FREE ESSAY ON DEATH PENTALY

DEATH PENTALY

The use of capital punishment has been a permanent fixture in society since the earliest
civilizations. It has been used for various crimes ranging from the desertion of soldiers
during wartime to the more heinous crimes of serial killers. However, the mere fact that
this brutal form of punishment and revenge has been the policy of many nations in the
past does not subsequently warrant its implementation in today's society. The death
penalty is morally and socially unethical, should be construed as cruel and unusual
punishment since it is both discriminatory and arbitrary, has no proof of acting as a
deterrent, and risks the atrocious and unacceptable injustice of executing innocent
people. As long as capital punishment exists in our society it will continue to spark the
injustice which it has failed to curb. 
Capital punishment is immoral and unethical. It does not matter who does the killing
because, when a life is taken by another, it is always wrong. By killing a human, the
state lessens the value of life and actually contributes to the growing sentiment in
today's society that certain individuals are worth more than others. When the value of
life is lessened under certain circumstances such as the life of a murderer, what is
stopping others from creating their own circumstances for the value of one's life such as
race, class, religion, and economics? Immanuel Kant, a great philosopher of ethics, came
up with the Categorical Imperative, which is a universal command or rule that states that
society and individuals must act in such a way that you can will that your actions become
a universal law for all to follow (Palmer 265). There must be some set of moral and
ethical standards that even the government can not go against, otherwise how can the
state expect its citizens not to follow its own example? 
Those who support the death penalty believe, or claim to believe, that capital punishment
is morally and ethically acceptable. The bulk of their evidence comes from the Old
Testament, which actually recommends the use of capital punishment for a number of
crimes. Others also quote the Sixth Commandment which, in the original Hebrew, reads Thou
Shall Not Commit Murder. However, these literal interpretations of selected passages from
the Bible which are often quoted out of context, corrupt the compassionate attitude of
Judaism and Christianity, second of which clearly focuses on redemption and forgiveness
and urges humane and effective ways of dealing with crime and violence. Those who use the
Bible to support the death penalty are by themselves, since almost all religious groups
in the United States regard executions as immoral. 
Those that argue that the death penalty is ethical state that former great leaders and
thinkers such as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Kant, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau,
Montesquieu, and Mill all supported it (Koch 324). However, Washington and Jefferson, two
former presidents and admired men, both supported slavery as well. Surely, the advice of
someone who clearly demonstrated a total disregard for the value of human life cannot be
considered in such an argument as capital punishment. In regard to the philosophers,
Immanuel Kant, a great ethical philosopher, stated that the motives behind actions
determine whether something is moral or immoral (Palmer 271). 
The motives behind the death penalty, which revolves around revenge and the frustration
and rage of people who see that the government is not coping with violent crime, are not
of good will, thereby making capital punishment immoral according to ethical philosophy
(Bruck 329). The question of whether executions are a cruel form of punishment may no
longer be an argument against capital punishment now that it can be done with lethal
injections, but it is still very unusual in that it applies only to a select number of
individuals, making the death penalty completely discriminatory and arbitrary. 
After years of watching the ineffectiveness of determining who should be put to death,
the Supreme Court in the1972 Furman v. Georgia decision invalidated all existing death
sentence statues as violative of the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual
punishment and thus depopulated state death rows of 629 occupants (Berger 352). This
decision was reached not because it was believed that the death penalty was intrinsically
cruel and unusual but because, as Justice Stewart put it, the death penalty as actually
applied was unconstitutionally arbitrary (Berger 353). Local politics, money, race, and
where the crime is committed can often play a more decisive role in sentencing someone to
death than the actual facts of the crime. According to Amnesty International, the death
penalty is a lethal lottery: just one out of every one hundred people arrested for murder
is actually executed (Death Penalty Focus). 
In regards to racial discrimination in sentencing, it has been found that racial bias
focuses primarily on the race of the victim, not the defendant (Berger 355). Only 31 out
of the more than 15, 000 recorded executions in this country have been of white
defendants convicted of killing black victims, while black defendants convicted of raping
white women were commonly sentenced to death (Death Penalty Focus). Stephen Nathanson, a
professor of philosophy at Northwestern University addresses the problems of
discrimination and randomness best by saying, as long as racial, class, religious, and
economic bias continue to be important determinants of who is executed, the death penalty
will continue to create and perpetuate injustice (Nathanson 346). 
Proponents of capital punishment believe that the argument that the death penalty is
discriminatory and arbitrary does not give support to the abolition of capital
punishment, but rather to the extension of it. Edward Koch, the mayor of New York from
1978 to 1989 and death penalty supporter, states that the discriminatory manner of the
death penalty no longer seems to be the problem it once was, yet in 1987, the Supreme
Court case of McCleskey v. Kemp established that in Georgia someone who kills a white
person is four times more likely to be sentenced to death than someone who kills a black
person (Death Penalty Focus). In response to this, supporters of the death penalty
believe that the death penalty should be extended to all murders. This is what was
attempted after the Furman decision. A number of states sought to resolve the
discriminatory and arbitrary nature of the death penalty by simply sentencing to death
everyone convicted of first-degree murder, but the Supreme Court rejected this proposal
saying that mandatory death sentence laws did not really resolve the problem but instead
'simply papered [it] over' since juries responded by refusing to convict certain
arbitrarily chosen defendants of first-degree murder (Berger 353). 
An argument against the death penalty which to sensible and decent persons should seem
undeniable is the fact that innocent people have been murdered by the state in the past
and in all probability more will follow. The wrongful execution of an innocent person is
such an awful injustice that in any civilized society could never be justified, yet this
is the message that the United States is willing to pronounce. Simply put by Professor
Nathanson, to maintain the death penalty is to be willing to risk innocent lives. In
1987, a study conducted by Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet appeared in the Standford Law
Review concerning the execution of innocent people. The study concluded that in the
period between 1900 to 1980, about 350 people were wrongfully convicted of capital
offenses, 139 of the 350 were sentenced to death, and 23 were actually executed
(Nathanson 344). Over this eighty year period, this figure averages out to the death of
an innocent person about every 3.4 years. This fact is extremely disturbing and
rightfully so, yet death penalty advocates blatantly disregard the information or attempt
to justify it in some way. 
Those who support capital punishment claim that such cases of innocent people being
executed have never occurred. For instance, Edward Koch quotes Hugo Bedau in support of
his claim that such cases are not true, saying it is false sentimentality to argue that
the death penalty should be abolished because of the abstract possibility that an
innocent person might be executed. Koch, in an attempt to gain political support, acted
quite unethically by quoting Bedau out of context and implying that such cases have not
occurred. According to David Bruck, a prominent lawyer for South Carolina Office of
Appellate Defense, All Bedau was saying was that doubts concerning executed prisoners'
guilt are almost never resolved. Koch also failed to relate in his essay that Bedau, who
had not yet released the 1987 study, had already comprised a list of murder convictions
since 1900 in which the state eventually admitted error in about 400 hundred cases.
Another response to the fact that innocent people have been executed is that the small
number of innocents executed outweighs the number of lives that will be saved, since the
possibility of being executed will deter others from committing a murder, and that lives
will be saved since that murderer cannot kill again. 
However,scientific studies have failed to prove that executions deter other people from
committing crime. According to Dr. Ernest van den Haag, a well-known scholar in favor of
the death penalty, one cannot claim that it has been proved statistically that the death
penalty does deter more than alternative penalties (Haag 338). Haag supports his stand on
the death penalty by stating that when they have the choice between life and death, 99
percent of all prisoners under sentence of death prefer life in prison. This statistic
proves nothing but the fact that man has an innate desire for survival. Those asked the
question have already committed the crime and thus do not reflect the sentiment of those
considering a crime. Also, people often kill when under great emotional stress or under
the influence of drugs or alcohol - times when they are not thinking of the consequences
(Death Penalty Focus). Career criminals and those that plan a crime do not expect to get
caught, thus making the consequences an invalid issue. In response to the fact that an
executed murderer will never kill again, society must ask itself whether it is morally
and ethically acceptable to risk killing an innocent person when an alternative such as
life imprisonment without possibility of parole exists. In California since 1978, more
than 1,000 people have received this alternate sentence which includes no appeals
process. The public can be assured that those who commit heinous murders and receive this
sentence will never be free again. According to Death Penalty Focus, A recent Field Poll
showed support for the death penalty plummeted when alternative sentencing is available.
Just 29 percent favored death over life without parole plus requiring the defendant to
work in prison and give part of his earnings as restitution to the families of his
victims. 
The use of capital punishment has endured throughout the ages, yet its use today
in a civilized society should no longer be acceptable to morally and ethically conscious
individuals. The vast majority of countries in Western Europe and North and South
America, more than 80 nations worldwide have abandoned capital punishment. Yet, the
United States remains an avid supporter in company with countries such as Iran, Iraq, and
China as one of the major users of capital punishment (Death Penalty Focus). The use of
the death penalty in its discriminatory and arbitrary methods only magnifies inequalities
of race that persist in the criminal justice system and in American society generally
(Berger 355). Even with the death of a guilty man, innocence is lost, even Edward Koch
admits, The death of anyone even a convicted killer diminishes us all. But it is a sad
commentary on the state of this country when we are willing to accept the avoidable death
of an innocent person and allow the death penalty to continue to create and perpetuate
injustice. 
Works Cited
Berger, Vivian, (1988.) Rolling the dice to decide who dies. New York State Bar Journal,
October 
Bruck, David, (1985.) The Death Penalty, The New Republic, May 20, ---------- Death
Penalty Focus (DPF), 
Koch, Edward, Myths and Facts about California's Death Penalty, pamphlet 
--- Death and Justice, How Capital Punishment Affirms Life 
Nathanson, Stephen, (1985.) The New Republic, April 15 
--- What If the Death Penalty Did Save Lives? 
Palmer, Donald, (1987.) An Eye for an Eye? The Morality of Punishing by Death, 
---Does the Center Hold? 
Van den Haag, Ernest, (1996) An Introduction to Western Philosophy, Mayfield Publishing
Company, London. 
--- The Death Penalty Pro and Con: A Debate, (1983.) 
Bibliography
Berger, Vivian, (1988.) Rolling the Dice to Decide Who Dies, New York State Bar Journal
October 
Bruck, David, (1985.) The Death Penalty, The New Republic, May 20,
--- Death Penalty Focus (DPF), 
Koch, Edward Myths and Facts about California's Death Penalty, pamphlet 
--- Death and Justice How Capital Punishment Affirms Life
Nathanson, Stephen, (1985.) The New Republic, April 15, What If the Death Penalty Did
Save Lives? 
Palmer, Donald, (1987) An Eye for an Eye? The Morality of Punishing by Death, Does the
Center Hold? 
Van den Haag,Ernest, (1996) An Introduction to Western Philosophy, Mayfield Publishing
Company, London
--- The Death Penalty Pro and Con: A Debate, 1983.