PUTTING DEATH ON DEATH ROW

The Death Penalty is a capital punishment which has been codified in human laws

ever since the days of King Hammurabi of Babylon (United). Even though it has been a part of

human society dating back to the founding of some of the earliest civilizations, the role the

death penalty will play in our modern culture is a topic of heated debate. In the United States,

the death penalty is most often utilized in cases of murder and rape; however there are rare

instances in which it is used for cases of violent felonies. The Constitutionality of the Death

Penalty is an area of constant tumult, because in the 1972 Furman vs. Georgia case the

Supreme Court found that the punishment was “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” and thus

violated the eighth amendment (United). Yet later in 1976 this decision was partially reversed

thanks to numerous state law suits petitioning for the death penalty (United).

Despite the fact that the death penalty is a constitutional punishment, this does not

correlate to it being a justifiable punishment. In fact the death penalty can quite possibly

erroneously take the life of an innocent person, and thus destroy the life of a person who was

not at fault for any wrongdoing. It is also an expensive punishment to deal out, costing millions

of dollars every year, and for all of that money it’s been proven to have no effect on prevention

of further brutalities. It also does not make logical sense to punish murderers with murder,

because the point of punishment is to indicate that what a perpetrator did (murder) was wrong

– not legitimize their actions by endowing them with the might of the justice system. Moreover

it is an unnecessary punishment which ought to be done away with for the sake of practicality

and humanity.

Certain things in life are best left to nature, including Death. Due to the presence of the

death penalty in the American Legal System, over 48 individuals since just 1975 have been

mistakenly sentenced to death within the past two decades (United). Even Chairman Don

Edwards of the House Judiciary Committee stated that “No matter how careful courts are, the

possibility of perjured testimony, mistaken honest testimony, and human error remain all too

real. We have no way of judging how many innocent persons have been executed, but we can

be certain that there were some” (United). The fact that the Chairman of the House Judiciary

Committee has serious doubts about the Legal System’s ability to guarantee the guilt of

convicts on death row conveys the message that the Death Penalty is a flawed punishment. The

irreversible and absolute nature of the Death Penalty requires that conclusive evidence be

provided to prove a person’s guilt. However, as such evidence cannot always be provided

people may be sentenced to an unjustified death. Such accidental deaths not only cause

irrevocable pain and suffering for the accused, but also for the family and friends of those put

to death. As in the case of Walter McMillion, who claimed he “was wrenched from [his]

family, from [his] children, from [his] grandchildren, from [his] friends, from [his] work that

[he] loved, and was placed in an isolation cell, the size of a shoe box, with no sunlight, no

companionship, and no work for nearly six years. Every minute of every day, [he] knew [he]

was innocent . . . ." (United). Instances of inhumanity like this one must be prevented at all

costs, and the only way to do this is by putting the Death Penalty itself on death row.

[The Death Penalty is an excessively expensive punishment, and although many people

argue that the death penalty is more fiscally conservative thanks to the fact that those who

suffer it are not housed in a government operated prison for the remainder of their lives, this is

indeed a fallacy. Not only does the death penalty cause strife and hardship for those directly

involved in its proceedings, but it also costs taxpayers far too much money to be a permissible

punishment. In fact just death penalty cases alone cost California taxpayers $137 million a

year, whereas if those same trials concerned lifetime incarceration they would have cost only

$11.5 million (The Death). The main reason for these high court costs is the seemingly endless

process required by the Constitution for the analysis and prosecution of capital cases, this

leads to long trials lasting anywhere from months to years. This coupled with the inability of

most death row inmates to provide their own attorneys means that public attorneys must be

paid for by the taxpayer (The Death). Research shows that California, which is currently

experiencing massive budget shortfalls, could save $1 billion over the next five years if it was

to replace the death penalty with life without parole (California). Such modifications, if

enacted across the nation, would not only free up massive amounts of public funding to be

used for things like infrastructure improvements or education, but would also lead to more

funding for crime prevention which would ideally lower the crime rate and make costly criminal

trials less and less frequent.]

[Albeit it is commonly thought that the presence and threat of the death penalty is

sufficient to deter people from committing capital crimes or engaging in violent misdemeanor,

the opposite has been found to be true. A New York Times Study discovered that in the past

twenty years the homicide rate in those states which impose the death penalty has risen by

48% to 101% more than in states which do not exercise capital punishment (Bonner). It is

thought that this is occurring because those people committing less severe crimes do not

resort to severe violence when approached by law enforcement because they do not see the

law itself as something which can take their lives. In fact, the ten states with the lowest

homicide rates have only put to death 1% of all executed convicts nationwide (The Myth).

These statistics back up the claim that the death penalty serves no practical purpose in society,

for the reason that it is mistakenly thought to be a means by which dangerous criminals are

removed from the community for good. However their permanent removal in all reality is

proven to correlate strongly with an increase in the number of homicides committed. Thus

society takes one step forward by taking the violent convicts off the street, but two steps

backward by putting these convicts to death.]

The death penalty cannot be expected to teach a lesson to possible felons, while simultaneously

serving as a twisted justification of their actions. Because if these convicts see that the

government can take lives, then murder suddenly becomes a legitimate act, simply for the

reason that it is employed by the government and sanctioned by the Supreme Court as

Constitutional. As the Italian Philosopher, Cesare Beccaria states “Executions devalue human

life and demonstrate that it is correct and appropriate to kill those who have gravely offended

us. Thus, the lesson taught by capital punishment may be the legitimacy of lethal vengeance,

not of deterrence” (Cesare). Proving that if society wishes to for all of its members to abstain

from murder and capital acts its government must be the first to set an example, otherwise any

semblance of legitimacy is lost. One could also argue as Dr. James S. Liebman does, that “unlike

eighteenth-century England's mandatory death penalty, which was carried out in properly

deterrent - meaning brutal and terrorizing - fashion, in the town square on market day,

preceded by fiery sermonizing on the object lesson intended thereby, the late twentieth-

century American death penalty seems designed to minimize deterrence” (Liebman). Even

though such grotesque proceedings would never be permitted in society, the point remains

that punishment must deter crime, and if the Death Penalty is not doing that then it is not

fulfilling its purpose. And for the massive price we pay to preserve the death penalty (both in

terms of lives and money), the deterrent results it delivers are too paltry a compensation to

be warrant the cost.

The death penalty may have been declared a legal punishment by the Supreme Court,

but that does not render it a just punishment. It brings with it the possibility of destruction of

innocent lives, costs which are passed on to the taxpayer, and a lack of any consolation that

future crimes of rape or murder will not be committed. The death penalty is not a solution for

violent crimes; it is in all reality a major component of the problem. It is foolish of society to

yearn for a day when murders won’t be committed as long as the government continues to kill

dozens of possibly innocent people every year. In order for violence to be curtailed and justice

to be augmented the death penalty must be done away with.