Death Penalty Essay, Research Paper

The use of capital punishment has been a permanent fixture in society since the

earliest civilizations. It has been used for various crimes ranging from the

desertion of soldiers during wartime to the more heinous crimes of serial

killers. However, the mere fact that this brutal form of punishment and revenge

has been the policy of many nations in the past does not subsequently warrant

its implementation in today’s society. The death penalty is morally and socially

unethical, should be construed as cruel and unusual punishment since it is both

discriminatory and arbitrary, has no proof of acting as a deterrent, and risks

the atrocious and unacceptable injustice of executing innocent people. As long

as capital punishment exists in our society it will continue to spark the

injustice which it has failed to curb. Capital punishment is immoral and

unethical. It does not matter who does the killing because, when a life is taken

by another, it is always wrong. By killing a human, the state lessens the value

of life and actually contributes to the growing sentiment in today’s society

that certain individuals are worth more than others. When the value of life is

lessened under certain circumstances such as the life of a murderer, what is

stopping others from creating their own circumstances for the value of one’s

life such as race, class, religion, and economics? Immanuel Kant, a great

philosopher of ethics, came up with the Categorical Imperative, which is a

universal command or rule that states that society and individuals "must

act in such a way that you can will that your actions become a universal law for

all to follow" (Palmer 265). There must be some set of moral and ethical

standards that even the government can not go against, otherwise how can the

state expect its citizens not to follow its own example? Those who support the

death penalty believe, or claim to believe, that capital punishment is morally

and ethically acceptable. The bulk of their evidence comes from the Old

Testament, which actually recommends the use of capital punishment for a number

of crimes. Others also quote the Sixth Commandment which, in the original

Hebrew, reads "Thou Shall Not Commit Murder." However, these literal

interpretations of selected passages from the Bible which are often quoted out

of context, corrupt the compassionate attitude of Judaism and Christianity,

second of which clearly focuses on redemption and forgiveness and urges humane

and effective ways of dealing with crime and violence. Those who use the Bible

to support the death penalty are by themselves, since almost all religious

groups in the United States regard executions as immoral. Those that argue that

the death penalty is ethical state that former great leaders and thinkers such

as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Kant, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesquieu,

and Mill all supported it (Koch 324). However, Washington and Jefferson, two

former presidents and admired men, both supported slavery as well. Surely, the

advice of someone who clearly demonstrated a total disregard for the value of

human life cannot be considered in such an argument as capital punishment. In

regard to the philosophers, Immanuel Kant, a great ethical philosopher, stated

that the motives behind actions determine whether something is moral or immoral

(Palmer 271). The motives behind the death penalty, which revolves around

revenge and the "frustration and rage of people who see that the government

is not coping with violent crime," are not of good will, thereby making

capital punishment immoral according to ethical philosophy (Bruck 329). The

question of whether executions are a "cruel" form of punishment may no

longer be an argument against capital punishment now that it can be done with

lethal injections, but it is still very "unusual" in that it applies

only to a select number of individuals, making the death penalty completely

discriminatory and arbitrary. After years of watching the ineffectiveness of

determining who should be put to death, the Supreme Court in the1972 Furman v.

Georgia decision "invalidated all existing death sentence statues as

violative of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and thus

depopulated state death rows of 629 occupants" (Berger 352). This decision

was reached not because it was believed that the death penalty was intrinsically

cruel and unusual but because, as Justice Stewart put it, the "death

penalty as actually applied was unconstitutionally arbitrary" (Berger 353).

Local politics, money, race, and where the crime is committed can often play a

more decisive role in sentencing someone to death than the actual facts of the

crime. According to Amnesty International, the "death penalty is a lethal

lottery: just one out of every one hundred people arrested for murder is

actually executed" (Death Penalty Focus). In regards to racial

discrimination in sentencing, it has been found that "racial bias focuses

primarily on the race of the victim, not the defendant" (Berger 355). Only

31 out of the more than 15, 000 recorded executions in this country have been of

white defendants convicted of killing black victims, while black defendants

convicted of raping white women were commonly sentenced to death (Death Penalty

Focus). Stephen Nathanson, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University

addresses the problems of discrimination and randomness best by saying, "as

long as racial, class, religious, and economic bias continue to be important

determinants of who is executed, the death penalty will continue to create and

perpetuate injustice" (Nathanson 346). Proponents of capital punishment

believe that the argument that the death penalty is discriminatory and arbitrary

does not give support to the abolition of capital punishment, but rather to the

extension of it. Edward Koch, the mayor of New York from 1978 to 1989 and death

penalty supporter, states that the discriminatory manner of the death penalty

"no longer seems to be the problem it once was," yet in 1987, the

Supreme Court case of McCleskey v. Kemp established that in Georgia someone who

kills a white person is four times more likely to be sentenced to death than

someone who kills a black person (Death Penalty Focus). In response to this,

supporters of the death penalty believe that the death penalty should be

extended to all murders. This is what was attempted after the Furman decision. A

number of states sought to resolve the discriminatory and arbitrary nature of

the death penalty by simply sentencing to death everyone convicted of

first-degree murder, but the Supreme Court rejected this proposal saying that

"mandatory death sentence laws did not really resolve the problem but

instead ’simply papered [it] over’ since juries responded by refusing to convict

certain arbitrarily chosen defendants of first-degree murder" (Berger 353).

An argument against the death penalty which to sensible and decent persons

should seem undeniable is the fact that innocent people have been murdered by

the state in the past and in all probability more will follow. The wrongful

execution of an innocent person is such an awful injustice that in any civilized

society could never be justified, yet this is the message that the United States

is willing to pronounce. Simply put by Professor Nathanson, "to maintain

the death penalty is to be willing to risk innocent lives." In 1987, a

study conducted by Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet appeared in the Standford Law

Review concerning the execution of innocent people. The study concluded that in

the period between 1900 to 1980, about "350 people were wrongfully

convicted of capital offenses, 139 of the 350 were sentenced to death, and 23

were actually executed" (Nathanson 344). Over this eighty year period, this

figure averages out to the death of an innocent person about every 3.4 years.

This fact is extremely disturbing and rightfully so, yet death penalty advocates

blatantly disregard the information or attempt to justify it in some way. Those

who support capital punishment claim that such cases of innocent people being

executed have never occurred. For instance, Edward Koch quotes Hugo Bedau in

support of his claim that such cases are not true, saying "it is false

sentimentality to argue that the death penalty should be abolished because of

the abstract possibility that an innocent person might be executed." Koch,

in an attempt to gain political support, acted quite unethically by quoting

Bedau out of context and implying that such cases have not occurred. According

to David Bruck, a prominent lawyer for South Carolina Office of Appellate

Defense, "All Bedau was saying was that doubts concerning executed

prisoners’ guilt are almost never resolved." Koch also failed to relate in

his essay that Bedau, who had not yet released the 1987 study, had already

comprised a "list of murder convictions since 1900 in which the state

eventually admitted error" in about 400 hundred cases. Another response to

the fact that innocent people have been executed is that the small number of

innocents executed outweighs the number of lives that will be saved, since the

possibility of being executed will deter others from committing a murder, and

that lives will be saved since that murderer cannot kill again.

However,scientific studies have failed to prove that executions deter other

people from committing crime. According to Dr. Ernest van den Haag, a well-known

scholar in favor of the death penalty, "one cannot claim that it has been

proved statistically that the death penalty does deter more than alternative

penalties" (Haag 338). Haag supports his stand on the death penalty by

stating that "when they have the choice between life and death, 99 percent

of all prisoners under sentence of death prefer life in prison." This

statistic proves nothing but the fact that man has an innate desire for

survival. Those asked the question have already committed the crime and thus do

not reflect the sentiment of those considering a crime. Also, people often kill

when under great "emotional stress or under the influence of drugs or

alcohol – times when they are not thinking of the consequences" (Death

Penalty Focus). Career criminals and those that plan a crime do not expect to

get caught, thus making the consequences an invalid issue. In response to the

fact that an executed murderer will never kill again, society must ask itself

whether it is morally and ethically acceptable to risk killing an innocent

person when an alternative such as life imprisonment without possibility of

parole exists. In California since 1978, more than 1,000 people have received

this alternate sentence which includes no appeals process. The public can be

assured that those who commit heinous murders and receive this sentence will

never be free again. According to Death Penalty Focus, "A recent Field Poll

showed support for the death penalty plummeted when alternative sentencing is

available. Just 29 percent favored death over life without parole plus requiring

the defendant to work in prison and give part of his earnings as restitution to

the families of his victims." The use of capital punishment has endured

throughout the ages, yet its use today in a "civilized" society should

no longer be acceptable to morally and ethically conscious individuals. The vast

majority of countries in Western Europe and North and South America, more than

80 nations worldwide have abandoned capital punishment. Yet, the United States

remains an avid supporter in company with countries such as Iran, Iraq, and

China as one of the major users of capital punishment (Death Penalty Focus). The

use of the death penalty in its discriminatory and arbitrary methods "only

magnifies inequalities of race that persist in the criminal justice system and

in American society generally" (Berger 355). Even with the death of a

guilty man, innocence is lost, even Edward Koch admits, "The death of

anyone even a convicted killer diminishes us all." But it is a sad

commentary on the state of this country when we are willing to accept the

avoidable death of an innocent person and allow the "death penalty to

continue to create and perpetuate injustice."

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Berger, Vivian, (1988.) Rolling the dice to decide who dies. New York State

Bar Journal, October Bruck, David, (1985.) The Death Penalty, The New Republic,

May 20, ———- Death Penalty Focus (DPF), Koch, Edward, Myths and Facts

about California’s Death Penalty, pamphlet — Death and Justice, How Capital

Punishment Affirms Life Nathanson, Stephen, (1985.) The New Republic, April 15

— What If the Death Penalty Did Save Lives?" Palmer, Donald, (1987.) An

Eye for an Eye? The Morality of Punishing by Death, —Does the Center Hold? Van

den Haag, Ernest, (1996) An Introduction to Western Philosophy, Mayfield

Publishing Company, London. — The Death Penalty Pro and Con: A Debate, (1983.)

Bibliography Berger, Vivian, (1988.) Rolling the Dice to Decide Who Dies, New

York State Bar Journal October Bruck, David, (1985.) "The Death Penalty,

The New Republic, May 20, — Death Penalty Focus (DPF), Koch, Edward Myths and

Facts about California’s Death Penalty, pamphlet — Death and Justice How

Capital Punishment Affirms Life Nathanson, Stephen, (1985.) The New Republic,

April 15, What If the Death Penalty Did Save Lives? Palmer, Donald, (1987) An

Eye for an Eye? The Morality of Punishing by Death, Does the Center Hold? Van

den Haag,Ernest, (1996) An Introduction to Western Philosophy, Mayfield

Publishing Company, London — The Death Penalty Pro and Con: A Debate, 1983.