores the moral balance that has been offset by the commission of crime. Lastly, death penalty brings about closure and vindication to the family members of the offender. And in the light of these far reaching advantages, death penalty should be practiced as an effective mean of punishing the offenders who are guilty of serious crimes.

Works Cited

Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty.Web. http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/arguments/arguments.PDF Bedau, H. The Case Against Death Penalty. Web.

Bowers, D.C. Life Imprisonment versus Death Penalty. USA: Nashville: Allied Printing Trading Council, 1913. Web. Google Books.

Burleigh, C.C. Thoughts on Capital Punishment.USA: Philadelphia, 1945. Web. Google books.

Goel, V. ‘’Capital Punishment: A human Right Case Study and Jurisprudence’’. International NGO journal vol.3 (9), pp. 152-161, September 2008.

Macdonald, A. ‘’Death Penalty and Homicide’’, July 1, 1910. Vol.16. USA: The American Journal of Sociology.

Maulsby, D. ‘’ The Death Penalty’’ February 1, 1893. Vol. 55. USA: American Advocates of Peace. Web. Google Books. Mens rea. Web. https://www.usadojo.com/articles/kapap/mens-rea.htm

Ross, W. ‘’The Death Penalty: Reasons For its abolition’’, Dec.1, 1905.Vol. 11. USA: The V Virginia Law Registrar. Stephen Toulmin. Web. http://www.stephentoulmin.com/

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Argumentative Essays on Death Penalty

It's difficult to write about the complex and often controversial subject of the death penalty. Selecting an engaging and personally resonant essay topic is crucial for a successful academic endeavor. We emphasize the importance of creativity in this process and aims to make the information accessible to students of varying academic levels. Let's embark on this journey together, exploring topics that not only challenge but also expand our understanding and critical thinking skills.

Essay Topics by Type

Below, you'll find a curated list of essay topics categorized by type, each with a distinct focus ranging from technology and society to personal growth and academic interests.

Argumentative Essay Topics

The Morality of the Death Penalty: Is it a justified form of punishment?
Cost Implications: Comparing the economic impact of the death penalty versus life imprisonment.
Effectiveness as a Deterrent: Does the death penalty truly deter crime?

Compare and Contrast Essay Topics

Death Penalty Practices Worldwide: How different countries approach capital punishment.
Historical vs. Modern Perspectives: The evolution of the death penalty in the legal system.

Descriptive Essay Topics

A Day in the Life: Describing the process of a death penalty case from verdict to execution.
Public Perception: How media representations influence views on the death penalty.

Persuasive Essay Topics

Abolition Arguments: Persuading against the continuation of the death penalty in modern society.
Rehabilitation over Retribution: The case for prioritizing rehabilitation for criminals.

Narrative Essay Topics

Personal Testimony: Narratives from families affected by the death penalty.
Life on Death Row: A day in the life of a death row inmate, based on real accounts and research.

Introduction Paragraphs

Each essay topic comes with a suggested introductory paragraph to kickstart your writing process.

The Morality of the Death Penalty

In the debate over the death penalty, the crux of the argument often revolves around its moral standing. This essay will explore the multifaceted dimensions of capital punishment, questioning its justification as a punitive measure. Thesis Statement: Despite its intention to serve justice, the death penalty raises significant ethical concerns, challenging the principles of human rights and dignity.

Death Penalty Practices Worldwide

Capital punishment varies significantly across different cultural and legal landscapes. This essay aims to compare and contrast the application of the death penalty in various countries, shedding light on the global diversity of justice. Thesis Statement: A comparative analysis reveals profound differences in ethical, legal, and procedural frameworks governing the death penalty, reflecting broader societal values and norms.

Conclusion Paragraphs

Concluding paragraphs are crafted to summarize the main points and reinforce the thesis, adding a final reflection or call to action.

This essay has traversed the ethical landscape surrounding the death penalty, examining its complex implications on society and the justice system. The evidence suggests that the moral costs of capital punishment far outweigh its purported benefits. Final Reflection: In the pursuit of a more humane and just society, abolishing the death penalty emerges as a necessary step forward.

Through a comparative lens, we have explored the diverse approaches to the death penalty, revealing a spectrum of global attitudes towards justice and punishment. These differences underscore the influence of cultural, legal, and ethical considerations in shaping capital punishment policies. Call to Action: It is imperative for nations to reevaluate their stance on the death penalty in light of international human rights standards.

The Death Penalty: Arguments and Alternative Solutions

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The Death Penalty: a Critical Analysis of David Bruck's Arguments

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Pro Death Penalty: Uncovering The Good Side in The Evil

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The death penalty, known as capital punishment, refers to the act of carrying out the prescribed execution of a convicted offender who has been sentenced to death by a court of law for committing a criminal offense.

The history of the death penalty stretches back thousands of years. Its origins can be traced to ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia, where various forms of execution were practiced, including hanging, beheading, and stoning. Throughout history, the death penalty has been used by different societies as a means of punishment for a range of offenses. In medieval Europe, the death penalty became more prevalent, with common methods including burning at the stake, drawing and quartering, and hanging. The practice was often carried out publicly as a form of deterrence and to demonstrate the power of the ruling authority. Over time, there have been shifts in public opinion and legal systems regarding the death penalty. In the 18th century, the Enlightenment era brought forth ideas of human rights and the reformation of justice systems, leading to calls for the abolition of cruel and excessive punishments. In the modern era, many countries have abolished the death penalty, considering it a violation of human rights and the right to life. However, the death penalty remains in practice in several countries around the world, albeit with varying degrees of usage and controversy.

Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United States, Japan, Taiwan, China, India, North Korea, Singapore, Iraq, Vietnam, Yemen, Somalia, Bangladesh, South Sudan, etc.

Hanging, shooting, lethal injection, beheading, stoning, inert gas asphyxiation, electrocution and gas inhalation.

Furman v. Georgia: In 1972, this groundbreaking legal case had a profound impact on the death penalty in the United States. The Supreme Court's decision resulted in a temporary suspension of capital punishment across the nation. The ruling declared that the arbitrary application of the death penalty violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. Consequently, states were compelled to revise their death penalty laws in order to address concerns of arbitrariness and ensure a fairer application of the ultimate punishment. The Troy Davis case: Troy Davis, who was convicted of murder in Georgia in 1991, garnered international attention and raised substantial doubts about the fairness and accuracy of the death penalty. Despite maintaining his innocence until his execution in 2011, his case shed light on issues such as the reliability of eyewitness testimony, the potential for racial bias within the criminal justice system, and the inherent risk of wrongful convictions.

Public opinion on the death penalty is diverse and varies across different countries and cultures. However, there are several common trends and perspectives. Supporters of the death penalty argue that it serves as a deterrent to crime and provides justice for victims and their families. They believe that certain crimes warrant the ultimate punishment and that the death penalty acts as a form of retribution. On the other hand, opponents of the death penalty raise concerns about its morality, effectiveness, and potential for wrongful convictions. They argue that capital punishment violates the right to life, promotes violence, and is irreversible in cases of wrongful execution. Many argue that the justice system is fallible and prone to errors, raising questions about the reliability and fairness of capital punishment. Public opinion on the death penalty has been shifting in some countries, with a growing trend towards abolition. Factors such as evolving societal values, concerns about human rights, and the recognition of the potential for errors and biases within the justice system have contributed to changing perspectives.

1. Deterrence. 2. Retribution. 3. Justice for victims. 4. Cost-effectiveness. 5. Upholding societal values.

1. Irreversibility. 2. Human rights. 3. Ineffectiveness as a deterrent. 4. Racial and socioeconomic biases. 5. Moral and ethical considerations.

The topic of the death penalty is of paramount importance due to its profound implications on society, justice, and human rights. It raises fundamental questions about punishment, ethics, and the role of the state in administering justice. The death penalty sparks intense debates on multiple fronts, including its effectiveness as a deterrent, the potential for wrongful convictions, and the moral implications of state-sanctioned killing. Examining the death penalty forces us to confront inherent biases and flaws within the criminal justice system, such as racial and socioeconomic disparities in sentencing. It prompts discussions on the irreversibility of capital punishment and the risks of executing innocent individuals. Moreover, it demands an exploration of alternative approaches to punishment, rehabilitation, and the potential for reforming criminal justice systems.

The topic of the death penalty is highly relevant and worth exploring in an essay for students due to its interdisciplinary nature and profound societal impact. Writing an essay on this subject provides an opportunity for students to delve into complex ethical, legal, and social issues. Studying the death penalty encourages critical thinking and analysis of the justice system, including questions about fairness, human rights, and the potential for error. It prompts students to examine the moral implications of state-sanctioned killing and grapple with issues of punishment and rehabilitation. Furthermore, researching the death penalty enables students to explore the historical and cultural aspects of capital punishment, analyzing its evolution and variations across different societies. They can investigate case studies, legal precedents, and empirical evidence to evaluate the effectiveness, equity, and potential biases associated with the death penalty.

1. In 2020, Amnesty International reported that at least 483 executions were carried out in 18 countries worldwide. The top five executing countries were China, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. 2. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, as of April 2021, 185 innocent individuals have been exonerated and released from death row in the United States since 1973. 3. The United States is among the few Western democracies that still retain the death penalty. However, its use has significantly declined over the years. In 2020, the country recorded the lowest number of executions (17) in nearly three decades.

1. Donohue III, J. J., & Wolfers, J. (2009). Estimating the impact of the death penalty on murder. American Law and Economics Review, 11(2), 249-309. (https://academic.oup.com/aler/article-abstract/11/2/249/232287) 2. Goldberg, A. J., & Dershowitz, A. M. (1970). Declaring the death penalty unconstitutional. Harvard Law Review, 1773-1819. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1339687) 3. Soss, J., Langbein, L., & Metelko, A. R. (2003). Why do white Americans support the death penalty?. The Journal of Politics, 65(2), 397-421. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-2508.t01-2-00006) 4. Banner, S. (2022). The death penalty. In The Death Penalty. Harvard University Press. (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.4159/9780674020511/html) 5. Hoyle, C. (2008). Death Penalty. In Elgar Encyclopedia of Human Rights. Edward Elgar Publishing. (https://www.elgaronline.com/display/book/9781789903621/b-9781789903621.death.penalty.xml) 6. Radelet, M. L., & Borg, M. J. (2000). The changing nature of death penalty debates. Annual Review of Sociology, 26(1), 43-61. (https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.43) 7. Vidmar, N., & Ellsworth, P. (1973). Public opinion and the death penalty. Stan. L. Rev., 26, 1245. (https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/stflr26&div=63&id=&page=) 8. Donohue, J. J., & Wolfers, J. (2006). Uses and abuses of empirical evidence in the death penalty debate. (https://www.nber.org/papers/w11982) 9. Ellsworth, P. C., & Gross, S. R. (1994). Hardening of the attitudes: Americans' views on the death penalty. Journal of social Issues, 50(2), 19-52. (https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1994.tb02409.x) 10. Wolfgang, M. E., & Riedel, M. (1973). Race, judicial discretion, and the death penalty. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 407(1), 119-133. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/000271627340700110)

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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.

Rethinking Justice: why the Death Penalty should be Abolished

This essay about the reasons to abolish the death penalty discusses the ethical, practical, and financial implications of capital punishment. It argues that the irreversible nature of the death penalty, coupled with the risk of executing innocent people, raises serious moral concerns. The essay also points out the lack of evidence supporting the death penalty as a crime deterrent and highlights the biases in its application, which disproportionately affect minorities and those of lower socio-economic status. Additionally, it notes the higher costs of death penalty cases compared to life imprisonment. Finally, the essay emphasizes a shift in global norms, with a growing number of countries abolishing the death penalty in favor of more humane approaches to justice. This reflects a broader move toward upholding human rights and fostering a fair and equitable justice system.

How it works

The death penalty has always been a hot-button issue, sparking debates that cut deep into our moral and ethical fibers. But as society evolves, so too should our justice system. There are several powerful, human-centered reasons why the death penalty feels like an outdated relic in today’s legal landscape.

Let’s start with the moral quandary it presents. Taking a life, under any circumstance, raises a multitude of ethical questions. One of the most troubling aspects of capital punishment is the chilling possibility of executing an innocent person.

Since 1973, over 185 individuals on death row in the United States were exonerated. This isn’t just a statistic; it’s a glaring reminder of how irreversible and final the death penalty is. Mistakes in other areas of justice can often be rectified, but there is no undoing an execution.

Then there’s the argument about whether the death penalty actually deters crime. The evidence here is shaky at best. Numerous studies have shown that harsh penalties like execution do not effectively prevent crime more than life imprisonment. If deterrence is the goal, the death penalty misses the mark, which begs the question: why keep it?

Bias in the death penalty’s application adds another layer of concern. The system shows troubling disparities, particularly with racial biases and socioeconomic status influencing outcomes. Defendants accused of killing white victims are disproportionately sentenced to death, which speaks volumes about the prejudices skulking through the corridors of our courts. This isn’t just unfair; it’s a fundamentally flawed system that perpetuates inequality.

Financially, the death penalty doesn’t make much sense either. It’s far more expensive to execute someone than to keep them in prison for life. This is due to the lengthy and complex legal process required in capital cases, designed to minimize errors. Every dollar spent here is a dollar that could be used more effectively elsewhere within the criminal justice system.

Globally, the trend is also moving away from capital punishment, with over two-thirds of countries having abolished it in law or in practice. This global shift isn’t just about being progressive; it’s about adhering to international human rights standards that recognize the death penalty as a violation of the right to life.

In the end, abolishing the death penalty isn’t just about eliminating a punishment option. It’s about building a justice system that reflects our values of fairness, redemption, and humanity. It’s about acknowledging that the state shouldn’t sanction the irreversible act of taking a life. Moving away from the death penalty would signal a commitment to these values and contribute to a more equitable society.

So, as we ponder the path forward, let’s consider a justice system that upholds life and offers chances for redemption. That’s the kind of progress that aligns with our collective growth as a compassionate society.

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'Is the death penalty racist? Of course it is.'

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Buttons with anti-death penalty slogans are seen during a vigil against the death penalty in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2021

'Of course the death penalty is racist. And it would be wrong even if it weren't.'

Los Angeles Times editorial board

Civil rights groups have asked the California Supreme Court to invalidate the death penalty in the state, arguing it's racist, says the Los Angeles Times editorial board. They're right. A study found "Black defendants were 4.6 to 8.7 times more likely to be sentenced to death than other defendants," and the disparity was larger when the victim was white or Asian. But the death penalty "would still be wrong" if biases were eliminated. It gives the government "too much power."

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'Marjorie Taylor Greene's attention ploy flops'

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has been "dangling an axe over House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for weeks" for passing Ukraine aid, says Joe Perticone. But it's apparent even to the right-wing provocateur herself that she "overplayed her hand." Greene was hoping to boost her standing by ousting Johnson the way Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) got rid of Kevin McCarthy last year. But her antics have "further alienated herself from her colleagues" and diminished her influence.

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Kenneth Roth in Foreign Policy

The Biden administration is trying to talk International Criminal Court prosecutors out of charging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for obstructing aid to Palestinians, but Washington's arguments "are weak," says Kenneth Roth. It insists the ICC lacks jurisdiction, but the governments that created the court two decades ago have already "overruled" that claim. "As it did for the alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, the Biden administration should stand aside and let the ICC process run its course."

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John Pfaff in The American Prospect

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.

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Serge Schmemann

Editorial Board Member

Silencing Independent Voices Is Not the Way to Join the West

In Tbilisi, Georgia, the country’s parliament passed a “foreign agent” bill on Tuesday that, according to the ruling Georgian Dream party, will increase transparency on foreign funding of nongovernmental groups and media outlets.

But the thousands of Georgians who have been demonstrating in the streets since the measure was first introduced don’t agree with that description. Nor does the Biden administration, nor the European Union. They see the bill for what it is: a repressive measure intended to silence independent NGOs and media and move Georgia closer to the Kremlin’s orbit.

The law is modeled on one Russia enacted in 2012, which the Kremlin has used to smear or silence anyone challenging the government. The Georgian variant — widely known as the “Russian law” — would require organizations getting more than a fifth of their funding from abroad to register as “bearing the interests of a foreign power” or face stiff fines. The law was first introduced last year and withdrawn under heavy protest; this year the protests failed to dissuade the ruling party. Georgia’s largely ceremonial president, Salome Zourabichvili, says she will veto it, but Georgian Dream has enough votes to override her.

Why is the ruling party doing this?

One reason is the national elections set for October: Tamping down the opposition and the independent press will help Georgian Dream stay in power, which it’s held since 2012. The party has demonstrated distinctly authoritarian ambitions.

The more worrisome possibility is that Georgian Dream, the creation of the richest man in Georgia, Bidzina Ivanishvili, wants to get on the right side of Russia. Ivanishvili, who was prime minister from 2012 to 2013 and still wields considerable power behind the scenes, initially took a robust anti-Moscow stance, but that has been changing, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine.

The ruling party maintains that it is still keen on joining the European Union, which formally granted Georgia candidate status in December. The party has little choice, given that the overwhelming majority of Georgians are in favor of moving westward. But the party’s actions and words have pointed the other way, either out of fear of Russia — not irrational, given that Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 — or for gain, or to keep the party in power.

The United States and the European Union have made no secret of their alarm and annoyance. A State Department statement condemned the “foreign influence” legislation, warning that the law and Georgian Dream’s anti-Western rhetoric “put Georgia on a precarious trajectory.” A U.S. official warned that Washington may slap some financial and travel restrictions on some Georgian officials. It may not be too late.

Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

Is Disinflation Back on Track?

The latest news on inflation has been pretty good. It has also been extremely weird. And that weirdness is, in a way, the message.

With underlying inflation fairly low but probably still above the Fed’s 2 percent target and people still worried that it might go back up, quirky measurement issues can lead to big mood swings that are quickly reversed when the next numbers come in — or sometimes even a few hours after the initial announcement, once knowledgeable people have had some time to dig into the details.

There were two big official inflation reports in the past couple of days: the Producer Price Index (what we used to call wholesale prices) on Tuesday and the Consumer Price Index on Wednesday morning . There was also a private survey from the National Federation of Independent Business that may add some clarity.

So what do I mean by “weirdness”? On Tuesday I was busy most of the day with plumbers and dentists, so I was able to check in on events and commentary only once in a while. But this enforced limitation on the information flow might actually have given me more perspective. The first thing I saw was a hot P.P.I., with inflation coming in well above expectations. There was much wailing and rending of garments. Then, as the analysts I follow had time to parse the details, they started to declare that this was actually a good report.

Financial markets seemed to agree. One quick and dirty way to judge how markets view inflation data is to look at the yield on two-year U.S. Treasuries, which largely reflects what people think the Fed is going to do. If inflation looks hot, they expect the Fed to keep rates high and maybe even increase them; if it looks cool, they expect the opposite.

And if you look at two-year yields over the past few days, you see the market reaction matching my sense of the commentary:

Yields spiked when the P.P.I. report was released, then fell back once there was time to dig into the numbers, ending the day lower than they started.

On the other hand, markets from the get-go liked the C.P.I., which seemed to show inflation resuming its downward trend, with yields falling sharply. But as I write, analysts are still digging into the details. Will they be less optimistic by evening? Probably not: Early commentary seems, if anything, to be saying that the numbers were even better than they first appeared. But after yesterday, I’m going to wait and see.

I also mentioned the survey from the N.F.I.B., which represents small and medium businesses. One question it asks is whether businesses are planning to raise or lower prices over the next three months; the percentage difference from current numbers is often a useful indicator of inflation trends. And that spread is currently close to what it was before the pandemic, although slightly higher:

So my best guess? The acceleration in measured inflation over the past few months was probably a statistical illusion; inflation wasn’t as low as it seemed in late 2023 but probably hasn’t risen much, if at all. Underlying annual inflation is probably around 2.5 percent, maybe even less. So my guess is that we’ve already won this war — that we have basically achieved a soft landing, with low unemployment and acceptably low inflation.

But I could be wrong, and even if I’m right, it’s going to take at least a few more months of good inflation news before this happy reality sinks in.

Frank Bruni

Contributing Opinion Writer

Biden’s Daring Debate Proposal Could Recharge His Campaign

I’ve been waiting and hoping — no, I’ve been desperate — for President Biden to do two things. One, boldly project strength. Two, recognize that he cannot coast to re-election and that he needs to shake up the state of the presidential race.

With his offer on Wednesday to debate Donald Trump at least twice before the election and as early as next month, he has done just that.

The Biden campaign’s proposal came with the condition that the debates be in a television studio and there be no audience present to hoot, holler and otherwise interrupt. Trump subsequently indicated that he was onboard, though it wasn’t clear if he would agree to Biden’s terms.

By emphasizing debates and suggesting that they start soon, Biden is taking a risk. But it’s a necessary one. Trump and his supporters lean hard on the charge that Biden is too rickety — in terms of both energy and intellect — to face off against Trump, and they have sold that idea skillfully and mercilessly, with the help of right-wing news organizations that portray Biden as a doddering wreck. It’s selective and often malicious stuff, but that doesn’t mean that Biden can ignore it. He must refute it. Signaling an eagerness to debate is the crucial first step.

The next one is performing well in those debates, should they happen, and that’s where the risk comes in. Some Democrats who’ve spent time with Biden over the past year privately express concerns about his sharpness and stamina, and a debate is less scripted — and arguably more draining — than a State of the Union speech read from a teleprompter. But a reluctance or refusal to debate could be as damaging to Biden as half a dozen terrible moments at the lectern.

Besides which, Trump could have scores of such moments, to go by his bizarro stump speeches of late. That’s where the rewards that Biden could reap come in. Do I think that he will turn in debate performances for the ages? No. Do I think that Trump will have a harder time insisting on Biden’s wobbliness if he has demonstrated his own profound unsteadiness on the same stage where Biden is standing, with plenty of swing voters watching? Yes.

I also think that it’s past time for Biden to pivot from caution to daring. Maybe that pivot is finally here.

Putin’s Defense Shake-Up Is a Danger for Ukraine

With Vladimir Putin’s revival of Soviet-style centralized and secretive rule, the old art of Kremlinology is making a comeback. It’s not quite the same as when the lineup atop Lenin’s mausoleum on May Day was scrutinized for signs of who was on the way up or down, but Putin’s abrupt replacement of the long-serving Sergei Shoigu as defense minister last Sunday was still a distinct blast from that dismal past.

Technically, Shoigu was kicked upstairs, to head up the national security council. Putin is not given to publicly punishing loyal courtiers, and Shoigu was about as loyal as they come, even going fishing and hunting with the boss. Still, Kremlin-watchers have long expected his ouster, given the sloppiness of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the widespread corruption in the military-industrial complex, and Shoigu’s reported unpopularity with the generals. There was also the dramatic rebellion of the mercenary commander Yevgeny Prigozhin, who marched on Moscow last June demanding Shoigu’s head (only to lose his own in a plane crash broadly presumed to have been an assassination).

So, very briefly, here are the questions and speculation now keeping Kremlinologists busy:

Shoigu’s replacement at the Defense Ministry is Andrei Belousov, a senior Kremlin economist. That he is not a military man is not surprising; neither was Shoigu, a former construction foreman, nor his two predecessors. Military matters are handled by the generals of the General Staff; the defense minister looks after the military-industrial base. The thinking is that Belousov’s task will be to manage the rapid growth in Russia’s military spending and to clean up the corruption that is siphoning off huge amounts of the money earmarked for the Ukraine war.

How long Shoigu will be allowed to survive remains an open question. One of his top deputies, Timur Ivanov, was arrested on bribery charges in April. One of Ivanov’s nicknames was “Shoigu’s wallet.” And on Tuesday morning, government investigators announced that a senior general on the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Yuri Kuznetsov, had been detained on suspicion of “large-scale” bribe-taking.

A big question is what happens to Nikolai Patrushev, who is being displaced by Shoigu at the helm of the Russian security council. Patrushev, like Putin a former K.G.B. official, is among the oldest and closest members of Putin’s ruling clique, and among the most hawkish. Where he lands — or fails to land — will say a lot about where Putin is headed.

On balance, the musical chairs point to a major overhaul of the military as Russia moves toward what is basically a war economy. Russia is making incremental but steady advances in Ukraine, albeit at an astounding cost in casualties and armaments. Putin’s plan is to press on at any cost, squeezing Ukraine and its ever more reluctant Western backers, and keeping China on board as a major supplier. None of that bodes well for Ukraine.

Jonathan Alter

Where’s the Devastating Takedown of Michael Cohen That Trump Needs?

For months, we’ve known that the cross-examination of Michael Cohen would be the decisive moment of Donald Trump’s New York felony trial — the day we learned whether his defense team could plant reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors.

On Tuesday it became clear that the team was struggling with its most important task.

Todd Blanche, Trump’s lead defense lawyer, was like a baseball pitcher assigned to start Game 7 of the World Series after only two or three wins in his major-league career. Though a seasoned former federal prosecutor, he has little experience as a defense attorney — and it showed.

We’re only about a third of the way through Blanche’s cross, but so far, he’s too meandering and pleasant for the sharp-toned, rat-a-tat style necessary for the role.

Blanche spent more than an hour showing that Cohen, like Stormy Daniels last week, despises Trump, and this line of inquiry was entertaining if not informative. When he quoted Cohen calling Trump a “boorish cartoon misogynist,” Cohen wielded the same mild and effective rejoinder he used twice earlier: “Sounds like something I would say.” My kids would like to see me in that T-shirt.

Blanche spent a long time depicting Cohen as a publicity hound cashing in on his decision to flip on Trump. Guilty as charged. But Cohen’s unwise decision to make sport of Trump in an orange jumpsuit (and worse) earlier in the trial, while angering both the prosecution and defense, doesn’t relate to the falsification of business records at issue in the case. And Cohen made it clear that he was merely responding in kind to Trump’s childish posts, a few of which jurors have seen more than once. All told, an annoying waste of the jury’s time.

Blanche had trouble finding a rhythm. For instance, he asked Cohen if he had appeared on MSNBC shows anchored by Ali Velshi and Joy Reid. When Cohen said yes, Blanche had no follow-up.

But his real problem is that he has so little to work with. Cohen delivered devastating direct testimony all day Monday and again Tuesday morning, and he has been careful and low-key on cross.

Instead of attacking the prosecution’s case head-on, Blanche has been handcuffed by a client nursing a perverse desire to see Cohen’s insults — and his own — aired in open court.

At around 4 p.m. Tuesday, shortly before court adjourned for the day, Blanche began delving into why other prosecutors have passed on this case. That could be promising for him. But after all the runs the prosecution has already scored, he’ll have to strike Cohen out with the bases loaded to get back into the game.

Michelle Goldberg

Top Republicans Come Face to Face With Trump’s Seamy Past

On a day when Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer, testified about the price of loyalty to Trump, a group of Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential candidate, showed up at the courthouse to demonstrate their loyalty to Trump.

Sitting in the courtroom on Tuesday on my first day at the trial, I kept wondering what they were thinking as they heard Cohen, seeming every bit the weary, reluctantly reformed TV gangster, testify about his mafia-like interactions with Trumpworld.

He described how, after his home and office were raided by the F.B.I., Trump encouraged him, both through a “really sketchy” lawyer and through his own Twitter posts, to, in Cohen’s words, “Stay in the fold, stay loyal, don’t flip.” He described how once he decided “not to lie for President Trump any longer,” the then-president publicly attacked him.

Cohen now seems like a man whose life has been essentially wrecked — he went to prison, lost his law license, had to sell his New York and Chicago taxi medallions and is still on supervised release. Though his implosion has been particularly severe, he is far from alone; many people who’ve served Trump, no matter how faithfully, have been ruined in various ways by the experience.

Nevertheless, as Trump runs for re-election, Republicans are climbing over one another to get as close to him as possible. Toward the end of his testimony for the prosecution, Cohen was asked about his regrets.

“To keep the loyalty and to do things that he had asked me to do, I violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty,” he said. I’d like to know if Johnson, hearing this, had even a flicker of foreboding.

The Increase in Drowning Deaths Should Be a National Priority

Drowning deaths in the United States rose by more than 12 percent to an estimated 4,500 per year during the pandemic, according to grim new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase, from 4,000 per year in 2019, comes as this long-neglected public health crisis is slowly beginning to draw some attention from government policymakers.

“It’s moving in the wrong direction,” the C.D.C. director, Dr. Mandy Cohen, told The Times. The agency said more than half of Americans had never taken a swimming lesson.

The sobering data is an opportunity for President Biden and health officials to finally make drowning prevention a national priority.

Drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4 in the United States and the second leading cause of death by accidental injury for children 5 to 14. Tackling the issue has clear bipartisan appeal and would improve quality of life in every American community.

Despite the obvious need for action, federal, state and local governments in the United States have invested very little to prevent these deaths.

The rise in deaths has caught the eye of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose philanthropy told The Times this week it plans for the first time to direct millions of dollars to drowning prevention efforts within the United States to improve data collection and help fund swimming lessons in 10 states where drowning rates are highest: Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Oklahoma and Texas.

The planned $17.6 million investment by Bloomberg Philanthropies is modest compared with the $104 million it is spending globally on preventing drownings. But the focus by Bloomberg, whose prominent public health campaigns helped ban smoking in bars and restaurants in New York, could help raise the profile of this issue. Executives at the philanthropy said they planned to work with the C.D.C.

Many Americans of even wealthy backgrounds have lost children to drowning. But drowning is also an issue of equity. Black people and Native Americans are at substantially increased risk of drowning. So are teenage boys. The C.D.C. report found that these trends have continued. In 2020, they said, Black Americans saw the greatest increase in fatal drownings.

Red Cross surveys suggest that a majority of Americans lack basic swimming abilities. With C.D.C. data showing the existence of more than 10 million private pools in the United States and fewer than 309,000 public ones, it’s clear that large numbers of Americans lack access to basic information about water safety, as well as safe places to learn to swim. Instead of a public health issue, drowning is treated as a private matter and swimming as a luxury. To save lives, this needs to change.

David Brooks

Why Trump Is Ahead in So Many Swing States

What do American voters want? The latest New York Times/Siena polls of swing states offer some confusing evidence on this point. Some of the polling results suggest that Americans are in a revolutionary frame of mind: Asked whether the political and economic systems need major changes, 69 percent of respondents said those systems need major changes or should be entirely torn down.

On the other hand, when the pollsters gave voters a choice between a candidate who would bring the country back to normal and one who would bring major changes, 51 percent said they would prefer the back-to-normal candidate and only 40 percent would prefer the major-changes candidate.

So which is it? Is 2024 a change election in which people want someone who will shake things up, or is this a stability election in which people are going to vote for the candidate of order over the candidate of chaos?

Well, different voters want different things. But if I had to write a single sentence that reconciled these diverse findings, it would be this: The people who run America’s systems have led the country seriously astray; we need a president who will shake things up and lead the country back to normal.

When they hear “systems,” I assume voters are thinking of the network of institutions run by America’s elite — corporations, governing agencies, higher education, the news media and so on. If voters believe one thing about Donald Trump it’s that he’s against these systems and these systems are against him.

Voters clearly see President Biden implicated in these systems. The heart of his problem heaves into view when people are asked which candidate will bring about change. Seventy percent of voters said that Trump would bring about major changes or tear down the system entirely if elected. And 71 percent of voters said that little or nothing would change if Biden was re-elected.

In other words, the evidence suggests that the swing voter wants reactionary change, not revolutionary change. The mood suggested by the evidence is angry nostalgia. That would be my explanation for why Trump is so convincingly ahead in most of the swing states.

Trump Told Cohen Disclosure of His Fling Would Be a ‘Total Disaster’

When Michael Cohen took the stand for the first time in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial on Monday morning, he almost accidentally sat down without taking the oath. But after he raised his hand and swore to tell the truth, he seemed to do so.

In dry language, with his impulse-control problems nowhere in sight, he landed blow after blow on the former president.

Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, is willing to look like a stooge — pathetically eager for any praise from the boss — to implant in jurors’ minds that even in the absence of incriminating emails, he should be believed because of all the time he spent looking for Brownie points from Trump. When he did so, he was implicating Trump.

Cohen’s testimony about the Playboy model Karen McDougal, who says she had a nine-month affair with Trump, is important beyond Trump describing her to Cohen as “beautiful.” It cemented Trump’s attention to detail, which we’ve heard a lot about already. He constantly asked for updates on the hush money that American Media Inc., publisher of The National Enquirer, was paying at his direction to McDougal, replying, “Great!” or “Fantastic,” when Cohen delivered them.

Cohen’s tape of Trump discussing that deal landed hard when it was played, and not just because it was Trump’s voice talking about “150” — a clear reference to the $150,000 in hush money that Trump — through Cohen and A.M.I. — was originally going to pay McDougal. Trump’s micromanaging, which we’ve heard about for two weeks, came to life in a way that didn’t help him. And when Cohen dissected practically every moment of the call, there was no mistaking the meaning of the brief conversation.

When Cohen told Trump that Stormy Daniels was shopping her story, “Trump was really angry with me,” he said. Trump told Cohen: “‘I thought you had this under control, I thought you took care of this! … Just take care of it!’”

According to Cohen, Trump thought he would surely lose the 2016 election if the Daniels story came out. He testified that Trump said, “This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women will hate me,” and added that “guys, they think it’s cool” to have sex with a porn star, “but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.” In combination with the fallout from the “Access Hollywood” tapes, they agreed, it would send his already low polling with women into a tailspin.

“Get control of it!” Trump barked, Cohen testified. “Just get past the election. If I win, it’ll have no relevance when I’m president. And if I lose, I don’t really care.”

Here the prosecutor, Susan Hoffinger, asked if Cohen inquired about Melania Trump. He said yes, and said Trump responded: “Don’t worry. How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long.”

Wow. With Trump, every time you think he’s touched bottom, he crashes through the floor. Here he was already looking ahead to his third divorce.

Cohen is doing very well on direct examination. The test will come Tuesday afternoon, when cross-examination is likely to begin.

Farah Stockman

Israel Needs to Allow More Aid Crossings to Keep Gazans Alive

An already unbearable situation in Gaza is getting far worse, as hundreds of thousands of desperate Palestinian families flee an Israeli ground operation in Rafah, in southern Gaza. Aid groups say the so-called humanitarian zone near the sea, where people are being told to move, doesn’t have enough shelter, food, water or sanitation to support the people who are already there. Without a significant infusion of new aid, this place is at risk of total famine and social chaos.

One glimmer of good news came on Sunday, when Israel opened the Western Erez crossing in northern Gaza. But virtually no aid has got through to southern Gaza for nearly a week, aid groups say. The reality is that the Gaza Strip needs many, many more crossings.

“If you have only one entry point in, then it becomes extremely valuable, and every adverse actor can disrupt it for their own gain,” Dave Harden, a former U.S.A.I.D. mission director in the West Bank and Gaza, told me.

If there were a dozen access points, spread across every two or three kilometers, then no single crossing would become a choke point, vulnerable to attack. He said there’s no reason that Israel, which controls the security envelope around Gaza, could not open far more checkpoints.

“People complain that Hamas is stealing aid, but there would be no incentive to steal if there was enough food going in,” said Harden, adding that he shared a plan to open more than half a dozen more border crossings in Gaza with a branch of the Israeli military about six weeks ago.

But since then, the opposite has occurred. The main artery for humanitarian aid, Kerem Shalom, was shut down on May 5 after a Hamas rocket attack killed four Israeli soldiers. Then Israel seized the border crossing at Rafah , gaining full control over the vital entry and exit point for people and goods for the first time since 2005. Israeli officials have blamed Egypt for the halt in humanitarian goods through Rafah since last week. But for months aid groups have cited the onerous inspections of aid convoys, Israeli attacks on aid workers and protests by right-wing Israeli settlers who have destroyed or delayed truckloads of aid as the cause of famine in Gaza.

“The situation is absolutely desperate,” Sean Carroll, who leads Anera, an American aid organization that has operated in Gaza for decades, wrote in an email on Monday. His staff members have been forced to evacuate Rafah at a moment’s notice, just like the rest of the population, and were forced to leave vital supplies in a warehouse behind.

“They are trying to keep delivering but there’s not much to deliver,” he told me.

Believe It, Democrats. Biden Could Lose.

Donald Trump may be the presidential candidate whose midday snoozing has generated headlines and animated late-night comics, but President Biden is the one who needs to wake up.

He’s a whopping 12 points behind Trump among registered voters in Nevada, according to polls by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer that were released on Monday morning. Biden won that state by nearly 2.5 points in 2020. He’s behind among registered voters in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan — in all of the six battleground states surveyed except Wisconsin. That’s not some wildly aberrant result. It echoes alarms sounded before. It speaks to stubborn troubles.

And it’s difficult for Democrats to believe. I know: I talk regularly with party leaders and party strategists and I’ve heard their incredulity. They mention abortion and how that should help Biden mightily. They mention the miserable optics of a certain Manhattan courtroom and a certain slouched defendant. They mention Jan. 6, 2021. They note Trump’s unhinged rants and autocratic musings and they say that surely, when the moment of decision arrives, a crucial share of Americans will note all of that, too, and come home to Biden.

From their lips to God’s ear. But with stakes this huge, I can’t help worrying that such hopefulness verges on magical thinking and is midwife to a confidence, even a complacency, that Biden cannot afford. He needs to step things up — to defend his record more vigorously, make the case for his second term more concretely, project more strength and more effectively communicate the most important difference between him and his opponent: Biden genuinely loves America, while Trump genuinely loves only himself.

The new polling shows that Democratic senators up for re-election are doing better than Biden , so his party affiliation isn’t his doom. That’s the lesson, too, of the favor enjoyed by Democratic governors in red and purple states . Look, for prime example, at Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania .

But Biden seems to get the blame for the war in Gaza. For the high cost of living, too. Regarding the economy, he has a story to tell — infrastructure investment, the CHIPS Act, low unemployment — and must tell it better, with an eye not on his liberal base, but on the minorities and young people who are drifting away from him. That’s the moral of the latest numbers: Take no voter for granted. And there’s not a second to waste.

Patrick Healy

Deputy Opinion Editor

Will Michael Cohen Throw Cold Water on Trump’s Polling Lead?

Every Monday morning on The Point, we kick off the week with a tipsheet on the latest in the presidential campaign. Here’s what we’re looking at this week:

The next two weeks are critical for Donald Trump. He is leading President Biden in most polls in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and other swing states that will decide the 2024 election. But on Monday, the star witness in Trump’s criminal trial — Michael Cohen, his former lawyer — will begin telling a Manhattan jury that he gave $130,000 to the porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about a sexual encounter with Trump. And based on the pace of the trial, the case could go to the jury as soon as next week.

Cohen is the linchpin to any conviction, acquittal or hung jury for Trump. More than any other witness in the case, he will put words in Trump’s mouth for jurors — telling them how the former president directed the payment to Daniels. Expect the cross-examination to be withering, but in the end, Trump’s lawyers may be hard-pressed to contain or thwart the damaging Cohen testimony without strong witnesses who can rebut it.

The trial matters because some voters say a conviction could change their thinking about Trump — a man who for years has shaken off scandals like Teflon. Failure to convict, in turn, could boost the martyr message that he’s been campaigning on at rallies like his big one in New Jersey on Saturday.

I just did a focus group with Trump voters from 2020 about how they see him now, which will be published on Tuesday. Most of these voters want to support him again because they think the economy will do better under him. But these voters volunteered how much they dislike Trump’s chaotic and inappropriate behavior, and several of them are looking at R.F.K. Jr. as a third-party candidate. What happens in the trial could steer some of these Trump voters away from him.

Biden had a successful fund-raising weekend on the West Coast, but it’s Israel’s military actions in Gaza and the cease-fire talks that will loom over both his week and the biggest event on his schedule: his commencement address at Morehouse College next Sunday. Many voters are unhappy with Biden’s approach to Gaza and general handling of the war, and he came in for some criticism over his latest move on U.S. weapons to Israel.

This isn’t an easy time for Mr. Biden to set foot on a college campus, but he’s been an admired figure at many historically Black colleges like Morehouse — and he and his campaign need to improve his standing with both Black voters and Georgia voters, where he is lagging Trump in polls. No single event will turn it around for Biden, but I think this will be one of his highest-stakes speeches of the spring.

The Table Is Set for Michael Cohen to Testify Against Trump

For months, we’ve heard that the prosecution’s entire case in Donald Trump’s New York felony trial boils down to one man: Michael Cohen.

It turns out that it doesn’t — as long as Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, behaves himself on the witness stand beginning early next week.

For three weeks, I’ve sat in the courtroom and watched prosecutors carefully set the table for the feast of Cohen’s testimony against his longtime boss. Knowing that Cohen is a disreputable witness, they’ll basically argue that you don’t have to like the chef to swallow the food he serves.

The arc of the prosecution’s narrative has taken the jury from the “catch and kill” scheme (a coherent prelude to the crime) to the validation of highly incriminating records to the debunking of arguments for the defense. It all adds up to an effective precorroboration of Cohen’s likely testimony.

Stormy Daniels had no connection to the falsification of business records, the fundamental charge against Donald Trump. But by establishing that she did, indeed, have sex with Trump, her testimony provided important proof of motive. It’s increasingly clear to the jury that Trump coughed up the hush money to save his 2016 campaign after it was sent reeling by the “Access Hollywood” tape. He knew that a credible story of sex with a porn star would sink him. So he broke the law.

The defense has responded mostly by grasping at straws. It tried to make the hush money look like an extortion scheme, with the former president in his favorite position as victim — a difficult maneuver, considering that Trump has spent years in the same tawdry milieu.

On Monday and Friday, the defense attorney Emil Bove used technojargon and innuendo to suggest, without a shred of proof, that a key piece of evidence — a Sept. 9, 2016, call in which Trump and Cohen discussed hush money for the Playboy model Karen McDougal — was somehow tampered with by Cohen, the F.B.I. or some other sinister force and that it might not have been Cohen on the call. The idea was to use a nanosecond gap in the call and a change in phone ownership to capture the imagination of even a single conspiracy-minded juror. It takes only one to create a hung jury.

But Bove’s cross-examination crashed when a young prosecution witness explained that when people (in this case, Cohen) buy new phones, they usually keep their old numbers.

Is that all they’ve got? No, the defense is betting on the offensiveness of Cohen, who has been ignoring repeated pleas from prosecutors to keep his mouth shut in the days before he takes the stand. (Justice Juan Merchan strongly suggested he do so.)

If Cohen can straighten up and fly right, riding on a trove of evidence and surviving cross-examination, a conviction is well within sight.

COMMENTS

Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty
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.
Top 10 Pro & Con Arguments
Top 10 Pro & Con Arguments. 1. Legality. The United States is one of 55 countries globally with a legal death penalty, according to Amnesty International. As of Mar. 24, 2021, within the US, 27 states had a legal death penalty (though 3 of those states had a moratorium on the punishment's use).
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Capital punishment - Arguments, Pros/Cons: Capital punishment has long engendered considerable debate about both its morality and its effect on criminal behaviour. Contemporary arguments for and against capital punishment fall under three general headings: moral, utilitarian, and practical. Supporters of the death penalty believe that those who commit murder, because they have taken the life ...
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Arguments against Death Penalty. The first argument against the lethal sentence is a lack of deterrence among criminals. According to Amnesty International Australia (2019), there is no evidence that the prospect of death prevents potential perpetrators. Furthermore, some authorities state that the lethal sentence does not decline the number of ...
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In the July Opinion essay "The Death Penalty Can Ensure 'Justice Is Being Done,'" Jeffrey A. Rosen, then acting deputy attorney general, makes a legal case for capital punishment:
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2009] Classic Arguments For and Against the Death Penalty3 most without fail, prosecuting attorneys in death penalty cases consult the murder victim's friends and family as to what punishment they de-sire for the offender.6 Not surprisingly, the family's extreme grief and anger typically cause them to urge the death penalty. This all-too-
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As John Duncan was dying of cancer in 2018, he asked family members to promise they would witness the execution on his behalf. On July 17, they did. "Finally," they said in a statement ...
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Depending on one's perspective, however, the death penalty may not actually represent justice for victims. 01. of 05. "The Death Penalty Is an Effective Deterrent". This is probably the most common argument in favor of capital punishment, and there's actually some evidence that the death penalty may be a deterrent to homicide, but it's a very ...
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View PDF. Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty ARGUMENT 1 DETERRENCE The death penalty prevents future murders. 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 ...
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The arguments against deterrence. ... The argument goes that the death penalty reinforces the belief that bad things happen to those who deserve it. This reinforces the contrary belief; that good ...
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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.
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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. ... World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, June 27, 2008, http ...
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The gap between death penalty states and non-death penalty states rose considerably from 4 per cent difference in 1990 to 25 per cent in 2010. Source: FBI Uniform Crime Report, from Death Penalty ...
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The first argument is based on the claim that death penalty deters crime. Death penalty as a deterrent mean to further commission of crime is one of the main reasons why death penalty is practiced in many jurisdictions. As a mean of punishing the criminals for their offences, death penalty deters further commission of crime in two ways.
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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 ...
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A. Human rights. One of the strongest arguments against the death penalty is that it violates the right to life as stated in various international human rights conventions. Critics argue that the death penalty is a form of cruel and inhumane punishment, as it involves intentionally taking a person's life. They believe that every individual has ...
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The last argument against death penalty is that, as various studies have proven, the costs for the death sentence are very expensive compared to other, less harsh types of sentences or punishments. The states could save millions of dollars by eliminating the death penalty and replacing it by things that would benefit the society and communities ...
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Arguments against the death penalty. The death penalty goes against our most basic human right - the right to life. Being killed by lethal injection or being electrocuted is not always smooth and ...
≡Essays on Death Penalty: Top 10 Examples by GradesFixer
5 pages / 2464 words. The purpose of this essay is to assess the viability of the death penalty as an operative castigation. The death penalty is defined as the legal killing an individual as a sentence. As of 2018, there were 53 countries that still have the death penalty... Death Penalty Society.
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Death Penalty Arguments for and against. In a tapestry human conversation, a few themes weave an example effort and moral self-examination tangled more, that death stop. Through epochs and cultures, discussions, fasten the high measure of punishment, mixed up the deepest wellsprings human consciousness, drawing arguments near acharnés both his ...
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79 essay samples found. The death penalty, also known as capital punishment, remains a contentious issue in many societies. Essays on this topic could explore the moral, legal, and social arguments surrounding the practice, including discussions on retribution, deterrence, and justice. They might delve into historical trends in the application ...
Essay: Arguments against the Death Penalty
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.
Rethinking Justice: why the Death Penalty should be Abolished
This essay about the reasons to abolish the death penalty discusses the ethical, practical, and financial implications of capital punishment. It argues that the irreversible nature of the death penalty, coupled with the risk of executing innocent people, raises serious moral concerns.
'Is the death penalty racist? Of course it is.'
Buttons with anti-death penalty slogans are seen during a vigil against the death penalty in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2021
Conversations and insights about the moment.
Drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4 in the United States and the second leading cause of death by accidental injury for children 5 to 14.