Capital Punishment: Legality, Effectiveness, and Availability of Alternatives

Recently I watched “The exonerated”, and it has come to my attention that there are several issues concerning capital punishment. Capital punishment, which is the legal execution of a prisoner is another expression of the death penalty. To find out more about capital punishment and how the issues raised in the film apply to our current society of the United States, I decided to do my research report on this. My hypothesis is ‘Capital punishment is an unfair and cruel system that should be abolished in the United States.’ My three key questions to prove my hypothesis are; where is capital punishment legal in the United States, and has it proven to be effective in deterring crime? What are the flaws in the capital punishment system that makes it unfair and cruel? Is life imprisonment without parole a more beneficial alternative to capital punishment?

So, where is capital punishment legal in the United States, and has it proven to be effective in deterring crime?

The article from The Sun titled “On death row: which US states still have the death penalty?” states that capital punishment is legal in 28 states, with it being abolished in 22 states since it became legal in the United States. It also declares that there has been a decline in the support for capital punishment over the years. According to Gallup, public support for the death penalty has dropped dramatically, from 80% in the mid-1990s to just 55% in 2020.

This data makes me feel relieved and gives me a sense of hope that our society is recognising the flaws in the capital punishment system and it will soon be abolished in all states in the United States.

A report written by The American Civil Liberties Union titled “The case against the death penalty” states: “the death penalty is not a viable form of crime control”. When asked to rank the most effective methods of crime reduction, police chiefs ranked the death penalty as the least effective in terms of deterrence. They stated that the more efficient factors for lowering crime rates were “curbing drug use and putting more officers on the street, longer sentences, and gun control.” This demonstrates that the death penalty has had no significant impact on crime deterrence in the United States. The most popular argument in favor of the death penalty is that the threat of execution has a greater impact on criminal behavior than incarceration. I disagree with this argument because the vast majority of capital offenses are committed under extreme emotional stress or while under the influence of drugs or alcohol when rational thinking is impaired. This means violence is often perpetrated by those who are oblivious to the implications for themselves and others, implying that the threat of execution does not influence their decision to commit violent crimes. Furthermore, because the majority of capital crimes are committed in the heat of the moment, it is difficult to see how the threat of any punishment might deter a non-premeditated offense. I think all this information clearly shows that capital punishment doesn’t solve the crime problem in America. The states where the death penalty is legal don’t have lower criminal homicide rates than the states where the death penalty is illegal. Between 2000 and 2010, states that practiced capital punishment had 25-46% higher rates than the states that did not. The author claims that the reason behind this is because “a return to the exercise of the death penalty weakens socially based inhibitions against the use of lethal force to settle disputes.” Although the death penalty guarantees that the convicted prisoner will not commit any additional crimes, there is no evidence that it has a deterrent impact on society. All of this evidence reveals that the most popular argument in favor of the death penalty is wrong, as it has shown no effectiveness in deterring crime in the United States. This leads me to consider if the death penalty doesn’t deter crime, what is another viable reason as to how it positively affects society? I believe that the millions of dollars that are paid towards these executions should be allocated to different areas that would benefit and improve the criminal justice system in the United States. By abolishing the death penalty, more time and money could be allocated to solving the root causes of crime, such as mental health, housing, educational access, and long-term employment opportunities. This information helps further prove my hypothesis that “Capital punishment is an unfair and cruel system that should be abolished in the United States” because once these problems are addressed, it would help create safer communities and possibly prevent future crime.

What are the flaws in the capital punishment system that make it unfair and cruel?

A report from the Equal Justice Initiative titled “Death Penalty states: “the death penalty in America is a flawed, expensive policy, defined by bias and error”. This source is reliable because it contains relevant information and it is a government official website. The author claims that the death penalty system in the United States treats the rich and guilty better than the underprivileged and innocent. I agree with this claim because the quality of a defendant’s legal team is the main factor in determining whether or not they will be sentenced to death, and hiring an effective lawyer is expensive. Since most defendants facing capital charges cannot afford to hire an attorney, they are assigned lawyers who are usually overworked, underpaid, and inexperienced in death penalty cases. Few states in America provide sufficient funding for capital defense counsel, meaning there is a critical lack of resources for investigation and expert assistance. This means these appointed lawyers frequently fail to conduct thorough investigations, call witnesses, and challenge forensic evidence, resulting in death sentences for a large number of innocent people. Since 1973, 1532 people have been executed in the United States, with 183 inmates being exonerated and released from their death row sentence. This shows that for every nine people executed, one person on death row has been innocent. Not having adequate funding for capital defense counsel, I find to be a fixable excuse. I believe that insufficient funding for capital defense counsel is an unacceptable reason why innocent people are being placed on death row. I also believe this is a reflection of humanity prioritizing the wrong things. This is because these innocent prisoners are being subjected to long-term physiological harm, which could have been prevented if our society prioritized improving the broken justice system in the United States. This article also states that ‘’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’’. The author argues that the death penalty in America is a “direct descendant of lynching”. I agree with this because similarly, an article written by Emmaline Soken- Huberty titled “5 reasons why the death penalty is wrong” states: “when researchers delve deeper, they discover patterns of discrimination based on race”. Emmaline explains that although black people only make up 13% of the US population, they make up over 40% of the prisoners with a death sentence. I think all this information clearly shows that the capital punishment system in the United States is biased and filled with errors. I think the author’s view of capital punishment emphasizes that the death penalty is unfair and cruel and needs to be abolished in the United States and should cause our society to lack faith in the United States criminal justice system.

The article “Botched executions: Infamous examples of trouble on death row” written by Crystal Ponti, explains the cruelty and the effect that botched executions have on a prisoner. I find this source to be reliable as it was published in August 2020 and contains recent and relevant information by a qualified journalist. According to Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College and author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions “A botched execution is an execution which does not follow the legal protocol or, more importantly, it doesn’t comport with what might be called the standard operating procedure”. An estimated three percent of all executions in the United States between 1890 and 2010, were botched. These estimates show that the procedure for executing prisoners in the United States is seriously flawed. When executions are botched it results in a long and extremely painful death causing the prisoner to suffer immensely. Despite lethal injection being the most ‘humane’ option, it has the highest rate of error. Several failed or botched executions are documented in this article. One of these botched executions occurred on July 23rd, 2014 when Joseph Wood was executed by lethal injection. Joseph Wood should have died within 10 minutes of receiving the first injection, but it took an agonising two hours due to a violation of the Arizona protocol. This botched execution was blamed on the fact that the state had used a new cocktail of lethal drugs. This proves to me that this is a cruel punishment as several witnesses stated that for an hour and forty minutes Joseph continued to gasp, gulp, and struggle to breathe. I also believe that these botched executions need to receive more attention and not be described as a slight error in admission. According to Sarat, history has proved that finding a failsafe method of taking a human life during execution is unlikely. I agree with this statement since it is in our nature for humans to make mistakes, therefore as long as humans are in charge of the process, there is always the risk of human error. This information proves that the process for executing a prisoner is cruel, as it causes severe suffering when carried out incorrectly, and it is unlikely to execute a prisoner without any complications every time.

According to a report titled “Aging death row: Is executing old or infirm inmates cruel?” written by Kim Chandler, the death row population in the United States is aging. There are approximately 2,800 people on death row in prisons across the United States, with approximately 1,200 of them being over the age of fifty. It is often argued that executing someone who is mentally frail or whose medical conditions could complicate the execution procedure is cruel. This article provides information into the case against someone that was serving the death sentence named Vernon Madison. Vernon Madison is sixty-seven years of age, and has been serving decades on death row, he was convicted in 1985 for the murder of a police officer. Since his incarceration his speech has become slurred, he suffers from confusion, causing him to sometimes believe he is near release. Maddison’s attorney, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, claims that “killing a fragile man suffering from dementia is unnecessary and cruel.” The source “On death row: which US states still have the death penalty?” was also relevant to this point, as it stated that for those found guilty, the average time between sentencing and execution is fourteen years and eight months. I found this source reliable and useful as it was published on 20th, November 2020 so the information is recent and relevant, but it also made me question the lengthy process for the execution of a prisoner. When I considered this new information I realized that the lengthy process between sentencing and execution is one of the biggest flaws in the capital punishment system. I think we need to consider that after this time are the prisoners being executed the same people who committed the crime? Vernon Maddison’s case brings me back to this question. I believe that if the convicted prisoner has gained a mental illness during their time in incarceration that causes them to have no memory of the crime they committed, they do not need to be executed. They are no longer a threat to society or anyone else, so I think they should be allowed to live out the rest of their days in prison. If the execution procedure would be complicated due to a medical condition, which would cause the process to be extremely agonising it would be inhumane to subject any prisoner to this punishment.

Is life imprisonment without parole a more beneficial alternative to capital punishment?

Christopher Reinhart, a chief attorney, explained the differences in how inmates are treated on death row compared to inmates serving a life without parole sentence in an article titled “Prison conditions for death row and life without parole inmates.” I find this source to be reliable as it contains relevant information and the author has credentials and is qualified to write about Capital Punishment even though the article was published in April 2011. It is often argued that life without parole, or commonly known as LWOP, is a more ethical alternative to capital punishment. The article explains that life without parole inmates have fewer restrictions than death row inmates and have more access to exercise, sunlight, and social interactions. Death row inmates are allowed two hours of recreation outside of their cells six days a week and are always isolated from other prisoners, whereas life without parole inmates can spend six to seven hours each day out of their cell and are allowed to interact with other prisoners. This has had a positive effect on the prisoners, as they have been shown to have better mental health than death row inmates because they are not subjected to as much isolation as death row inmates. I believe that conditions for inmates in prisons in the United States need to be improved, but the conditions for those on LWOP are better than on the death penalty. This makes me believe that replacing the death penalty with this sentence would be an improvement. Another advantage to the life without parole sentence is that it is less expensive than capital punishment, with capital punishment costing roughly half as much. If the death penalty were abolished and replaced with this sentence, this money could be used to improve the criminal justice system in the United States. This money could be used to fund more rehabilitation programs for prisoners, which would assist them after their release and make them more productive members of society. All of this information illustrates that life without parole has more societal and economic benefits than the death penalty. This illustrates that the death penalty should be abolished in the United States and replaced with this sentence.

The article “Life without parole is no moral alternative to the death penalty “ written by America Magazine claims that life without parole has the same result as the death penalty: death in prison. In 2000 the U.S Catholic bishops wrote that “Abandoning the parole system, as some states have done…turns prisons into warehouses where inmates grow old, without hope, their lives wasted.” And, as Pope Francis stated in the 2015 United States Congress, “A just and necessary punishment must never exclude the dimension of hope and the goal of rehabilitation.” This is a valid statement because without hope and redemption what motivation do the prisoners have to live. Also, neither of these sentences allows for the prisoners to undergo a personal transformation or repair the damage they have caused. ?? Additionally, four percent of those on death row were wrongfully convicted according to a National Academy of Science survey on previous exonerations. If that figure applies to those serving a life without parole sentence, it means that an estimated 2,000 people are incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. A consequence of this alternative sentence is that the innocent people serving life without parole are unlikely to have their convictions overturned because they do not have the same access to state-funded legal assistance and unlimited appeals as those on death row do. This brings me back to the topic of hope; the lives of these innocent people, and their chance for justice, have been squandered because their case is unlikely to be investigated. “I wish I still had that death sentence,” Randy Arroyo, an inmate currently serving the LWOP sentence said. “I believe my chances have gone down the drain. No one will ever look at my case.” This information makes me wonder whether life without the possibility of parole is a better punishment or if it has just as many disadvantages as the death penalty system. However, there are still advantages that come with the LWOP sentence that need to be considered. The author’s perspective on capital punishment made me consider things I hadn’t previously considered. While several valid points were made about why life without parole is not a viable alternative to the death penalty, I still believe it is a better system. It eliminates several of the risks associated with the death penalty and is more cost-effective, which means that if capital punishment is replaced with this sentence, more money will be available to improve prisons in the United States. As a result, I continue to believe that the death penalty should be abolished, as it is an antiquated form of punishment.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, through my findings, I have been able to further prove my hypothesis that capital punishment is an unfair and cruel system and should be abolished in the United States. The evidence I found to support this was proof that the capital punishment system is cruel and unfair because it has a high rate of error and bias. It also subjects the prisoners to severe physiological harm and what has been described as 'torture.' Based on my research our society should lack faith in the criminal justice system in the United States and consider replacing the death penalty with alternatives that are less biased and have fewer failure rates. Life without parole is a more beneficial approach to punish prisoners in both an economic and societal way.