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Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?

In its last six months, the United States government has put 13 prisoners to death. Do you think capital punishment should end?

By Nicole Daniels

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.

In July, the United States carried out its first federal execution in 17 years. Since then, the Trump administration has executed 13 inmates, more than three times as many as the federal government had in the previous six decades.

The death penalty has been abolished in 22 states and 106 countries, yet it is still legal at the federal level in the United States. Does your state or country allow the death penalty?

Do you believe governments should be allowed to execute people who have been convicted of crimes? Is it ever justified, such as for the most heinous crimes? Or are you universally opposed to capital punishment?

In “ ‘Expedited Spree of Executions’ Faced Little Supreme Court Scrutiny ,” Adam Liptak writes about the recent federal executions:

In 2015, a few months before he died, Justice Antonin Scalia said he w o uld not be surprised if the Supreme Court did away with the death penalty. These days, after President Trump’s appointment of three justices, liberal members of the court have lost all hope of abolishing capital punishment. In the face of an extraordinary run of federal executions over the past six months, they have been left to wonder whether the court is prepared to play any role in capital cases beyond hastening executions. Until July, there had been no federal executions in 17 years . Since then, the Trump administration has executed 13 inmates, more than three times as many as the federal government had put to death in the previous six decades.

The article goes on to explain that Justice Stephen G. Breyer issued a dissent on Friday as the Supreme Court cleared the way for the last execution of the Trump era, complaining that it had not sufficiently resolved legal questions that inmates had asked. The article continues:

If Justice Breyer sounded rueful, it was because he had just a few years ago held out hope that the court would reconsider the constitutionality of capital punishment. He had set out his arguments in a major dissent in 2015 , one that must have been on Justice Scalia’s mind when he made his comments a few months later. Justice Breyer wrote in that 46-page dissent that he considered it “highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment,” which bars cruel and unusual punishments. He said that death row exonerations were frequent, that death sentences were imposed arbitrarily and that the capital justice system was marred by racial discrimination. Justice Breyer added that there was little reason to think that the death penalty deterred crime and that long delays between sentences and executions might themselves violate the Eighth Amendment. Most of the country did not use the death penalty, he said, and the United States was an international outlier in embracing it. Justice Ginsburg, who died in September, had joined the dissent. The two other liberals — Justices Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — were undoubtedly sympathetic. And Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who held the decisive vote in many closely divided cases until his retirement in 2018, had written the majority opinions in several 5-to-4 decisions that imposed limits on the death penalty, including ones barring the execution of juvenile offenders and people convicted of crimes other than murder .

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Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty

Click the buttons below to view arguments and testimony on each topic.

The death penalty deters future murders.

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 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 .

Hugo Adam Bedau (deceased) Austin Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University Excerpts from “The Case Against The Death Penalty” (Copyright 1997, American Civil Liberties Union)

“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.

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….

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.

Should the Death Penalty Be Legal?

• History of the Death Penalty

Practiced for much, if not all, of human history, the death penalty (also called capital punishment) is the “execution of an offender sentenced to death after conviction by a court of law of a criminal offense,” according to Roger Hood, professor at the Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Oxford.

Amnesty International lists the United States as just one of 55 countries globally with a legal death penalty for ordinary crimes as of May 2023. Another nine countries reserve the death penalty for “exceptional crimes such as crimes under military law or crimes committed in exceptional circumstances,” according to Amnesty International. Meanwhile, 112 countries have abolished the death penalty legally and 23 have abolished the punishment in practice. Read more history…

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1 The death penalty provides the justice and closure families and victims deserve. Many relatives of murder victims believe the death penalty is just and necessary for their lives to move forward. Jason Johnson, whose father was sentenced to death for killing his mother, states: “[I will go to see him executed] not to see him die [but] just to see my family actually have some closure… He’s an evil human being. He can talk Christianity and all that. That is all my father is. That’s all he’s ever been, is a con man… If he found redemption, that doesn’t matter, that’s between him and God. His forgiveness is to come from the Lord and his redemption is to come from the Lord, not the government. The Bible also says, ‘An eye for an eye.’” [ 17 ] Phyllis Loya, mother of police officer Larry Lasater who was killed in the line of duty, states, “I will live to see the execution of my son’s murderer. People [need] closure, and I think it means different things to different people. What it would mean for me is that my fight for justice for my son would be complete when his sentence, which was [handed down] by a Contra Costa County jury and by a Contra Costa County judge, would be carried out as it should be.” [ 18 ] While some argue that there is no “closure” to be had in such tragedies and via the death penalty, victim families think differently. Often the families of victims have to endure for years detailed accounts in the press and social media of their loved one’s gory murder while the murderer sits out a life sentence or endlessly appeals their conviction. A just execution puts an end to that cycle. As Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor explains, “The family of each murder victim suffers unspeakable pain when their loved one is murdered. Those wounds are torn open many times during the following decades, as the investigations, trials, appeals, and pardon and parole board hearings occur. Each stage brings torment and yet a desire for justice for the heinous treatment of their family member. The family feels that the suffering and loss of life of the victim and their own pain are forgotten when the murderer is portrayed in the media as a sympathetic character. The family knows that the execution of the murderer cannot bring their loved one back. They suspect it will not bring them ‘closure’ or ‘finality’ or ‘peace,’ but there is justice and perhaps an end to the ongoing wounding by ‘the murderer and then the system.’” [ 19 ] Read More

Pro 2 The death penalty prevents additional crime. If not a deterrent to would-be murderers, at the very least, when carried out, the death penalty prevents convicted murderers from repeating their crimes. “Perhaps the most straightforward argument for the death penalty is that it saves innocent lives by preventing convicted murderers from killing again. If the abolitionists had not succeeded in obtaining a temporary moratorium on death penalties from 1972 to 1976, [Kenneth Allen] McDuff would have been executed, and Colleen Reed and at least eight other young women would be alive today,” explains Paul Cassell, former U.S. District Judge. [ 15 ] Kenneth Allen McDuff was convicted and sentenced to death in 1966 for the murders of three teenagers and the rape of one. However, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty nationwide in 1972 ( Furman v. Georgia ), leading to a reduced sentence and McDuff being released on parole in 1989. An estimated three days later, he began a crime spree: torturing, raping, and murdering at least six women in Texas before being arrested again on May 4, 1992, and sentenced to death a second time. Had McDuff been executed as justice demanded for the first three murders, at least six murders would have been prevented. [ 15 ] [ 16 ] Considering recidivism rates, how many more murders and associated crimes of kidnaping, rape, and torture, among others could have been deterred had the death penalty been imposed on any number of murderers? Read More

Pro 3 The death penalty is the only moral and just punishment for the worst crimes. Talion law ( lex talionis in Latin), or retributive law, is perhaps best known as the Biblical imperative: “Anyone who inflicts a permanent injury on his or her neighbor shall receive the same in return: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The same injury that one gives another shall be inflicted in return.” [ 8 ] [ 9 ] The word “retribution” comes from the Latin re + tribuo , or “I pay back.” In order for those who commit the worst crimes to pay their debts to society, the death penalty must be employed as punishment, or the debt has not been paid. [ 10 ] “ Retribution is an expression of society’s right to make a moral judgment by imposing a punishment on a wrongdoer befitting the crime he has committed,” says Charles Stimson of the Heritage Foundation. Therefore, “the death penalty should be available for the worst of the worst,” regardless of the race or gender of the victim or perpetrator. [ 11 ] Thus, “retributionists who support the death penalty typically do not wish to expand the list of offenses for which it may be imposed. Their support for the death penalty is only for crimes defined as particularly heinous, because only such criminals deserve to be put to death. Under lex talionis it is impermissible to execute those whose crimes do not warrant the ultimate sanction,” explains Jon’a F. Meyer, professor at Rutgers University. “The uniform application of retributive punishment is central to the philosophy.” [ 12 ] As Robert Blecker, professor emeritus at New York Law School, further clarifies, “retribution is not simply revenge . Revenge may be limitless and misdirected at the undeserving, as with collective punishment. Retribution, on the other hand, can help restore a moral balance. It demands that punishment must be limited and proportional. Retributivists like myself just as strongly oppose excessive punishment as we urge adequate punishment: as much, but no more than what’s deserved. Thus I endorse capital punishment only for the worst of the worst criminals.” [ 13 ] “Sometimes, justice is dismissing a charge, granting a plea bargain, expunging a past conviction, seeking a prison sentence, or — in a very few cases, for the worst of the worst murderers — sometimes, justice is death…A drug cartel member who murders a rival cartel member faces life in prison without parole. What if he murders two, three, or 12 people? Or the victim is a child or multiple children? What if the murder was preceded by torture or rape? How about a serial killer? Or a terrorist who kills dozens, hundreds or thousands?” asks George Brauchler, District Attorney of the 18th Judicial District in Colorado. The nature of the crime, and the depth of its depravity, should matter. [ 14 ] Read More

Con 1 Not only is the death penalty not a deterrent to crime, it is very expensive. Advocates for capital punishment long argued that it deters crime, other criminal acts, but according to the ACLU, “There is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than states without such laws. And states that have abolished capital punishment show no significant changes in either crime or murder rates.” [24] “People commit murders largely in the heat of passion, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or because they are mentally ill, giving little or no thought to the possible consequences of their acts,” the ACLU continues. “The few murderers who plan their crimes beforehand… intend and expect to avoid punishment altogether by not getting caught. Some self-destructive individuals may even hope they will be caught and executed.” [ 24 ] Further, the death penalty is significantly more expensive than life-without-parole, the oft-shunned alternative penalty. The death penalty system costs California $137 million per year while a system with lifelong imprisonment as the maximum penalty would cost $11.5 million, an almost 92% decrease in expense. The statistics are lower but comparable across other states including Kansas, Tennessee, and Maryland. [ 25 ] And this money has to come from somewhere, most often at the expense of taxpayers. In Texas, executions are funded “by raising property tax rates and by reducing public safety expenditure. Property crime rises as a consequence of the latter,” explains Jeffrey Miron of the Cato Institute. [ 26 ] Read More

Con 2 The death penalty is steeped in poor legal assistance and racial bias. The Equal Justice Initiative explains that the “death penalty system treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent,” resulting in the punishment being ”mostly imposed on poor people who cannot afford to hire an effective lawyer” while “people of color are more likely to be prosecuted for capital murder, sentenced to death, and executed, especially if the victim in the case is white.” [ 20 ] The American Bar Association sets minimum qualifications for capital case lawyers, yet most death penalty states do not require lawyers to meet even those requirements, leaving defendants without the means to hire a private lawyer to face the court with inadequate counsel. [ 20 ] Further, erroneous eyewitness identifications, false and coerced confessions, false or misleading forensic evidence, misconduct by police, prosecutors, or other officials, and incentivized witnesses taint death row cases. [ 21 ] For every eight people on death row, one of them has later been found innocent. [ 20 ] The death penalty is inconsistently applied and most often applied to Black men who have killed a white person. While Black people made up only 13% of the American population in 2018, 41% of people on death row and 34% of those executed were Black. [ 20 ] This inequality should not be surprising considering the roots of the death penalty. Bryan Stevenson, capital defense attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, refers to the death penalty as the “stepchild of lynching .” [ 22 ] As journalist Josh Marcus explains, “Following the end of the Reconstruction period, which saw federal troops occupy the former Confederate states and enforce new legal and constitutional protections for Black people, lynching surged in the late 1800s, until it became all but a daily occurrence across America. Lynchings sometimes involved government officials like local law enforcement, and government officials began arguing for capital punishment as an alternative. It would still satiate the public’s appetite for violence against Black people, but under the auspices of the law, which at the time allowed for explicit racial segregation in all areas of life.” [ 22 ] A survey of executions found that 80% of executions occur in former Confederate states and mirror historic lynching sites. [ 22 ] [ 23 ] “We should be beyond the point of killing people for killing people. It’s so archaic,” concludes Rachel Sutphin, whose father Eric, a Deputy Sheriff in Virginia, was killed by an escaped prisoner who was, in turn, executed by lethal injection. [ 23 ] Read More

Con 3 The death penalty is immoral and amounts to torture. Many religions , from Catholicism to Judaism, not only oppose the death penalty but also call for its worldwide abolition. “Murder is calculated, unjustified and intentional taking of life. When we, under the supposed color of law, deliberate, decide, and plan the purposeful extinguishing of human life, we commit murder. The death penalty is murder,” explains Rabbi and former Assistant Ohio Public Defender Benjamin Zober. “We are commanded, ‘justice, justice, shall you pursue.’ (Deut. 16:20) We cannot do this by taking lives, acting in anger, or vengeance, or by creating more bloodshed, trauma, and pain…. There is a world in every person, every life…. ‘Anyone who destroys a life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world.’ (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5).” [ 27 ] Robert Schentrup, brother of 16-year-old Carmen who died in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 says, “This is the part where pundits on TV will invoke the name of my sister to support the murder of another human being. This is the part where people try to convince me that vengeance should make me feel better and that it will bring me ‘closure’ so that ‘I can continue to heal. But I do not … care, because my sister is dead, and killing someone else will not bring her back.” [ 28 ] Further, while the death penalty ultimately takes a life, the condemned person is subjected to what is otherwise considered physical and psychological torture before death. As law professor John Bessler explains “The death penalty, in fact, always and inevitably inflicts severe pain and suffering rising to the level of torture. That’s because capital charges and death sentences systematically threaten individuals with death (and, when death warrants against individuals are carried out, kill), with torture—prohibited by various domestic laws in addition to the bar in international law—considered to be the aggravated form of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” [ 29 ] Certain methods of execution are especially tortuous: consider the 2024 nitrogen hypoxia execution of Kenneth Smith, which inflicted an intense struggle for air before he died 22 minutes after the execution began. In the United States, cruel punishment is explicitly banned by the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment . [ 29 ] [ 30 ] Read More

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Capital Punishment: Pros and Cons of the Death Penalty

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The death penalty, also known as capital punishment, is the lawful imposition of death as punishment for a crime. In 2004 four (China, Iran, Vietnam, and the US) accounted for 97% of all global executions. On average, every 9-10 days a government in the United States executes a prisoner.

It is the Eighth Amendment , the constitutional clause that prohibits "cruel and unusual" punishment, which is at the center of the debate about capital punishment in America. Although most Americans support capital punishment under some circumstances, according to Gallup support for capital punishment has dropped dramatically from a high of 80% in 1994 to about 60% today.

Facts and Figures

Red state executions per million population are an order of magnitude greater than blue state executions (46.4 v 4.5). Blacks are executed at a rate significantly disproportionate to their share of the overall population.

Based on 2000 data , Texas ranked 13th in the country in violent crime and 17th in murders per 100,000 citizens. However, Texas leads the nation in death penalty convictions and executions.

Since the 1976 Supreme Court decision that reinstated the death penalty in the United States, the governments of the United States had executed 1,136, as of December 2008. The 1,000th execution, North Carolina's Kenneth Boyd, occurred in December 2005. There were 42 executions in 2007 .

More than 3,300 prisoners were serving death-row sentences in the US in December 2008. Nationwide, juries are delivering fewer death sentences: since the late 1990s, they have dropped 50%. The violent crime rate has also dropped dramatically since the mid-90s, reaching the lowest level ever recorded in 2005.

Latest Developments

In 2007, the Death Penalty Information Center released a report, “ A Crisis of Confidence: Americans’ Doubts About the Death Penalty .”

The Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty should reflect the "conscience of the community," and that its application should be measured against society's "evolving standards of decency. This latest report suggests that 60% of Americans do not believe that the death penalty is a deterrent to murder. Moreover, almost 40% believe that their moral beliefs would disqualify them from serving on a capital case.

And when asked whether they prefer the death penalty or life in prison without parole as punishment for murder, the respondents were split: 47% death penalty, 43% prison, 10% unsure. Interestingly, 75% believe that a "higher degree of proof" is required in a capital case than in a "prison as punishment" case. (poll margin of error +/- ~3%)

In addition, since 1973 more than 120 people have had their death row convictions overturned. DNA testing has resulted in 200 non-capital cases to be overturned since 1989. Mistakes like these shake public confidence in the capital punishment system. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that almost 60% of those polled—including almost 60% of the southerners—in this study believe that the United States should impose a moratorium on the death penalty.

An ad hoc moratorium is almost in place. After the 1,000th execution in December 2005, there were almost no executions in 2006 or the first five months of 2007.

Executions as a form of punishment date to at least the 18th century BC. In America, Captain George Kendall was executed in 1608 in the Jamestown Colony of Virginia; he was accused of being a spy for Spain. In 1612, Virginia's death penalty violations included what modern citizens would consider minor violations: stealing grapes, killing chickens and trading with Indigenous peoples.

In the 1800s, abolitionists took up the cause of capital punishment, relying in part on Cesare Beccaria's 1767 essay, On Crimes and Punishment .

From the 1920s-1940s, criminologists argued that the death penalty was a necessary and preventative social measure. The 1930s, also marked by the Depression, saw more executions than any other decade in our history.

From the 1950s-1960s, public sentiment turned against capital punishment , and the number executed plummeted. In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled in Trop v. Dulles that the Eighth Amendment contained an "evolving standard of decency that marked the progress of a maturing society." And according to Gallup, public support reached an all-time low of 42% in 1966.

Two 1968 cases caused the nation to rethink its capital punishment law. In U.S. v. Jackson , the Supreme Court ruled that requiring that the death penalty be imposed only upon recommendation of a jury was unconstitutional because it encouraged defendants to plead guilty to avoid trial. In Witherspoon v. Illinois , the Court ruled on juror selection; having a "reservation" was insufficient cause for dismissal in a capital case.

In June 1972, the Supreme Court (5 to 4) effectively voided death penalty statutes in 40 states and commuted the sentences of 629 death row inmates. In Furman v. Georgia , the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment with sentencing discretion was "cruel and unusual" and thus violated the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In 1976, the Court ruled that capital punishment itself was constitutional while holding that new death penalty laws in Florida, Georgia and Texas—which included sentencing guidelines, bifurcated trials, and automatic appellate review—were constitutional.

A ten-year moratorium on executions that had begun with the Jackson and Witherspoon ended on 17 January 1977 with the execution of Gary Gilmore by firing squad in Utah.

There are two common arguments in support of capital punishment : that of deterrence and that of retribution.

According to Gallup, most Americans believe that the death penalty is a deterrent to homicide, which helps them justify their support for capital punishment. Other Gallup research suggests that most Americans would not support capital punishment if it did not deter murder.

Does capital punishment deter violent crimes? In other words, will a potential murderer consider the possibility that they might be convicted and face the death penalty before committing murder? The answer appears to be "no."

Social scientists have mined empirical data searching for the definitive answer on deterrence since the early 20th century. And "most deterrence research has found that the death penalty has virtually the same effect as long imprisonment on homicide rates." Studies suggesting otherwise (notably, writings of Isaac Ehrlich from the 1970s) have been, in general, criticized for methodological errors. Ehrlich's work was also criticized by the National Academy of Sciences - but it is still cited as a rationale for deterrence.

A 1995 survey of police chiefs and country sheriffs found that most ranked the death penalty last in a list of six options that might deter violent crime. Their top two picks? Reducing drug abuse and fostering an economy that provides more jobs.

Data on murder rates seem to discredit the deterrence theory as well. The region of the county with the greatest number of executions—the South—is the region with the largest murder rates. For 2007, the average murder rate in states with the death penalty was 5.5; the average murder rate of the 14 states without the death penalty was 3.1. Thus deterrence, which is offered as a reason to support capital punishment ("pro"), doesn't wash.

Retribution

In Gregg v Georgia , the Supreme Court wrote that "[t]he instinct for retribution is part of the nature of man..." The theory of retribution rests, in part, on the Old Testament and its call for "an eye for an eye." Proponents of retribution argue that "the punishment must fit the crime." According to The New American : "Punishment—sometimes called retribution—is the main reason for imposing the death penalty."

Opponents of retribution theory believe in the sanctity of life and often argue that it is just as wrong for society to kill as it is for an individual to kill. Others argue that what drives American support for capital punishment is the " impermanent emotion of outrage ." Certainly, emotion not reason seems to be the key behind support for capital punishment.

Some supporters of the death penalty also contend it is less expensive than a life sentence. Nevertheless, at least 47 states do have life sentences without the possibility of parole. Of those, at least 18 have no possibility of parole. And according to the ACLU :

The most comprehensive death penalty study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million more per execution than a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of life imprisonment (Duke University, May 1993). In its review of death penalty expenses, the State of Kansas concluded that capital cases are 70% more expensive than comparable non-death penalty cases.

More than 1000 religious leaders  have written an open letter to America and its leaders:

We join with many Americans in questioning the need for the death penalty in our modern society and in challenging the effectiveness of this punishment, which has consistently been shown to be ineffective, unfair, and inaccurate... With the prosecution of even a single capital case costing millions of dollars, the cost of executing 1,000 people has easily risen to billions of dollars. In light of the serious economic challenges that our country faces today, the valuable resources that are expended to carry out death sentences would be better spent investing in programs that work to prevent crime, such as improving education, providing services to those with mental illness, and putting more law enforcement officers on our streets. We should make sure that money is spent to improve life, not destroy it... As people of faith, we take this opportunity to reaffirm our opposition to the death penalty and to express our belief in the sacredness of human life and in the human capacity for change.

In 2005, Congress considered the Streamlined Procedures Act (SPA), which would have amended the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). AEDPA placed restrictions on the power of federal courts to grant writs of habeas corpus to state prisoners. The SPA would have imposed additional limits on the ability of state inmates to challenge the constitutionality of their imprisonment through habeas corpus.

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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 it is upheld on appeal), because of the possibility of commutation to life imprisonment.

Capital punishment for murder , treason , arson , and rape was widely employed in ancient Greece under the laws of Draco (fl. 7th century bce ), though Plato argued that it should be used only for the incorrigible . The Romans also used it for a wide range of offenses, though citizens were exempted for a short time during the republic. It also has been sanctioned at one time or another by most of the world’s major religions. Followers of Judaism and Christianity, for example, have claimed to find justification for capital punishment in the biblical passage “Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” ( Genesis 9:6). Yet capital punishment has been prescribed for many crimes not involving loss of life, including adultery and blasphemy . The ancient legal principle Lex talionis ( talion )—“an eye for an eye , a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life”—which appears in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi , was invoked in some societies to ensure that capital punishment was not disproportionately applied.

The prevalence of capital punishment in ancient times is difficult to ascertain precisely, but it seems likely that it was often avoided, sometimes by the alternative of banishment and sometimes by payment of compensation . For example, it was customary during Japan’s peaceful Heian period (794–1185) for the emperor to commute every death sentence and replace it with deportation to a remote area, though executions were reinstated once civil war broke out in the mid-11th century.

In Islamic law , as expressed in the Qurʾān , capital punishment is condoned . Although the Qurʾān prescribes the death penalty for several ḥadd (fixed) crimes—including robbery, adultery, and apostasy of Islam —murder is not among them. Instead, murder is treated as a civil crime and is covered by the law of qiṣās (retaliation), whereby the relatives of the victim decide whether the offender is punished with death by the authorities or made to pay diyah (wergild) as compensation.

Death was formerly the penalty for a large number of offenses in England during the 17th and 18th centuries, but it was never applied as widely as the law provided. As in other countries, many offenders who committed capital crimes escaped the death penalty, either because juries or courts would not convict them or because they were pardoned, usually on condition that they agreed to banishment; some were sentenced to the lesser punishment of transportation to the then American colonies and later to Australia. Beginning in the Middle Ages, it was possible for offenders guilty of capital offenses to receive benefit of clergy , by which those who could prove that they were ordained priests (clerks in Holy Orders) as well as secular clerks who assisted in divine service (or, from 1547, a peer of the realm) were allowed to go free, though it remained within the judge’s power to sentence them to prison for up to a year, or from 1717 onward to transportation for seven years. Because during medieval times the only proof of ordination was literacy, it became customary between the 15th and 18th centuries to allow anyone convicted of a felony to escape the death sentence by proving that he (the privilege was extended to women in 1629) could read. Until 1705, all he had to do was read (or recite) the first verse from Psalm 51 of the Bible—“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions”—which came to be known as the “ neck verse” (for its power to save one’s neck). To ensure that an offender could escape death only once through benefit of clergy, he was branded on the brawn of the thumb ( M for murder or T for theft). Branding was abolished in 1779, and benefit of clergy ceased in 1827.

From ancient times until well into the 19th century, many societies administered exceptionally cruel forms of capital punishment. In Rome the condemned were hurled from the Tarpeian Rock ( see Tarpeia ); for parricide they were drowned in a sealed bag with a dog, cock, ape, and viper; and still others were executed by forced gladiatorial combat or by crucifixion . Executions in ancient China were carried out by many painful methods, such as sawing the condemned in half, flaying him while still alive, and boiling . Cruel forms of execution in Europe included “breaking” on the wheel, boiling in oil, burning at the stake , decapitation by the guillotine or an axe, hanging , drawing and quartering , and drowning. Although by the end of the 20th century many jurisdictions (e.g., nearly every U.S. state that employs the death penalty, Guatemala, the Philippines , Taiwan , and some Chinese provinces) had adopted lethal injection , offenders continued to be beheaded in Saudi Arabia and occasionally stoned to death (for adultery) in Iran and Sudan . Other methods of execution were electrocution , gassing, and the firing squad.

Historically, executions were public events, attended by large crowds, and the mutilated bodies were often displayed until they rotted. Public executions were banned in England in 1868, though they continued to take place in parts of the United States until the 1930s. In the last half of the 20th century, there was considerable debate regarding whether executions should be broadcast on television, as has occurred in Guatemala. Since the mid-1990s public executions have taken place in some 20 countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria , though the practice has been condemned by the United Nations Human Rights Committee as “incompatible with human dignity.”

In many countries death sentences are not carried out immediately after they are imposed; there is often a long period of uncertainty for the convicted while their cases are appealed. Inmates awaiting execution live on what has been called “ death row ”; in the United States and Japan, some prisoners have been executed more than 15 years after their convictions . The European Union regards this phenomenon as so inhumane that, on the basis of a binding ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (1989), EU countries may extradite an offender accused of a capital crime to a country that practices capital punishment only if a guarantee is given that the death penalty will not be sought.

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Capital Punishment:Our Duty or Our Doom?

But human rights advocates and civil libertarians continue to decry the immorality of state-sanctioned killing in the U.S. Is capital punishment moral?

About 2000 men, women, and teenagers currently wait on America's "death row." Their time grows shorter as federal and state courts increasingly ratify death penalty laws, allowing executions to proceed at an accelerated rate. It's unlikely that any of these executions will make the front page, having become more or less a matter of routine in the last decade. Indeed, recent public opinion polls show a wide margin of support for the death penalty. But human rights advocates and civil libertarians continue to decry the immorality of state-sanctioned killing in the U.S., the only western industrialized country that continues to use the death penalty. Is capital punishment moral?

Capital punishment is often defended on the grounds that society has a moral obligation to protect the safety and welfare of its citizens. Murderers threaten this safety and welfare. Only by putting murderers to death can society ensure that convicted killers do not kill again.

Second, those favoring capital punishment contend that society should support those practices that will bring about the greatest balance of good over evil, and capital punishment is one such practice. Capital punishment benefits society because it may deter violent crime. While it is difficult to produce direct evidence to support this claim since, by definition, those who are deterred by the death penalty do not commit murders, common sense tells us that if people know that they will die if they perform a certain act, they will be unwilling to perform that act.

If the threat of death has, in fact, stayed the hand of many a would be murderer, and we abolish the death penalty, we will sacrifice the lives of many innocent victims whose murders could have been deterred. But if, in fact, the death penalty does not deter, and we continue to impose it, we have only sacrificed the lives of convicted murderers. Surely it's better for society to take a gamble that the death penalty deters in order to protect the lives of innocent people than to take a gamble that it doesn't deter and thereby protect the lives of murderers, while risking the lives of innocents. If grave risks are to be run, it's better that they be run by the guilty, not the innocent.

Finally, defenders of capital punishment argue that justice demands that those convicted of heinous crimes of murder be sentenced to death. Justice is essentially a matter of ensuring that everyone is treated equally. It is unjust when a criminal deliberately and wrongly inflicts greater losses on others than he or she has to bear. If the losses society imposes on criminals are less than those the criminals imposed on their innocent victims, society would be favoring criminals, allowing them to get away with bearing fewer costs than their victims had to bear. Justice requires that society impose on criminals losses equal to those they imposed on innocent persons. By inflicting death on those who deliberately inflict death on others, the death penalty ensures justice for all.

This requirement that justice be served is not weakened by charges that only the black and the poor receive the death penalty. Any unfair application of the death penalty is the basis for extending its application, not abolishing it. If an employer discriminates in hiring workers, do we demand that jobs be taken from the deserving who were hired or that jobs be abolished altogether? Likewise, if our criminal justice system discriminates in applying the death penalty so that some do not get their deserved punishment, it's no reason to give Iesser punishments to murderers who deserved the death penalty and got it. Some justice, however unequal, is better than no justice, however equal. To ensure justice and equality, we must work to improve our system so that everyone who deserves the death penalty gets it.

The case against capital punishment is often made on the basis that society has a moral obligation to protect human life, not take it. The taking of human life is permissible only if it is a necessary condition to achieving the greatest balance of good over evil for everyone involved. Given the value we place on life and our obligation to minimize suffering and pain whenever possible, if a less severe alternative to the death penalty exists which would accomplish the same goal, we are duty-bound to reject the death penalty in favor of the less severe alternative.

There is no evidence to support the claim that the death penalty is a more effective deterrent of violent crime than, say, life imprisonment. In fact, statistical studies that have compared the murder rates of jurisdictions with and without the death penalty have shown that the rate of murder is not related to whether the death penalty is in force: There are as many murders committed in jurisdictions with the death penalty as in those without. Unless it can be demonstrated that the death penalty, and the death penalty alone, does in fact deter crimes of murder, we are obligated to refrain from imposing it when other alternatives exist.

Further, the death penalty is not necessary to achieve the benefit of protecting the public from murderers who may strike again. Locking murderers away for life achieves the same goal without requiring us to take yet another life. Nor is the death penalty necessary to ensure that criminals "get what they deserve." Justice does not require us to punish murder by death. It only requires that the gravest crimes receive the severest punishment that our moral principles would allow us to impose.

While it is clear that the death penalty is by no means necessary to achieve certain social benefits, it does, without a doubt, impose grave costs on society. First, the death penalty wastes lives. Many of those sentenced to death could be rehabilitated to live socially productive lives. Carrying out the death penalty destroys any good such persons might have done for society if they had been allowed to live. Furthermore, juries have been known to make mistakes, inflicting the death penalty on innocent people. Had such innocent parties been allowed to live, the wrong done to them might have been corrected and their lives not wasted.

In addition to wasting lives, the death penalty also wastes money. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it's much more costly to execute a person than to imprison them for life. The finality of punishment by death rightly requires that great procedural precautions be taken throughout all stages of death penalty cases to ensure that the chance of error is minimized. As a result, executing a single capital case costs about three times as much as it costs to keep a person in prison for their remaining life expectancy, which is about 40 years.

Finally, the death penalty harms society by cheapening the value of life. Allowing the state to inflict death on certain of its citizens legitimizes the taking of life. The death of anyone, even a convicted killer, diminishes us all. Society has a duty to end this practice which causes such harm, yet produces little in the way of benefits.

Opponents of capital punishment also argue that the death penalty should be abolished because it is unjust. Justice, they claim, requires that all persons be treated equally. And the requirement that justice bc served is all the more rigorous when life and death are at stake. Of 19,000 people who committed willful homicides in the U.S. in 1987, only 293 were sentenced to death. Who are these few being selected to die? They are nearly always poor and disproportionately black. It is not the nature of the crime that determines who goes to death row and who doesn't. People go to death row simply because they have no money to appeal their case, or they have a poor defense, or they lack the funds to being witnesses to courts, or they are members of a political or racial minority.

The death penalty is also unjust because it is sometimes inflicted on innocent people. Since 1900, 350 people have been wrongly convicted of homicide or capital rape. The death penalty makes it impossible to remedy any such mistakes. If, on the other hand, the death penalty is not in force, convicted persons later found to be innocent can be released and compensated for the time they wrongly served in prison.

The case for and the case against the death penalty appeal, in different ways, to the value we place on life and to the value we place on bringing about the greatest balance of good over evil. Each also appeals to our commitment to"justice": Is justice to be served at all costs? Or is our commitment to justice to be one tempered by our commitment to equality and our reverence for life? Indeed, is capital punishment our duty or our doom?

(Capital punishment) is . . . the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated . . can be compared . . . For there to be an 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 mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life. --Albert Camus

If . . . he has committed a murder, he must die. In this case, there is no substitute that will satisfy the requirements of legal justice. There is no sameness of kind between death and remaining alive even under the most miserable conditions, and consequently there is no equality between the crime and the retribution unless the criminal is judicially condemned and put to death. --Immanuel Kant

For further reading:

Hugo Adam Bedau, Death Is Different: Studies in the Morality, Law, and Politics of Capital Punishment (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987).

Walter Berns, For Capital Punishment (New York: Basic Books, 1979.)

David Bruch, "The Death Penalty: An Exchange," The New Republic , Volume 192 (May 20, 1985), pp. 20-21.

Edward I. Koch, "Death and Justice: How Capital Punishment Affirms Life," The New Republic, Volume 192 (April 15,1985), pp. 13-15.

Ernest van den Haag and John P. Conrad , The Death Penalty: A Debate (New York: Plenum Press, 1983).

This article was originally published in Issues in Ethics - V. 1, N.3 Spring 1988

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Is capital punishment a fair and appropriate measure for atrocious crimes or should it be banned?

Capital punishment is still enforced in many countries, such as the USA and China. We discuss the pros and cons of death penalty and whether it should be abolished. If you care about this issue, leave your comments and share the debate.

Harsh punishments

Capital punishment is at the centre of one of the most significant moral debates in modern societies. Theorists and proponents of, both, utilitarian and retributive justice have historically discussed whether it is morally acceptable for the state to execute people, and if so under what circumstances. Although the death penalty has been abolished, either by law or practice, by more than 140 countries , it is still used in a big part of the world. According to Amnesty international , the number of countries implementing executions each year over the last couple of years is 22.

China has been consistently the country with the most executions and the USA is among the five top executioners. Murder and drug-trafficking are the most common crimes punishable by death , although in some countries adultery, witchcraft, or political activism can also incur capital punishment. Lethal injections, hanging, shooting, and electrocutions are some of the most common methods used for the death penalty.

Death penalty pros and cons

• One of the most common justifications for the death penalty in the Western world is that it acts as a deterrent of capital crimes , as the fear of death and the horror of the execution might prevent people from committing serious crimes.
• It is also considered to be the appropriate retribution and deserved punishment for really horrific crimes. Criminals who commit capital crimes have reached a point where rehabilitation is impossible and for some life in prison might increase criminal behaviour. The death penalty, therefore, prevents crimes for recurring and protects society.
• Further moral arguments suggest that capital punishment provides closure for the families of the victims and that punishment should fit the crime in order for justice to be served.
• Finally, there are practical arguments put forward. The death penalty helps ease overpopulation in prisons and it ensures that less tax payers' money is spent for the maintenance of individuals that have acted against society in the most violent way.
• It can also be used as an important negotiating tool for the police and the justice system, as where the possible sentence is death, the prisoner has the strongest possible incentive to try to get their sentence reduced, and therefore are likely to help with investigations.

These arguments are rebuked by opponents of capital punishment.

• Executions, they argue, are  cruel and immoral . Human life is valuable and everybody has a right to live. No one has the right to take away a human life, not even organised states.
• Human rights activists argue that death penalty is a form of revenge against offenders and revenge is not necessarily about social justice .
• Another important argument supported by abolitionists is that the death penalty discriminates against minorities and the poor, as it is people from these groups that are more likely to be sentenced to death. For example, although African Americans make up only about 13% of the US population, almost 50% of convicts on the death row are African American .
• There is also always the possibility of a wrongful verdict that might irrevocably sent innocent people to the death row.
• Finally, opponents of capital punishment argue that empirical reality disproves some of the arguments of defenders of the death penalty. There is no proof that the death penalty or long prison sentences have a strong deterrent effect . Crime rates are no lower in countries with death penalty.
• Furthermore, the costs of carrying out a death sentence can be much more expensive than keeping a criminal in jail, due to legal costs, number of appeals but also security and incarceration costs.

It is for these reasons that opponents of the sentence ask for the death penalty to be abolished.

Where do you stand in this debate? After looking at death penalty's pros and cons, do you consider that capital punishment is a fair and appropriate measure for atrocious crimes or is it inhumane and should be banned?    

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Expert Commentary

The research on capital punishment: Recent scholarship and unresolved questions

2014 review of research on capital punishment, including studies that attempt to quantify rates of innocence and the potential deterrence effect on crime.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Alexandra Raphel and John Wihbey, The Journalist's Resource January 5, 2015

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/criminal-justice/research-capital-punishment-key-recent-studies/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

Over the past year the death penalty has again come into focus as a major public policy and political issue, catalyzed by several high-profile events.

The botched execution of convicted murderer and rapist Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in 2014 was seen as a potential turning point in the debate, bringing increased attention to the mechanisms by which persons are executed. That was followed by a number of other closely scrutinized cases, and the year ended with few executions relative to years past. On December 31, 2014, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley commuted the sentences of the remaining four prisoners on death row in that state. In 2013, Maryland became the 18th state to abolish the death penalty after Connecticut in 2012 and New Mexico in 2009.

Meanwhile, polling data suggests some softening of public attitudes, though the majority Americans continue to support capital punishment. Gallop noted in October 2014 that the level of public support (60%) is at its lowest in 40 years. A Washington Post -ABC News poll in mid-2014 found that more Americans support life sentences, rather than the death penalty, for convicted murderers. Further, recent polls from the Pew Research Center indicate that only a bare majority of Americans now support capital punishment, 55%, down from 78% in 1996.

Scholarly research sheds light on a number of important aspects of this issue:

False convictions

One key reason for the contentious debate is the concern that states are executing innocent people. How many people are unjustly facing the death penalty? By definition, it is difficult to obtain a reliable answer to this question. Presumably if judges, juries, and law enforcement were always able to conclusively determine who was innocent, those defendants would simply not be convicted in the first place. When capital punishment is the sentence, however, this issue takes on new importance.

Some believe that when it comes to death-penalty cases, this is not a huge cause for concern. In his concurrent opinion in the 2006 Supreme Court case Kansas v. Marsh , Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that the execution error rate was minimal, around 0.027%. However, a 2014 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the figure could be higher. Authors Samuel Gross (University of Michigan Law School), Barbara O’Brien (Michigan State University College of Law), Chen Hu (American College of Radiology) and Edward H. Kennedy (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) examine data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Justice relating to exonerations from 1973 to 2004 in an attempt to estimate the rate of false convictions among death row defendants. (Determining innocence with full certainty is an obvious challenge, so as a proxy they use exoneration — “an official determination that a convicted defendant is no longer legally culpable for the crime.”) In short, the researchers ask: If all death row prisoners were to remain under this sentence indefinitely, how many of them would have eventually been found innocent (exonerated)?

Interestingly, the authors also note that advances in DNA identification technology are unlikely to have a large impact on false conviction rates because DNA evidence is most often used in cases of rape rather than homicide. To date, only about 13% of death row exonerations were the result of DNA testing. The Innocence Project , a litigation and public policy organization founded in 1992, has been deeply involved in many such cases.

Death penalty deterrence effects: What do we know?

A chief way proponents of capital punishment defend the practice is the idea that the death penalty deters other people from committing future crimes. For example, research conducted by John J. Donohue III (Yale Law School) and Justin Wolfers (University of Pennsylvania) applies economic theory to the issue: If people act as rational maximizers of their profits or well-being, perhaps there is reason to believe that the most severe of punishments would serve as a deterrent. (The findings of their 2009 study on this issue, “Estimating the Impact of the Death Penalty on Murder,” are inconclusive.) In contrast, one could also imagine a scenario in which capital punishment leads to an increased homicide rate because of a broader perception that the state devalues human life. It could also be possible that the death penalty has no effect at all because information about executions is not diffused in a way that influences future behavior.

In 1978 — two years after the Supreme Court issued its decision reversing a previous ban on the death penalty ( Gregg v. Georgia ) — the National Research Council (NRC) published a comprehensive review of the current research on capital punishment to determine whether one of these hypotheses was more empirically supported than the others. The NRC concluded that “available studies provide no useful evidence on the deterrent effect of capital punishment.”

Researchers have subsequently used a number of methods in an effort to get closer to an accurate estimate of the deterrence effect of the death penalty. Many of the studies have reached conflicting conclusions, however. To conduct an updated review, the NRC formed the Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty, comprised of academics from economics departments and public policy schools from institutions around the country, including the Carnegie Mellon University, University of Chicago and Duke University.

In 2012, the Committee published an updated report that concluded that not much had changed in recent decades: “Research conducted in the 30 years since the earlier NRC report has not sufficiently advanced knowledge to allow a conclusion, however qualified, about the effect of the death penalty on homicide rates.” The report goes on to recommend that none of the reviewed reports be used to influence public policy decisions on the death penalty.

Why has the research not been able to provide any definitive answers about the impact of the death penalty? One general challenge is that when it comes to capital punishment, a counter-factual policy is simply not observable. You cannot simultaneously execute and not execute defendants, making it difficult to isolate the impact of the death penalty. The Committee also highlights a number of key flaws in the research designs:

• There are both capital and non-capital punishment options for people charged with serious crimes. So, the relevant question on the deterrent effect of capital punishment specifically “is the differential deterrent effect of execution in comparison with the deterrent effect of other available or commonly used penalties.” None of the studies reviewed by the Committee took into account these severe, but noncapital punishments, which could also have an effect on future behaviors and could confound the estimated deterrence effect of capital punishment.
• “They use incomplete or implausible models of potential murderers’ perceptions of and response to the capital punishment component of a sanction regime”
• “The existing studies use strong and unverifiable assumptions to identify the effects of capital punishment on homicides.”

In a 2012 study, “Deterrence and the Dealth Penalty: Partial Identificaiton Analysis Using Repeated Cross Sections,” authors Charles F. Manski (Northwestern University) and John V. Pepper (University of Virginia) focus on the third challenge. They note: “Data alone cannot reveal what the homicide rate in a state without (with) a death penalty would have been had the state (not) adopted a death penalty statute. Here, as always when analyzing treatment response, data must be combined with assumptions to enable inference on counterfactual outcomes.”

However, even though the authors do not arrive at a definitive conclusion, the National Research Council Committee notes that this type of research holds some value: “Rather than imposing the strong but unsupported assumptions required to identify the effect of capital punishment on homicides in a single model or an ad hoc set of similar models, approaches that explicitly account for model uncertainty may provide a constructive way for research to provide credible albeit incomplete answers.”

Another strategy researchers have taken is to limit the focus of studies on potential short-term effects of the death penalty. In a 2009 paper, “The Short-Term Effects of Executions on Homicides: Deterrence, Displacement, or Both?” authors Kenneth C. Land and Hui Zheng of Duke University, along with Raymond Teske Jr. of Sam Houston State University, examine monthly execution data (1980-2005) from Texas, “a state that has used the death penalty with sufficient frequency to make possible relatively stable estimates of the homicide response to executions.” They conclude that “evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the months of or after executions.” Depending on which model they use, these deterrent effects range from 1.6 to 2.5 homicides.

The NRC’s Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty commented on the findings, explaining: “Land, Teske and Zheng (2009) should be commended for distinguishing between periods in Texas when the use of capital punishment appears to have been erratic and when it appears to have been systematic. But they fail to integrate this distinction into a coherently delineated behavioral model that incorporates sanctions regimes, salience, and deterrence. And, as explained above, their claims of evidence of deterrence in the systematic regime are flawed.”

A more recent paper (2012) from the three authors, “The Differential Short-Term Impacts of Executions on Felony and Non-Felony Homicides,” addresses some of these concerns. Published in Criminology and Public Policy , the paper reviews and updates some of their earlier findings by exploring “what information can be gained by disaggregating the homicide data into those homicides committed in the course of another felony crime, which are subject to capital punishment, and those committed otherwise.” The results produce a number of different findings and models, including that “the short-lived deterrence effect of executions is concentrated among non-felony-type homicides.”

Other factors to consider

The question of what kinds of “mitigating” factors should prevent the criminal justice system from moving forward with an execution remains hotly disputed. A 2014 paper published in the Hastings Law Journal , “The Failure of Mitigation?” by scholars at the University of North Carolina and DePaul University, investigates recent executions of persons with possible mental or intellectual disabilities. The authors reviewed 100 cases and conclude that the “overwhelming majority of executed offenders suffered from intellectual impairments, were barely into adulthood, wrestled with severe mental illness, or endured profound childhood trauma.”

Two significant recommendations for reforming the existing process also are supported by some academic research. A 2010 study by Pepperdine University School of Law published in Temple Law Review , “Unpredictable Doom and Lethal Injustice: An Argument for Greater Transparency in Death Penalty Decisions,” surveyed the decision-making process among various state prosecutors. At the request of a state commission, the authors first surveyed California district attorneys; they also examined data from the other 36 states that have the death penalty. The authors found that prosecutors’ capital punishment filing decisions remain marked by local “idiosyncrasies,” meaning that “the very types of unfairness that the Supreme Court sought to eliminate” beginning in 1972 may still “infect capital cases.” They encourage “requiring prosecutors to adhere to an established set of guidelines.” Finally, there has been growing support for taping interrogations of suspects in capital cases, so as to guard against the phenomenon of false confessions .

Related reading: For an international perspective on capital punishment, see Amnesty International’s 2013 report ; for more information on the evolution of U.S. public opinion on the death penalty, see historical trends from Gallup .

Keywords: crime, prisons, death penalty, capital punishment

About the Authors

Alexandra Raphel

John Wihbey

What is Capital Punishment?

Capital punishment, often referred to as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned execution of an individual as a punishment for a crime. It is one of the most contentious and morally charged issues in the realm of criminal justice, with strong arguments both for and against its use. The practice dates back thousands of years and has been employed by societies around the world for various offenses. This essay explores the concept of capital punishment, its history, the arguments for and against it, and its application in modern legal systems.

History of Capital Punishment

Capital punishment has been used as a form of punishment for serious crimes for millennia. In ancient societies, it was common to see death as the ultimate penalty for a wide array of offenses. The Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest known sets of laws from ancient Babylon, prescribed the death penalty for various crimes, including theft, murder, and adultery (Amnesty International, 2023). Similarly, the ancient Greeks and Romans employed capital punishment for crimes ranging from murder to political dissent.

In medieval Europe, capital punishment was often carried out in public and was used not only as a form of punishment but also as a deterrent to others. Crimes punishable by death included treason , theft, and heresy. The methods of execution were often brutal and intended to maximize the suffering of the condemned, such as burning at the stake, crucifixion, and beheading (Reiman, 2022).

Modern Use of Capital Punishment

In the modern era, the use of capital punishment has become more limited, and the methods of execution have evolved to become less barbaric, focusing on minimizing the suffering of the condemned. Today, methods such as lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber, hanging, and firing squad are used, with lethal injection being the most common in countries that still practice the death penalty (Garland, 2017).

The global perspective on capital punishment has shifted significantly over the past century. Many countries have abolished the death penalty entirely, while others have restricted its use to the most heinous crimes, such as acts of terrorism and mass murder. According to Amnesty International (2023), as of 2022, more than two-thirds of the world’s countries have abolished capital punishment in law or practice. However, it remains legal in a number of countries, including the United States, China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

Arguments in Favor of Capital Punishment

Proponents of capital punishment argue that it serves as a powerful deterrent against serious crimes. The idea is that the threat of the death penalty discourages individuals from committing crimes such as murder, as the potential cost—loss of life—is too high. Some supporters also argue that capital punishment provides a sense of justice and closure for the victims’ families, as it ensures that the perpetrator will never be able to harm anyone again (Bedau & Cassell, 2019).

Another argument in favor of the death penalty is the concept of retribution. Retribution is the idea that criminals deserve to be punished in proportion to the severity of their crime. For many, the death penalty is seen as an appropriate response to particularly heinous crimes, such as premeditated murder or acts of terrorism. This viewpoint is often summarized by the phrase “an eye for an eye,” suggesting that the punishment should fit the crime (Pojman & Reiman, 2018).

Supporters also claim that the death penalty is more cost-effective than life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. They argue that the cost of housing, feeding, and providing medical care for a prisoner over the course of a lifetime far exceeds the cost of carrying out an execution, particularly in cases where appeals are limited (Sunstein & Vermeule, 2005).

Arguments Against Capital Punishment

Opponents of capital punishment argue that it is inhumane and a violation of the fundamental right to life. They contend that the state should not have the power to take a person’s life, regardless of the crime committed. This view is supported by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, which argue that the death penalty is a form of cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment that has no place in modern society (Amnesty International, 2023).

One of the most significant concerns surrounding capital punishment is the possibility of wrongful convictions. Despite advances in forensic science and the legal system, there is still the potential for error, and innocent people have been sentenced to death. According to the Innocence Project, over 190 individuals have been exonerated from death row in the United States since 1973, highlighting the fallibility of the justice system (Gross, 2015).

Additionally, studies have shown that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent to crime. Research conducted by the National Research Council found that there is no conclusive evidence that capital punishment deters crime more effectively than long-term imprisonment (Nagin & Pepper, 2012). This challenges one of the central arguments used by proponents of the death penalty.

Another argument against capital punishment is the disproportionate application of the death penalty, particularly concerning race and socioeconomic status. Numerous studies have shown that individuals from marginalized communities, particularly African Americans, are more likely to be sentenced to death than their white counterparts, even when convicted of similar crimes (Eberhardt et al., 2006). This raises concerns about the fairness and impartiality of the justice system.

The Legal Landscape of Capital Punishment

The legal framework governing capital punishment varies widely from country to country and, in some cases, from state to state within a country. In the United States, for example, the death penalty is legal in 27 states, while it has been abolished or is under moratorium in 23 states and the District of Columbia (Death Penalty Information Center, 2023). The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty but has imposed limitations on its use, such as banning the execution of individuals with intellectual disabilities and those who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crime (Roper v. Simmons, 2005).

Internationally, the trend is moving towards the abolition of the death penalty. The European Union has long been a staunch opponent of capital punishment, and its member states are required to abolish the death penalty as a condition of membership. In contrast, countries like China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia continue to carry out executions at a high rate, often for crimes that would not warrant the death penalty in other parts of the world, such as drug trafficking or political dissent (Amnesty International, 2023).

The Future of Capital Punishment

The future of capital punishment is uncertain. While many countries continue to move towards abolition, others have shown a reluctance to abandon the practice. In the United States, for example, there has been a noticeable decline in the number of executions and death sentences in recent years, driven in part by public opinion, legal challenges, and difficulties in obtaining the drugs used for lethal injections (Death Penalty Information Center, 2023).

As society continues to grapple with the moral, legal, and practical implications of the death penalty, the debate over its use is likely to persist. Whether capital punishment will eventually be abolished worldwide remains to be seen, but the growing movement towards its elimination suggests that the practice may one day become a relic of the past.

Capital punishment is one of the most controversial and complex issues in criminal justice. Its use raises fundamental questions about the nature of justice, the role of the state, and the value of human life. While some argue that it serves as a necessary deterrent and a form of retribution for the most heinous crimes, others contend that it is inhumane, prone to error, and disproportionately applied. As the global trend continues to move towards abolition, the future of capital punishment remains uncertain. What is clear, however, is that the debate over its use will continue to shape legal and ethical discussions for years to come.

• Amnesty International. (2023). Death penalty . Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/death-penalty/
• Bedau, H. A., & Cassell, P. G. (2019). Debating the death penalty: Should America have capital punishment? The experts on both sides make their case . Oxford University Press.
• Death Penalty Information Center. (2023). Facts about the death penalty . Retrieved from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/
• Eberhardt, J. L., Davies, P. G., Purdie-Vaughns, V. J., & Johnson, S. L. (2006). Looking deathworthy: Perceived stereotypicality of Black defendants predicts capital-sentencing outcomes. Psychological Science, 17 (5), 383-386.
• Garland, D. (2017). Peculiar institution: America’s death penalty in an age of abolition . Harvard University Press.
• Gross, S. R. (2015). The risks of death: Why erroneous convictions are common and why it matters. Michigan Law Review, 110 (6), 1163-1207.
• Nagin, D. S., & Pepper, J. V. (2012). Deterrence and the death penalty . National Academies Press.
• Pojman, L. P., & Reiman, J. (2018). The death penalty: For and against . Rowman & Littlefield.
• Reiman, J. H. (2022). The rich get richer and the poor get prison: Ideology, class, and criminal justice . Routledge.
• Sunstein, C. R., & Vermeule, A. (2005). Is capital punishment morally required? Acts, omissions, and life-life tradeoffs. Stanford Law Review, 58 (3), 703-750.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Human Rights — Capital Punishment

Essays on Capital Punishment

Capital punishment is a controversial and thought-provoking topic that has been debated for decades. Writing an essay on capital punishment can be a challenging task, especially when it comes to choosing the right topic. In this article, we will discuss the importance of the topic, provide advice on choosing a topic, and present a detailed list of recommended essay topics, divided by category.

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a highly divisive issue that has sparked fierce debate around the world. It raises questions about morality, justice, and the role of the state in taking the life of a convicted criminal. Writing an essay on capital punishment allows students to explore these complex issues and develop critical thinking skills. Moreover, it provides an opportunity to examine the social, ethical, and legal implications of the death penalty, making it an important and relevant topic for academic study.

When choosing a topic for a capital punishment essay, it is important to consider your interests and the specific aspects of the death penalty that you find compelling. You may want to explore the history of capital punishment, its ethical implications, its effectiveness as a deterrent, or its impact on society. Additionally, consider the current debates and controversies surrounding the death penalty, as these can provide a rich source of material for your essay.

Recommended Capital Punishment Essay Topics

History of capital punishment.

• The origins of capital punishment
• The evolution of execution methods
• Famous historical cases of capital punishment
• The abolition of the death penalty in certain countries

Ethical and Moral Considerations

• The morality of the death penalty
• Religious perspectives on capital punishment
• The rights of the condemned
• The ethics of executing the innocent

Effectiveness and Deterrence

• The effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent
• Comparing crime rates in states with and without the death penalty
• The psychological impact of the death penalty on society
• Alternatives to capital punishment

Legal and Social Justice Issues

• Racial disparities in death penalty sentencing
• The role of capital punishment in the criminal justice system
• International perspectives on the death penalty
• The impact of capital punishment on victims' families

Contemporary Debates and Controversies

• The use of lethal injection as an execution method
• The debate over capital punishment for juveniles
• The role of the media in shaping public opinion on the death penalty
• The impact of public opinion on the future of the death penalty

These are just a few examples of the many possible essay topics related to capital punishment. Regardless of the specific topic you choose, it is important to approach the subject with an open mind and a willingness to engage with different perspectives. By considering the historical, ethical, legal, and social aspects of the death penalty, you can develop a well-rounded and insightful essay that contributes to the ongoing discourse on this important issue.

Why Capital Punishment Should Be Legalized

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Reasoning Against The Death Penalty in America

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15 Biggest Capital Punishment Pros and Cons

Capital punishment is defined as the authorized, legal killing of an individual as punishment for a crime that was committed. It is a government-sanctioned action which is often referred to as the “death penalty” in the United States.

Common crimes that are eligible for a sentence of capital punishment upon conviction include murder, espionage, and reason. Certain crimes against humanity, such as genocide, also qualify at an international level for capital punishment.

As of 2018, there are currently 56 countries, including the United States, which have retained capital punishment as an option for their system of criminal justice. On the other hand, 103 countries have completely abolished for all crimes, 6 have abolished it for ordinary crimes, while another 30 are abolitionist in its practice.

Despite this fact, about 60% of the world still lives in a country where the death penalty has been retained. Here are the capital punishment pros and cons to consider.

List of the Pros of Capital Punishment

1. It provides a deterrent against violent crime within a society. The goal of a law is to provide someone with a deterrent against a crime they wish to commit. As a society, violent crime is something to be avoided at all costs. To make that happen, the strongest deterrent is required. That is why capital punishment often applies to cases of first-degree murder or issues where the safety of an entire country was jeopardized. By telling people they’ll die, if convicted, for these serious crimes, the goal is to prevent the crime from happening in the first place.

2. It still provides a respectful outcome to a convicted individual. The modern death penalty in the United States as evolved into a process that is intended to be painless and effective. Lethal injections of medication cause a person to stop breathing and their heart to stop beating. Although shortages of drugs from manufacturers have created issues with executions in recent years, including people surviving the execution attempt, the process is much more compassionate than electrocution, firing squads, or hanging, which were common execution methods in the past.

3. It allows for a deserved punishment for horrific crimes. There is a point in time when someone who commits a horrific crime is beyond the point where rehabilitation is possible. Not only does capital punishment create a deserved punishment that I equal to the crime committed, it provides a safety net for the rest of the society. A sentence of death prevents that person from committing another horrific crime. It also reduces the influence that person would have on prison populations, which may influence behaviors and choices of non-violent offenders upon their release.

4. It prevents prisons from becoming over-populated. In the United States, there are more than 2.3 million people being held in state and federal prisons, local jails, Indian Country jails, juvenile correctional facilities, immigration detention centers, military prisons, and civil commitment centers. About 443,000 people have not been convicted of anything and are awaiting trial. Another 41,000 are in detention in immigration centers without conviction. On the other hand, 704,000 prisoners are labeled as violent offenders in state prisons. Capital punishment laws create space for potential rehabilitation without dealing with issues of prison over-population.

5. It eliminates sympathy for the criminal. Criminal justice should involve addressing the facts of the situation. Far too often, there is an emotional response to people charged with a capital crime, with sympathy being directed toward the individual or the family of the accused person. When someone is facing a trial, or the consequences of their actions, then the law should be able to address the actions in a way that discourages others from doing the same thing.

6. It offers zero chance of escape. When the death penalty is being implemented, there is no chance for the individual to escape the consequences of their actions. It eliminates the possibility of an illegal escape. Even if an individual manages to survive their execution attempt, the law allows for another attempt to be made. As John McAdams, a suspended associate professor of political science at Marquette University at the time of writing, describes the situation, “If we execute murders and there is no deterrent effect, then we have killed murders. If we fail to execute murderers, which would have deterred others from committing such a crime, then we would have allowed the killing of innocent victims.”

List of the Cons of Capital Punishment

1. It costs more to implement the death penalty than offer life in prison. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the average cost of a case without capital punishment involved is $740,000. For cases where the death penalty is sought be prosecutors, the average cost off the case is $1.26 million. In addition to the prosecution expenses, the cost of housing a prisoner on death row is $90,000 more per year, on average, then a prisoner in the general population. With the average length of time on death row at 15 years in the United States, housing a prisoner for execution may cost more than $1 million more than housing a prisoner for a life sentence.

2. It does not deter crime like it should. Data collected in the United States, as some states have capital punishment and others do not, shows that there is a clear discrepancy in the rates of violent crime. It should be in the states with the death penalty, but the opposite is the case. The states which have the most executions also have the highest murder rates. In recent years, Illinois, Connecticut, New Mexico, and New York all abolished the death penalty and experienced a decrease in their murder rate in the following years.

3. It does not provide a sense of justice for the families of a victim. Although capital punishment may be the “ultimate” form of justice, it does not provide the sense of satisfaction for the families of a victim that many people think it does. Research by Marilyn P. Armour and Mark S. Umbreit, published in 2012 by the Marquette Law Review, found that family members of a victim experience higher levels of behavioral, physical, and psychological health when a perpetrator is given a life sentence that is enforced instead of the death penalty.

4. It is not the only way to ensure someone is never released from prison. The number of people serving life sentences in the United States is surging. About 162,000 people are currently serving a life sentence, which is 1 out of every 9 people. Another 45,000 people in the U.S. are serving an effective life sentence of 50 years or more before being eligible for parole. Incarceration rates for life sentences in the U.S. have risen by nearly 5 times the levels they were in 1984, even though crime is at historic lows. It is clear that there are options other than the death penalty to keep people in prison.

5. It puts the lives of innocent people at-risk within the criminal justice system. Since the 1970s, over 160 people have been exonerated after being initially convicted of a capital crime. Although we may never know how many people have been wrongly executed, there are recent examples of potential innocence. Cameron Willingham was executed for killing his three children in a fire at his home, despite the fact that 8 different experts say the conviction was based on faulty science. The case of Carlos DeLuna even brought a rebuke by Justice John Paul Stevens against the use of the death penalty because of the risks involved of killing an innocent person.

6. It does not provide a deterrent against non-violent crime either. In 2008, Indonesia executed two convicted Nigerians of drug-related offenses. The goal of the “emergency executions” was to deter drug use within the country, along with drug-related crime. The actual outcome, however, was much different than anticipated. In 2007, Indonesia experienced 22,630 drug-related arrests. In the year of the executions, there were 29,364 drug-related arrests. In 2009, there were 30,878 drug-related arrests. The number of prisoners incarcerated for drug-related crimes increased after each execution series for offenses as well. There are even 1.7 million more people using drugs in Indonesia after the executions.

7. It does not address the issue of crime in society. There will always be criminals who commit heinous crimes for personal pleasure. Yet 20% of the U.S. prison population involves people who have been locked up because of a drug offense. People who are in prison are reported statistically under the most violent offense from their conviction. It groups people with felony murder convictions with those who do not even commit the crime, like participating in a robbery where someone dies, but they did not pull the trigger.

8. It creates the possibility of sentencing children to death row. George Stinney was wrongly convicted of murder in 1944 in his hometown of Alcolu. At the time of his execution, he was only 14 years old. He was convicted in less than 10 minutes, in a 1-day trial, by a jury that was all-white. Stinney had been accused of killing two white girls, ages 11 and 7, and supposedly confessed to the crime, though no record of the confession was every found. Stinney was denied appeal and electrocuted. Although the Supreme Court ruled in March 2005 that the death penalty for anyone under the age of 18 is cruel and unusual punishment, other countries are not bound by such a ruling.

9. It eliminates the possibility of rehabilitation. There are criminals who prefer to live outside of the rules that society sets. These individuals may never be rehabilitated. The death penalty completely eliminates that possibility from the equation. Instead of allowing individuals an opportunity to make amends in some way, it automatically assumes that nothing can be done about that person. It suggests that society discards people based on their willingness to follow the rules, especially in nations where non-violent offenses qualify for capital punishment.

The pros and cons of capital punishment are often based on information that is faulty, misleading, or an outright lie. Although some societies may see temporary benefits from its implementation, the use of death as a deterrent against crime says more about the people who want it than the people who commit crime in the first place. At the very least, its presence risks the execution of an innocent person. At worst, it may encourage more violent crime in a society because the government sanctions violence as part of its systemic structures.

16 Advantages and Disadvantages of the Death Penalty and Capital Punishment

Human civilizations have used the death penalty in their set of laws for over 4,000 years. There have been times when only a few crimes receive this consequence, while some societies, such as the seventh century B.C.’s Code of Athens required the punishment for all crimes to be death.

The death penalty in the United States came about because of the influences of the colonial era. The first recorded execution in the colonies occurred in 1608 in Jamestown. Captain George Kendall was executed for being a spy for Spain. It only took four more years for Virginia to institute the death penalty for minor offenses such as stealing grapes or trading with Native Americans.

Today, capital punishment is reserved for brutal and heinous crimes, such as first-degree murder. Some countries use the death penalty for repetitive violent crime, such as rape and sexual assault, or for specific drug offenses. Here are the pros and cons of the death penalty to review as we head into 2021 and beyond.

List of the Pros of the Death Penalty

1. It is a way to provide justice for victims while keeping the general population safe. There is an expectation in society that you should be able to live your life without the threat of harm. When there is someone who decides to go against this expectation by committing a violent crime, then there must be steps taken to provide everyone else the safety that they deserve. Although arguments can be made for rehabilitation, there are people who would continue their violent tendencies no matter what. The only way to keep people safe in those circumstances, and still provide a sense of justice for the victims, is the use of the death penalty.

2. It provides a deterrent against serious crimes. The reason why there are consequences in place for criminal violations is that we want to have a deterrent effect on specific behaviors. People who are considering a breach of the law must see that the consequences of their actions are worse if they go through without that action compared to following the law.

Although up to 88% of criminologists in the United States report that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent to homicide, the fact that it can prevent some violence does make it a useful tool to have in society.

3. It offers a respectful outcome. A critical component of justice in modern society involves punishing criminal behavior in a way that is not cruel or unusual. That societal expectation has led the United States to implement capital punishment by using lethal injections. Although some regions struggle to purchase the necessary drugs to administer lethal injections, the process of putting someone to sleep before they stop breathing eliminates the pain and negative outcomes associated with other execution methods.

Modern processes in modern societies are much more compassionate compared to the historical methods of hanging, firing squads, or other gruesome methods of taking a life under the law.

4. It maintains prison populations at manageable levels. Over 2 million people are currently part of the prison population in the United States. About one in five people currently in jails across the country are awaiting trial for charges that they face. That is about the same amount of people who are labeled as being violent offenders. By separating those who are convicted of a capital crime, we create more room for individuals who want to work through rehabilitation programs or otherwise improve their lives and live law-abiding futures. This structure makes it possible to limit the financial and spatial impacts which occur when all serious crimes require long-term prisoner care.

5. It offers society an appropriate consequence for violent behavior. There are criminals who have a desire to rehabilitate their lives and create new futures for themselves within the bounds of the law. There are also criminals who desire to continue their criminal behaviors. By keeping capital punishment as an option within society, we create an appropriate consequence that fits the actions taken by the criminal. The death penalty ensures that the individual involved will no longer be able to create havoc for the general population because they are no longer around. That process creates peace for the victims, their families, and society in general.

6. It eliminates sympathetic reactions to someone charged with a capital crime. The United States offers a confrontational system of justice because that is an effective way to address the facts of the case. We make decisions based on logic instead of emotion. The law must be able to address the actions of a criminal in a way that discourages other people from conducting themselves in a similar manner. Our goal should be to address the needs of each victim and their family more than it should be to address the physical needs of the person charged with a capital crime.

7. It stops the threat of an escape that alternative sentences would create. The fastest way to stop a murderer from continuing to kill people is to eliminate their ability to do so. That is what capital punishment does. The death penalty makes it impossible for someone convicted of murder to find ways that kill other people. Failing to execute someone who is taking a life unjustly, who is able to kill someone else, makes us all responsible for that action. Although there are issues from a moral standpoint about taking any life, we must remember that the convicted criminal made the decision to violate the law in the first place, knowing full well what their potential outcome would be.

List of the Cons of the Death Penalty

1. It requires one person to kill another person. In an op-ed published by the New York Times, S. Frank Thompson discussed his experience in executing inmates while serving as the superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary. He talked about how the death penalty laws forced him to be personally involved in these executions. He came to a point where, on a moral level, he decided that life either had to be honored or not. His job required him to kill someone else. Whether someone takes a life through criminal means, or they do so through legal means, there still is an impact on that person which is unpredictable.

2. It comes with unclear constitutionality in the United States. In the 1970s, the Supreme Court of the United States found the application of the death penalty unconstitutional, but four years later, allowed the death penalty to resume with certain limitations on when and how it must be carried out. Some justices have called for a review of the death penalty due to current information about the risk of sentencing innocent people to death and other concerns about the death penalty.

After four decades of surveys, studies, and experiences with the death penalty, there are three specific defects that critics state exist. There is unreliability in the systems that are used to put prisoners to death, there are delays that can last for 20 years or more before executing a prisoner, and the application of capital punishment has been called arbitrary.

3. It does not have a positive impact on homicide rates. The United States implemented the death penalty 22 times in 2019, and imposed 34 death sentences. Crime statistics for that year indicate that there were 16,425 reported murders and non-negligent manslaughter cases in the U.S. Some claim that criminals do not think they’ll be caught and convicted, so the death penalty has a limited deterrence effect. Statistics on crimes show that when the death penalty is abolished, and replaced with a guaranteed life in prison, there are fewer violent acts committed.

4. It creates a revenge factor, which may not best serve justice. No one can blame families of victims for wanting justice. There is enough reason because of their pain and loss to understand concepts like vengeance. The problem with the death penalty is that it implements only one form of justice. It can be seen to create the framework for allowing for an eye for an eye, rather than taking a morally higher ground. If we permit the killing of people as a consequence of their own murderous decisions, then do we devalue life itself? It cannot be assumed that something that is legal is necessarily morally correct.

5. It costs more to implement the death penalty. The average case brought to trial which involves the death penalty costs taxpayers $1.26 million (counted through to execution). Cases that are taken to a jury which do not involve capital punishment cost an average of $740,000 (counted through to the end of incarceration). When you compare the costs of maintaining a prisoner in the general population compared to keeping someone on death row, taxpayers save money by avoiding the death penalty.

Maintaining a prisoner on death row costs $90,000 more per year than keeping that person in the general population. When one considers the cost of keeping someone on death row for 20 years or more, it is cheaper to sentence someone to life in prison without the possibility of parole in most states that it is to put them to death.

6. It comes with a risk that an innocent person could be executed. Although we like to think that our criminal justice systems are perfect, it is not. A study by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences determined that at least 4% of the people that are on death row are likely to be innocent. Since 1973, over 170 people have been taken off of death row because evidence showed that they were innocent of the crime for which they were convicted.

The justice system has flaws in our justice system. There have been cases where prosecutors knowingly withheld exculpatory information. There have been times when the justice system has introduced false evidence against defendants. People can be coerced into entering a guilty plea, or admitting their guilt, because of external pressures placed on them.

7. It does not always provide the sense of justice that families require. Research published in 2012 by the Marquette Law Review found that the victim’s family experienced higher levels of psychological, physical, and behavioral health when the convicted criminal was sentenced to life in prison, instead of the death penalty. The death penalty might be considered to be the ultimate form of justice, but it does not always provide the satisfaction people think it will once it is administered.

8. It does not seek alternative solutions. About one in every nine people in the U.S. is the population is currently serving a life sentence. Many more are serving a sentence that keeps them in prison for the rest of their lives because it will last for 15 years or more. Violent crime has declined dramatically since it peaked in the early 1990s. According to FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 51% between 1993 and 2018, and using the Bureau of Justice Statistics, it fell 71% during that same period. In 2016, 2,330 prisoners escaped from prison in the U.S.

There are numerous ways to prevent someone from breaking out of prison and hurting someone else, and the decreased number of violent crimes should mean a smaller prison population to work with to seek alternative solutions.

9. It automatically assumes that the criminal cannot be rehabilitated. There will always be people who decide they will live with a disregard for others. These people may never successfully complete a rehabilitation process after committing a crime. Sentencing someone to death makes the assumption that the person cannot be rehabilitated and suggests that there is no other way to help society except to get rid of that criminal.

These death penalty pros and cons are not intended to serve as a moral framework but are an attempt at a balanced look at reasons why capital punishment is a useful tool within societies, as well as reasons to the contrary. There are also specific outcomes that occur when the death penalty is not a potential sentence, which can be beneficial. That is why these critical points must continue to be discussed so that we all can come to the best possible decision to keep one another safe.

Pros and Cons of Capital Punishment Unit essay

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Prosand Cons of Capital Punishment

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Capital punishmenthas been around all along since the earliest days of humancivilization and has been used in punishment of capital punishment.There have been questions on whether capital punishment achieves itsintended purpose from a legal, psychological, political, social andmoral perspective. As such, there are arguments supported by varioustheories that propose and oppose capital punishment. Philosophicaltheories on morality have also been widely applied to assess whetherthe act is ethically justified or not. At the same time, religion andlegal perspectives have been applied. The assessment of the varioustheories indicates that there is no right or wrong position ofcapital punishment as both arguments are well supported by differenttheories. Thus this paper concludes that the choice to oppose orsupport capital punishment is a matter of personal inclinations.

Legalizing the death penalty simply grants the government the rightto kill people found guilty of specific crimes through a variety ofmethods. Somehow, the government’s most noble role is protectingthe rights of people with the right to life being the most important.Thus, a government keen on punishing offenders must do so with itsmost noble role in mind. At the same time, safeguarding the lives ofthe people might necessitate invoking the death penalty. As such,there are two divergent views on the death penalty the pro-deathpenalty that cites its advantages and the opposing side that citesthe disadvantages of capital punishment. This essay thus drawssupport from relevant sources to examine the pros and cons of capitalpunishment to make an informed conclusion.

Retribution

Retribution or retributive justice is a theory of justice thatrequires offenders to suffer for their wrongdoing in a manner that isequivalent to the crime committed. As opposed to the notion ofrevenge, retribution in this case means that punishment does not seekpleasure, is directed at wrongs and it is not personal (Wilson 2013).Furthermore, the theory calls for inherent limits on type ofpunishment that also falls within set procedural standards. Theconcept is guided by three main arguments namely: (a) all guiltyoffenders deserve to be punished (b), only guilty offenders deserveto be punished and (d) guilty offenders deserve to be punished inproportion to the severity of their crime (Bohn 2011). Thus, underthe concept of retributive justice, capital punishment allows forguilty offenders to be punished in a manner equivalent to the crimecommitted not as a way of acquiring any form of pleasure for theoffended but as way providing them with revenge, a sense of justiceand restoring human dignity.

Many cultures and religions support capital punishment under theconcept of retributive justice. The Christian Bible comes first incalling for revenge as way of punishing offenders in a manner that isequivalent to the crime committed. The book of Duetronmy19:21 statesthat “show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,hand for hand, foot for foot.” The book also goes ahead tohighlight the role played by this kind of justice by saying that isdeters other people from committing such crimes. Therefore it wouldimply that murders and such similar crimes should be punishable bycapital punishment (Bible NIV). The Koran has also the sameprovisions in the Chapter (5) sūrat l-māidah 5:45 that also callsfor an eye for an eye in punishing offenders (Koran). The ancientChinese culture starting from the Qin Code of 200 BC practicedcapital punishment with many ways of killing offenders depending onthe perceived severity of the crime committed (Duhaime 2011). Thus,capital punishment is justified by major world religions and ancientcultures as a way of punishing capital offenders.

As has been mentioned above, several religions and the Chineseancient cultures support capital punishment in the belief that it candeter potential offenders. This claim is often cited in moderndiscussions and court rulings on capital punishment. Proponents ofcapital punishment argue that the severity of the punishment deterspotential offenders from committing such crimes in the future.However, there is no factual or scholarly evidence to support thisargument. In fact, some of the states such as Texas that continue topermit capital punishment have not recorded any considerable declinein crime. One of the most prominent religious supporters of the deathpenalty, Cardinal Avery Dulles, argued that the death penalty iseffective in deterring crime especially when done public to create asense of horror that would make potential offender fear committingcrime as opposed to the private and least painful methods used inmost judicial system. Dulles’ argument concurs with the ancientChinese death penalty methods (Wilson 2013). The death penalty byLing-chee meant cutting the offender into different pieces in aspecified order such as eye brows, nose, breasts, arms and legs(Duhaime 2011). Such a process was very cruel and performed in publicwith the intention of instilling fear on would-be offenders.

The death penalty is justifiable from certain moral perspectives.Consequentialists and followers of Immanuel Kant’s philosophicalviews argue that the death penalty may not only be required but alsoobligatory for governments in order to safeguard the lives of people.The key assumption here is that the death penalty is the mosteffective means of preventing repeat offenses. Utilitarian ethics,which are also consequentialist, argue that capital punishment isdesirable if it guarantees happiness to the majority of the people(Sustein and Vermuele 2006, p. 705). Assuming that the deathpunishment has a deterrence effect, then the death of an offenderserves the greater good of society by deterring other offenders fromengaging in crime. Thus, it is clear that the death penalty isadvantageous as it promotes the welfare of society.

The death penalty is the ultimate form of punishment that guaranteesno repetition of crime by the offender. From a rational perspective,this option is best suited for offenders who are judged not to beresponsive to rehabilitation. In some cases, the US and othercountries in the world have faced situations of repeat offenders inmany capital crimes such as child rape and murders (Bohn 2011).Proponents of the death penalty argue that the death penalty offersthe best solution to cases of repeat offender who have already proventhat they cannot be rehabilitated as the penal system intends toachieve through incarceration.

Other grounds

There are other grounds for support of capital punishment though theyare considerably weak. One of the supposed advantages of capitalpunishment is closure and vindication for survivors and families.This approach to justice is victim-based as seeks to shape theoffender’s path to justice by considering more the rights of thevictims as opposed to the offender. Basically, the approach isgrounded in emotions that evolve with respect to structures assupported by cognitive neuroscience, sociology, psychology andpolitical science. Bandes (2008) indicates that the manner in howsurvivors and families recover or grieve largely depends on theirexpectations of a judicial process. Therefore, it is only right thatjustice is only served to survivors and families if a death penaltyis applied in such a case. However, this claim has a major weaknessin the sense that it assumes that all survivors and families wish torevenge and wish death upon the offenders and hence leaves no roomfor forgiveness.

Trying and handling capital punishment cases takes longer andconsumes more resources that non-death penalty capital offenses.Procon (2009) cites John Roman and his colleagues at the District ofColumbia Crime Policy Institute who sampled fourteen studiesassessing the cost of capital punishment. All the fourteen studiesrevealed that the cost of trying a death penalty case was higher interms and resources. On average, additional costs in trying everysingle capital punishment case ranged from $100, 000 to $1.7 million.Ordinarily, the cost of drugs required in executing an offender isless than $100 according to 2011 estimates in Texas but the trialprocess is longer compared to life without parole (LWOP), which makesthe former an expensive option (Procon 2009 Phillips 2014).Therefore, from a cost analysis perspective, death penalty isdisadvantageous to the American economy and taxpayers.

Deontological ethics hold that capital punishment is wrong. Theargument is based on the deontologists believe that the rightness orwrongness of an action is not based on the consequences or theoverall effect on the welfare of the people but rather based on agiven maxim. The key maxim here that makes the death penalty is theargument that no single person or institution has the right to takethe life of another no matter the situation or crime. Although theethical theories accept the death penalty, Bohm (2008, p.121)believes that the ultimate view on the morality of the act depends onlocal social values. In this case, some Americans view the deathpenalty as immoral.

From a different ethical perspective, capital punishment is perceivedas immoral as it does not guarantee justice to the poor. Thisargument is hinged on the notion that the world’s major justicesystems are unable to provide justice equally with the rich havingbetter access to justice compared to the poor. Ideally, the rich canafford the best defense attorneys and even in some cases are capableof corrupting the system to work in their favor. For instance, in theUS, the issue of race and ethnicity has featured strongly in thecriminal justice system with the system being accused of unfairlytargeting African Americans who are unfairly overrepresented inAmerican jails and capital punishments over the years (Allen andClubb 2009). Accordingly, African American lead in the number ofexecutions and the situation does not communicate any sense of moraljustice to this group and other minority group in the country.

Although Christianity and Islam encourage the notion of revenge, bothreligions also preach the need for forgiveness and the sanctity oflife. Some scholars have termed Christianity to be in contradictionin some of the teachings with the case of the death penalty being agod example. The call for revenge through the concept for “an eyefor an eye” is viewed as not as a means of achieving justice but asmeans of encouraging revenge. On the contrary, the New Testamentrecognizes the sanctity of life and indicates that only the creatoror the giver of life has the authority to take that life back. Thebook of Romans 12:19-20 encourages Christians to show love to theirenemies and to leave revenge unto the lord as He always punishesthose who err against His people. Islam also encourages forgivenessin many verses. As such, these two key religions do not support thedeath penalty.

Irrevocablemistakes

Capital punishment does not offer room for correction of mistakescommitted by the judicial process. This is very true considering thenumber of Americans under the capital punishments and on life withoutparole have been proven innocent through advances in technology. DNAtesting and fingerprint technology have in the last few years changedthe way in which criminal investigations and the judicial processesare carried out. The technology has enabled collection and processingof new evidence that has shown that in some cases, innocent peoplewere already executed. Where mistakes in the judicial process occur,as is expected of all human processes, capital punishment does notoffer the judicial process a chance to correct mistakes. As a result,many innocent individuals may be executed and thus the option is notdesirable in any way.

Failureto deter

There is no clear evidence whether the death penalty deter or doesnot deter capital offences. Therefore, there are no grounds assuggested by some scholars that the death penalty does indeeddiscourage others from committing crime. However, the death penaltybased on deterrence is immoral simply because there no moral groundsfor one to pay for the predicted future crimes of other people. Thereis no guarantee that the death of capital offenders will serve as alearning lesson to potential offenders. Again, the motivation to setan example to other potential offenders using one offender mayencourage the fabrication of evidence in order to achieve theobjective (Bohn 2011). This is because the judicial systems might bemotivated by the need to set an example to others as opposed toserving justice to both the victim and offender.

Constitutionality

The eight amendment of the US constitution provides for the mostbasic opposition to capital punishment. The amendment states that“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed,nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Under this provision,death penalty is considerably cruel. However, the Supreme Court hasruled that the death penalty can only be considered unconstitutionalif the penalty is disproportionate to the crime (Allen and Clubb118). Based on the eighth amendment and societal values, some stateshave abolished the death penalty and made it illegal.

Based on the above arguments, there are two clear sides on the issueof capital punishment. As one of the most hotly contested issuepolitically, the pros of and cons of the death penalty clearly lieswith the value that a given society attaches to human life and thedignity of the same. Most importantly, it also depends on socialvalues and beliefs which also play a great role in formulating lawsand constitutions. This is because, some religious beliefs or legalprovisions can be used to either defend or oppose the death penalty.In this case, it is only right to conclude that the stand on deathpenalty largely varies with societal values as there is no universaltheory that clearly addresses the issue.

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