Death Penalty – an Argument Against, Essay Example

Most citizens of the United States would describe their country as being a worldwide leader in civil rights and social maturity.  In many cases, this assertion is true.  There is however one social issue where the U.S. trails most of the world in social progressiveness – the death penalty.

The countries with the most confirmed executions are China, Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively.  The United States follow Saudi Arabia as number four for the most executions.  This fact places the U.S. in the same frequency category for executions as Pakistan and Iraq (DPIC 1).  According to the same source, there have been 81 countries that have banned the death penalty since 1976.

These facts beg two questions.  Why have so many countries banned the death penalty?  Why does the United States still embrace the practice?

There are three basic arguments against executing criminals.  1) Executing people is immoral.  2) Executing people is not a social deterrent against crime.  3) Executing innocent people is a possibility.

The morality issue is a philosophical argument.  Opponents of the death penalty argue that it is wrong for the state to execute any person regardless of their criminal behavior.  Proponents might argue that executing murderers and other serious offenders is socially responsible and based on longstanding religious traditions.  Both of these arguments are subjective and do not address the practical issues of deterrence or wrongful executions.

The second argument is that the death penalty is not a deterrent against crime.  There are numerous studies on both sides of this issue.  For the most part, the majority of credible scientific studies tend to discount the value of state executions in deterring crime.  This argument is more objective than the morality issue, but is still subject to the validity of studies on the issue.

The most compelling argument against the death penalty is the “Irreversibility” of the practice.  A person who believes the death penalty to be morally appropriate can change his or her mind.  The deterrent value of the death penalty can be reevaluated in terms of a new study that produces different results (Zimmerman 373).

When however, all is said and done, an innocent person who has been wrongfully executed is irreversibly dead.  This fact is objective, scientifically true and irrefutable.  Given this consideration, the irreversibility argument provides the most compelling case against the death penalty.

Those who would argue against the validity of this argument might contend that wrongful executions are judicial anomalies that occur at a statistically insignificant rate.  If executing criminals was the morally correct thing to do, had a significant deterrent value, and the odds of executing the wrong person was astronomically low, then the practice might be appropriate.

Unfortunately, cases of wrongful conviction for crimes meriting the death penalty are not as few as most people might think.  According to a study by Beadau, Putnam and Radelet (Inciardi 397), 119 people convicted of capital crimes have been exonerated and released from death row in the past 37 years.  Given the total number of inmates incarcerated on death rows across the country, this figure represents one in eight inmates wrongfully awaiting execution.

In statistics, a correlation difference of 0.7 or more is typically considered statistically significant.  In the case of wrongfully convicted criminals on death row, the number is 12%.  This is not a statistical anomaly.  It is statistically profound!  Even if capital punishment were proven beyond any doubt to deter crime, the practice of erroneously executing one innocent person for every eight real criminals is simply too high a price to pay.

The criminal justice system in the U.S. is generally considered to be one of the best in the world.  It is however, not without problems.  An extensive study by Columbia University quoted in the book Capital Punishment found that:

Between 1973 and 1995 5,760 individuals sentenced to death nationwide between 1973 and 1995, only 5 percent were actually executed.  And when capital cases were sent back for a new trial, 7 percent of the defendants were found not guilty and less than 20 percent of those who were convicted received another death sentence.  Importantly, of the 4,578 cases that were appealed, the researchers found that there were serious legal flaws in more than two-thirds.  The most common causes of error were “egregiously incompetent defense attorneys who missed demonstrably important evidence, and police and prosecutors who did discover that kind of evidence but suppressed it.”  Similarly, a study of 76 inmates released from death row between 1970 and 1998 because of doubts about their guilt concluded that prosecutorial or police misconduct, perjury, and racial discrimination were most often the factors that influenced the wrongful convictions.  (Inciardi 87)

Notwithstanding those who may have been released from death row on the basis of appellate decisions, DNA evidence, or other factors, there have certainly been individuals who have not escaped wrongful execution.  There are a number of documented cases, but the true number of innocent lives snuffed by the hand of “justice” will never be known.

In a situation like this, the actual number of people wrongfully executed is perhaps not as compelling an argument against capital punishment as the individual lives and families affected by this horror.

Every single person who has been hung, electrocuted, gassed, or “humanely” terminated by lethal injection was a husband or wife, a son or daughter, a mom or a dad, or perhaps a sibling.  Killing criminals may sound to some people like an appropriate response to heinous crimes.  But the high rate of wrongful convictions for capital crimes should give those people cause to reconsider.

Would a person favoring the death penalty be willing to sacrifice their innocent son, or husband, or sister for the sake of ensuring that eight other “real” criminals get put to death?

Works Cited

(Death Penalty: An International Perspective   2010)The Death Penalty: An International Perspective. 2010. Death Penalty Information Center. 29 Oct. 2010 <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-penalty-international-perspective>.

(Inciardi J  Criminal Justice Year Hear)Inciardi, J. Criminal Justice. Edition Here ed. City of publication Here: McGraw-Hill, Year Here. NOOKstudy. Web. 29 Oct. 2010. <URL Here>.

(Zimmerman P  Statistical Variability and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment 2009)Zimmerman, P. “Statistical Variability and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment.” American Law and Economics Review 11.2 (2009): 370-98. EBSCOHOST. 29 Oct. 2010. <http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=111&sid=66ccc77a-9dbd-48ef-8aad-3ad6bb37a126%40sessionmgr112&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=eoh&AN=1094427>.