Ongoing Debate: Capital Punishment, Essay Example

An ongoing controversy in American society, and one likely to be in place for years to come, is the death penalty as mandated by law for certain and extreme crimes.  On one side, supporters of capital punishment usually insist that it must have a powerfully deterrent effect on potential criminals, and that the death penalty certainly prevents a convicted criminal from offending again.  This side also typically justifies the penalty on moral grounds; when an individuals commits an extreme crime of murder, kidnapping, or terrorism, they essentially surrender the right to live in a civilized society.  On another level, opponents question the deterrent effect of capital punishment, in that many murders and other extreme crimes are not premeditated, and are often the acts of mentally ill individuals who cannot be held responsible for their actions. This in turn connects to the death penalty perceived as a moral wrong.  No matter the reasons a person commits an extreme crime, the state is not ethically permitted to actually take a life because the action itself violates the morality of the society which condemns killing.  Both sides present strong arguments, likely creating the modern reality of varying state statutes regarding capital punishment, and the increasingly long periods in which convicted criminals sentenced to death await the penalty.  Given this consistent element of debate, it is reasonable to conclude that capital punishment will never be fully resolved, and that challenges to existing laws either legalizing or banning it will inevitably assert themselves.

Opposition Viewpoints

On a pragmatic level, those who oppose the death penalty tend to stress that there is no real evidence of capital punishment as a deterrent to violent crime.  Various studies are pointed to, such as the Amnesty International Report identifying that, in Canada, the homicide rate has decreased by 40 percent since 1975, and that the nation abolished the death penalty in 1976 (Jacquette, 2009,  p. 104).  This single fact, it is felt, completely eliminates the deterrence argument of supporters, which so powerfully goes to the society’s need to protect itself.  The implication is that, if capital punishment did prevent extreme crime in an identifiable way, there would be some grounds for considering it.

Opposition also often refers to the reality of mental illness in many cases of extreme criminality.  There is a great deal of debate about this issue alone in psychiatric and legal arenas, simply because mental disorders or illness take so many forms, and to limitless degrees.  Mental illness is too broad a term to be consistently applied to the subject, and the courts are continually seeking to define specifics of conditions which would remove the criminal’s responsibility for the crime.  In 2013, for example, an inmate on Death Row challenged the sentence by claiming to suffer from autism, and consequently entitled to legal protections extended to all such persons.  It is as well noted by studies that approximately 20 percent of all Death Row inmates suffer from some form of mental impairment (Vollum et al, 2014,  p. 88).  It is certainly reasonable then to argue that an individual suffering from schizophrenia, and/or a psychosis creating delusions and an inability to perceive reality, is not responsible for their crimes and cannot be sentenced to death.

Once the deterrent argument is so weakened and the reality of mental illness is set in place, there basically remains only the question of ethics, and opposition is usually emphatic on this point.  Opponents of capital punishment tend to take the view that no act justifies the moral wrong of the state intentionally taking a life (Mandery, 2011, p. 45).  For many, the only reasonable justification for any type of punishment is to bring about positive change; if this is not the goal, then the punishment is not punishment, but revenge (Jacquette, 2009,  p. 21).  A society, in plain terms, cannot refuse to accept murder and then deliberately take a life, no matter the situation.  Revenge is seen as a base desire and one completely removed from a correct system of justice, just as the state’s taking a life is seen as a definite failure of the society’s ethical obligations to itself and to its citizen.

Lastly, opposition has a further – and interesting – argument, in that even the general approval of capital punishment is marked by delays and inconsistencies, which in turn reflect a deep sense in the society that the punishment is wrong.  The courts are continually addressing appeals on capital convictions, just as the legal processes of a capital case are conducted with the most attention to absolute proof of guilt as possible; there can be no mistake in such a conviction, and this reveals society’s awareness of how extreme, and potentially incorrect, the death penalty is.  Capital punishment happens slowly, the actual timing of an execution aside: “The inmates executed in 2011 had been under sentence of death an average of 16.5 years, which was 20 months longer than those executed in 2010” (BJS, 2013).  This would seem to clearly indicate that the society is reluctant to execute criminals, a reluctance opponents of capital punishment see as reflecting the innate sense of it as wrong.  Consequently, the debate side against the death penalty typically denies that there is any deterrence benefit to capital punishment; that it ignores the reality of mental illness, and not deliberate criminality, as the causes of the crimes; that it is morally wrong for a society to simultaneously condemn killing and commit the act itself; and that this is a wrong at least partially known to supporters, given the complex and lengthy capital processes and Death Row durations.

Support

In strictly social terms, the main argument supporting the death penalty is that it deters violent crime in a general sense.  As this is the most severe punishment, it is reasoned that an awareness of it as law must deter the extreme crimes it is in place to address.  Studies reveal that this is in fact the most frequently cited reason for supporting the penalty (Mandery,  p. 31).  Opposition, as noted, often cites statistics indicating that there is no real relation between the death penalty and homicide rates, but this is a position easily countered.  To begin with, there is no escaping the reality that the offender put to death cannot offend again, and this is no small consideration.  Viewed from a different angle, it is plainly frightening to consider as eligible for parole those criminals with histories of violent crime, and this is a major – and reasonable – societal concern.

There is strong evidence behind this concern.  In 1972, the Supreme Court overturned the death penalty statutes in Texas and Georgia, and 598 inmates sentenced to death were released into the mainstream prison populations.  Exhaustive studies have traced the behaviors of these inmates following the ruling, and it is documented that, of the 598, six committed murders within the prison settings and 60 others committed seriously violent crimes.  Over the years, 243 of the original number have been released into society – not including several who escaped and have not been recaptured – and, in total, there have been two violent offenses per year from this population (Mandery, pp. 71-74).  That the ratio of recidivism is relatively small does not in any way lessen the reality that these are acts of extreme violence which would not have occurred, had the prisoners been put to death.

Aside from this specific argument for capital punishment as preventing violent offenders from offending again, there is as well the thinking that the penalty’s deterrent effect in a general sense cannot be known, and consequently cannot be disputed.  Put another way, there is no means to measure murders, rapes, and kidnappings that have not taken place because the potential criminal feared punishment.  The cited Canadian statistic, for example, is inherently flawed logic; it presupposes that a situation after a fact is due to a situation before the fact, and the obvious problem here is that there is no way of knowing what the Canadian homicide rate would be if the death penalty were still in place (Jacquette,  p.  104). This is true of any such scenario simply because, again, there is no way of establishing a deterrent effect when the deterrence is successful.  Supporters of capital punishment then rely on this reasoning, as well as on the likelihood that so severe a punishment must have some deterrent power.

In general terms, supporters of the death penalty do not perceive any ethical dilemma in the punishment.  This is at least partly due to the thinking mentioned earlier, in that the criminal who so radically violates the laws of the society surrenders their right to live.  Opponents tend to present supporters as being nearly fanatical in religious beliefs, and insisting upon traditional values of “an eye for an eye.”  Revenge, and not justice, is the goal, as opponents see such thinking.  However, supporters are usually quick to deny any such agenda, and with solid reasoning behind them.  To say that killing a murderer is as bad an act as that which the murderer committed, and makes the criminal a victim, is another application of flawed logic: “The criminal who takes a life isn’t on a par with someone who has been victimized” (Jacquette,  p. 45).  The circumstances are radically different because the criminal has acted in a way bringing about the justice response, whereas the victims of such crimes are genuinely victims.

Ultimately, supporters of capital punishment tend to be impatient of what they see as the irresponsibility of opponents.  Murder and heinous crimes are not hypothetical issues allowing for debate as to ethics; they are very real crimes of horrifying consequences, and the critical reality is that the subject of the death penalty exists at all because they are in fact committed.  The criminal generates the response, and the crimes are so extreme that only the most extreme response is warranted.  In this view, there is no ethical dilemma because the nature of the crimes demands death, because the offender has defied the most basic values of life and the society, because the criminal must not be given the opportunity to so offend again, and because the message must be sent that such actions are punishable by death.

Conclusion

As the cited evidence of many years spent by inmates on Death Row reveals, capital punishment is a consistently controversial penalty.  Those who oppose it strongly feel that it is a desire for revenge, not justice, which supports it, and that this is inherently unethical.  They are concerned as well with mental illness as prompting extreme crimes, and they tend to dismiss the deterrent potentials of the punishment.  Conversely, supporters see no ethical issue because such criminals invite the death penalty.  These criminals are not victimized because they themselves create victims.  Supporters believe as well that deterrence is probable, as the absence of it cannot be proved, and they rely on the fact that the executed offender cannot harm anyone again.  The conflict is then intense, so it is reasonable to conclude that capital punishment will never be fully resolved, and that challenges to existing laws either legalizing or banning it will inevitably arise in the future.

References

Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).  (2013).  Capital Punishment, 2011 – Statistical Tables. Retrieved 4 May 2014 from http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4697

Jacquette, D.  (2009). Dialogues on the Ethics of Capital Punishment.  Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Mandery, E.  (2011).  Capital Punishment in America: A Balanced Examination. Sudbury: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Vollum, S., Del Carmen, R. V., Frantzen, D., San Miguel, C., & Cheeseman, K.  (2014). The Death Penalty: Constitutional Issues, Commentaries, and Case Briefs. Waltham: Anderson Publishing.