Times, Dec. Penry was assessed by a clinical psychologist who testified that Penry had an IQ of fifty-four and, although he was twenty-two at the time of the trial, he was reported to have the learning age of a six-year-old and the social maturity level of a nine or ten-year old, essays against capital punishment. The FBI has found the states with the death penalty have the highest murder rates. Irrespective of the moral and ethical position of capital punishment, it is arguable that to cause so much suffering to the individual is bordering on essays against capital punishment, and is wrong. This is a subject that is very controversial and people tend to have a strong opinion of support or opposition on the topic.
INTRODUCTION TO THE “MODERN ERA” OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED STATES
Jump to navigation Skip navigation. 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 essays against capital punishment 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 essays against capital punishment 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 essays against capital punishment executions and seek the abolition of capital punishment. The death penalty system in the US is applied in an unfair and unjust manner essays against capital punishment people, largely dependent on how much money they have, essays against capital punishment, 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. Essays against capital punishment 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, essays against capital punishment. 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. Sinceover 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. Inessays against capital punishment, 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. GeorgiaU. 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, essays against capital punishment, 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, essays against capital punishment, in which essays against capital punishment jury first determines guilt or innocence and then chooses imprisonment or death in the light of aggravating or mitigating circumstances.
Inthe Supreme Court moved away from abolition, holding that "the punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution. 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 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. Inthe 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 Augustover 3, men and women are under a death sentence and more than 1, men, women and children at the time of the crime have been executed essays against capital punishment Despite the Supreme Court's ruling in Gregg v. Georgiaet 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 essays against capital punishment 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, essays against capital punishment. 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 essays against capital punishment 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, essays against capital punishment. Many murder victims do not support state-sponsored violence to avenge the death of their loved one. Sadly, these victims have often been marginalized by politicians and prosecutors, who would rather publicize the opinions of pro-death penalty family members. Changes in death sentencing have proved to be largely cosmetic. The defects in death-penalty laws, conceded by the Supreme Court in the early s, have not been appreciably altered by the shift from unrestrained discretion to "guided discretion.
A society that respects life does not deliberately kill human beings. An execution is a violent public spectacle of official homicide, and one that endorses killing to solve social problems — the worst possible example to set for the essays against capital punishment, and especially children. Governments worldwide have often attempted to justify their lethal fury by extolling the purported benefits that such killing would bring to the rest of society. The benefits of capital punishment are illusory, but the bloodshed and the resulting destruction of community decency are real. Deterrence is a function not only of a punishment's severity, but also of its certainty and frequency. The argument most often cited in support of capital punishment is that the threat of execution influences criminal behavior more effectively than imprisonment does.
As plausible as this claim may sound, in actuality the death penalty fails as a deterrent for several reasons. A punishment can be an effective deterrent only if it is consistently and promptly employed. Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet these conditions. The proportion of first-degree murderers who are sentenced to death is small, and of this group, an even smaller proportion of people are executed. Although death sentences in the mids increased to about per yearthis 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. Betweenthe average number of death sentences per year dropped toreducing the percentage even more.
Mandatory death sentencing is unconstitutional. The possibility of increasing the number of convicted murderers sentenced to death and executed by enacting mandatory death penalty laws was ruled unconstitutional in Woodson v. North CarolinaU. A considerable time between the imposition of the death sentence and the actual execution is unavoidable, essays against capital punishment, given the procedural safeguards required by the courts essays against capital punishment 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 essays against capital punishment 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 essays against capital punishment committed in the essays against capital punishment 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 essays against capital punishment 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, essays against capital punishment, 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, essays against capital punishment. 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, essays against capital punishment. 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, essays against capital punishment, 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, essays against capital punishment. Perhaps because "a return to the exercise of the death penalty weakens socially based inhibitions against the use of lethal force to settle disputes…. In adjacent states — one with the death penalty and the other without it — the state that practices the death penalty does not always show a consistently lower rate of criminal homicide. For example, between l and l, the homicide rates in Wisconsin and Iowa non-death-penalty states were half the rates of their neighbor, essays against capital punishment, Illinois — which restored the death penalty in l, and by had sentenced persons to death and carried out two executions.
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The History of the death penalty goes as far back as ancient China and Babylon. However, the first recorded death sentence took place in 16th Century BC Egypt, where executions were carried out with an ax. Since the very beginning, people were treated according to their social status; those wealthy were rarely facing brutal executions; […]. Capital punishment is a death penalty that is put into impact for significant wrongdoings. Capital punishment is an exceptionally dubious theme in the Country and all through the world. The United States has been divided by the death penalty debate, there are many supporters, however; there are also many who opposes it.
Advocates of capital punishment state it is a vital instrument for protecting lawfulness, preventing crime, and not cost as much life detainment. The defenders of capital punishment think that revenge or eye for an eye praises the person in question. Capital punishment defenders also feel that it helps comfort devastated loved ones and guarantees the culprits of offensive violations never have a chance to cause future tragedy. In most criminal cases, survivors demand justice for killers of relatives. Many people have faith that the criminal justice system is in existence, in great part, to deflect others from carrying out wrongdoings. Surveys demonstrate that crime is the main concern of most citizens of the United States and the people support capital punishment. President Bush made the war on crime a major priority years ago and placed capital punishment change the most important item in the fight against crime Hansen, Many individuals feel like capital punishment serves as a marvelous advertiser of criminals that may decide to perform disturbing crimes.
Contenders of the death penalty state there is no obstruction impact on crime, wrongly enables the government to take human life, and sustains social treacheries by excessively focusing on certain individuals and people who cannot afford the price of good lawyers. Capital punishment has no impediment impact on criminality, individuals fells this enables the government to take the life of humans. Capital punishment is a weight to citizens economically because the genuine price of operating an execution is said to be times greater than separating the criminal in the penitentiary for as many years as possible.
The practice of accomplishing a decision to hang the criminal is an extensive amount of time since it involves various petitions, thorough events which strain the whole procedure as the suspect can be on trial for many years. The procedure requires a considerable amount of money to assist numerous officers extending from lawyers, judges, clerks, and other officials in court. The general routine of chastisement is worth holding to preserve criminal law even though the practice as a whole may be administered unfairly. The use of capital punishment should be dismissed as it is disseminated unethically, keeping other requirements of criminal law unblemished Brooks, The criminal justice system ought to mirror the ethical opinions of humanity.
Thus, causing the punishment of death on its community entirely disrupts religious lessons on the holiness of life. It can be determined that there are many pros and cons connected with capital punishment however persuasively it very well may be pleased that the cons exceed the pros for example it is consistently satisfactory that life is given by God and no person should make that type of decision. Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert. Plagiarism checker Do the check.
Writing Help Ask for help. Paraphrasing Tool Paraphrase my essay. Essay examples. Essay topics. The Death Penalty is not Worth the Cost The death penalty is a government practice, used as a punishment for capital crimes such as treason, murder, and genocide to name a few. Why Capital Punishment should be Abolished Capital punishment has been used in the United States for vicious criminals since its inception. Why the Death Penalty is Unjust Capital punishment being either a justifiable law, or a horrendous, unjust act can be determined based on the perspective of different worldviews. The Use of Capital Punishment Capital Punishment is when a person is legally punished for a crime by death.
The Abolishment of Capital Punishment Dating back to the 18th century, the death penalty was a punishment used by many across the world. Does the Death Penalty Effectively Deter Crime? Should Capital Punishment be Allow in Modern Society America faces an ethically instilled dilemma on whether or not a convicted criminal of a serious crime should face the ending of his or her life as punishment. Abolishment of the Death Penalty Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to relate many different criminological theories in regard to capital punishment. Cost of the Death Penalty The death penalty costs more than life in prison. Should the Death Penalty be Legal in all Fifty States?
Why Capital Punishment is Cruel and Regressive Capital Punishment is the legally authorized killing someone for committing a heinous crime. Simpson Case Trial The O. Religious Values and Death Penalty Religious and moral values tell us that killing is wrong. The Problematics of Capital Punishment Capital punishment is a universal problematic ideology under constant debate. George Walker Bush and Death Penalty George Walker Bush, a former U. Capital Punishment Crime Deterrence Chapter 1: Introduction 1. Costs: Death Penalty Versus Prison Costs The Conservatives Concerned Organization challenges the notion that the death penalty is more cost effective compared to prison housing and feeding costs.
The Death Penalty: Right or Wrong? Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr. Supreme Court Decision Analysis In , a female by the name of Shirley Crook was found dead in her home. In , in the Thomson v. Oklahoma case, a majority of the Court decided that giving the death penalty to a fifteen-year-old defendant constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth amendment. Nevertheless, just two years later in the Stanford v. Kentucky case, a ruling percentage of the Court ruled that the death penalty was not unconstitutional when sentencing a sixteen or seventeen-year-old defendant Crosby. This seems an unethical decision. seventeen-year-olds are not yet even legally allowed to drink alcohol.
Imposing the death sentence onto a defendant of such a young age could be argued to be barbaric. Further to implementing capital punishment, the nation goes one step further and decides that it is appropriate to televise the executions. Robert Bryan Bedau speaks about his time defending individuals facing the death penalty. Bryan views the U. He claims that executions bring out the worst in people, and have done throughout history. Most people have seen movies featuring scenes of capital punishment; the on screen audience are shouting and throwing objects at the person about to be killed, and then at the moment of death the crowd erupts into excitement and cheering.
As Bryan rightly points out, these scenes are historically accurate. William Bailey investigated the validly of the argument for murder and capital punishment as being a deterrent Bailey. In order to do this he examined the monthly homicidal rates alongside the amount of television exposure of executions from through to Bailey found no evidence that the amount of television exposure of executions had a significant effect of deterrent on the homicides during the period studied. He claims that as television has become the most depended on news medium then any deterrent to murder would be displaying the punishment via this means.
He concludes that the current numbers of executions or broadcasts of such neither dissuade nor encourage murder Bailey. Capital punishment provokes debate in the U. and all over the world. However, a government who would allow and promote the implementation of the death penalty cannot really be upholding either principle. The ethical arguments against capital punishment are vast, ranging from philosophies on the value of life to basic human rights. Furthermore, the degree of disagreement within the Courts is a concern. The case of John Penry illustrates the point that a courtroom is made up of many people who will not always unanimously agree.
If a decision cannot be made unanimously over an issue as fundamental as this one, then there should be no opportunity for someone to be sentenced to death despite it. It is an embarrassment that America, one of the leading and most respected nations in the world, can still be using this out-dated tradition. Bailey, W. American Sociological Association. American Sociological Review, Vol. May Bedau, H. OUP USA. Chan, P. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Northwestern University. Crosby, Catherine, Preston Britner, Kathleen Jodi and Sharon Porwtood.
Law and Human Behavior, Vol. We accept sample papers from students via the submission form. If this essay belongs to you and you no longer want us to display it, you can put a claim on it and we will remove it. Just fill out the removal request form with all necessary details, such as page location and some verification of you being a true owner. Please note that we cannot guarantee that unsubstantiated claims will be satisfied. Note: this sample is kindly provided by a student like you, use it only as a guidance. ID Subscribe to WowEssays Premium and get access to over 1 MILLION high-quality downloadable samples. GET ACCESS NOW. Password recovery email has been sent to email email. HIRE WRITER PREMIUM DATABASE Sign in.
HIRE WRITER PREMIUM DATABASE. Type of Paper. Essay Topics. Educational Tools. Who We Are Contact Us Our Writers Honor Code WowEssays Reviews Blog Our Services. ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS. Premium samples database Get access to over 1 MILLION samples with WowEssays Premium! LEARN MORE. A particularly contested area of capital punishment regards the sentencing of individuals with learning disabilities. Works Cited Bailey, W. shtml Bedau, H. Amnesty International. The Free Dictionary. United States. Social Issues. Mentally Retarded.
Eighth Amendment. Cite this page Choose cite format: APA MLA Harvard Vancouver Chicago ASA IEEE AMA. Accessed 07 January 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. 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. Approximately two minutes later, we were told by a prison official that the execution was complete. District Court , S. The latest mode of inflicting the death penalty, enacted into law by more than 30 states, is lethal injection , first used in 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. 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. Heckler , F. 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:. Nor does execution by lethal injection always proceed smoothly as planned. In "the authorities repeatedly jabbed needles into … Stephen Morin, when they had trouble finding a usable vein because he had been a drug abuser. Although the U. 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. Nor was he the only Ohio inmate so maltreated. The state had amended its injection protocol to use a single drug, propofol, which advocates say causes severe pain upon injection. 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. Food and Drug Administration FDA —are now the subject of federal litigation that could impact the legitimacy of the American death penalty system.
Most people who have observed an execution are horrified and disgusted. 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:. 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. I don't want to do this anymore. 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 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.
Public executions were common in this country during the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the last ones occurred in in Kentucky, when 20, people gathered to watch the hanging of a young African American male. Teeters, in Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society 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 , asserted: "The death penalty cannot be useful, because of the example of barbarity it gives men.
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. 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. 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. 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. Neither Death Row Syndrome nor Death Row Phenomenon has received formal recognition from the American Psychiatric Association or the American Psychological Association. Death Row Syndrome gained international recognition during the extradition proceedings of Jens Soering, a German citizen arrested in England and charged with committing murder on American soil.
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.
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. 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. 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. It is almost impossible to describe the pain of losing a parent to a senseless murder. I remember lying in bed and praying, 'Please, God. Please don't take his life too. 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. 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. 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 Members of Mr. 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. 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.
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 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. State Defenders Assn. 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.
The group includes over 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. It was not my intent nor do I believe that of the voters who overwhelmingly enacted the death penalty law in We did not consider that horrific possibility.
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. Politicians could address this crisis, but, for the most part they either endorse executions or remain silent. 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 , 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. The savings in time and money will prove to be illusory. 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. Only a minority of the American public would favor the death penalty if offered such alternatives. An international perspective on the death penalty helps us understand the peculiarity of its use in the United States.
As long ago as , 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…. 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 ; France abolished it in Canada abolished it in 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. Underscoring worldwide support for abolition was the action of the South African constitutional court in , barring the death penalty as an "inhumane" punishment.
Between and , two dozen other countries abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Since , 43 more abolished it. Today, over 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 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 and ratified by eighteen nations by mid, the Sixth Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights ECHR provides for the abolition of capital punishment during peacetime. In , 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 , 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. 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. 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.
In , the United States signed the United Nations UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment CAT. While it does not explicitly prohibit capital punishment, the treaty does forbid the intentional infliction of pain. Additionally, accidents aside, our methods of execution—lethal injection, electrocution, firing squad, gas chamber, and hanging—may be inherently painful. Also in , 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. 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.
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