The High Price of Capital Punishment

Originally written March 29, 2010

As long as humans have lived in groups they have tried to set up formal or informal sets of rules that governed their communities usually based on their unique cultural and religious beliefs.  The price for stepping outside the group rules or social norms has traditionally varied according to the perceived severity of the crime committed.  For the crimes thought to be most serious, death has traditionally been seen as the most appropriate form of punishment.  As we have evolved as a species and learned to critically evaluate our social practices, the trend has been to abolish the death penalty, especially in the most developed countries.  However, out of all the developed countries, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and the United Sates are the only countries that have retained the death penalty.  “Western Europe has abolished the death penalty; Russia commuted the death sentences of all 700 of its condemned prisoners to life; and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights has called for a moratorium on all executions.  The number of countries that have stopped implementing the death penalty has grown to an all-time high of 105 (Dieter, 1999)”.

The reasons that most developed countries and even many developing countries have chosen to abolish the death penalty are many.  Although “supporters of capital punishment insist that fear of execution will prevent at least some criminals from committing serious offenses (Schaefer, 2009), Donohue & Wolfers state that the view that the death penalty deters is still the product of belief, not evidence (2006).  In fact, many experts, including former attorney general Janet Reno, who have analyzed the studies which claim to present evidence for deterrence, have concluded that they simply do not prove reliable under closer scrutiny.  In fact, when looking more closely at the data provided by some of these studies, “on balance the evidence suggests that the death penalty may increase the murder rate (Donohue & Wolfers, 2006),” which may be one explanation as to why the crime rates in the United States remain comparatively high.

The thought of state sponsored murder has always bothered me, and upon further research on the practical aspects of capital punishment, I find it extremely difficult to support any other position other than the complete abolishment of the death penalty.  I believe that at its core the death penalty is morally wrong because humans are fallible and the only entity suitable to pass down final judgment on a person is God.  Revenge and retribution should never be carried out by the government in a civilized society and I do believe any relatively evolved human being should never be comfortable, ultimately, with the possibility of executing innocent people.  Furthermore, it has been proven time and again that there are obvious that social and racial discrimination make it more likely that minorities and the poor will be sentenced to death, in addition to the fact that carrying out executions and keeping prisoners in death row does not make sense economically or practically.  “Research has firmly established that a modern death penalty system costs several times more than an alternative system in which the maximum criminal punishment is life imprisonment without parole (Radelet & Borg, 2000).  In the U.S. specifically the U.N. Commission on Human Rights has noted that there are aspects of the death penalty that appear to be especially egregious and I agree wholeheartedly with their assessment.

“The international human rights community has identified its chief concerns about the death penalty in the U.S.: The execution of juvenile offenders; the execution of those suffering from mental retardation or severe mental illness; the execution of foreign nationals who were not informed of their rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations; the arbitrary application of the death penalty and the related problem of racial and economic bias; the length of time that death row inmates spend in extreme isolation and deprivation between sentencing and execution (Dieter, 1999).”  The first on the list is the question of whether or not youths who have been convicted of violent crimes should be subject to the death penalty.

For the reasons stated above the capital punishment has proven to be an impractical, ineffective, discriminatory and morally questionable way of dealing with crime.  These reasons become even more crucial when dealing with juvenile criminal offenders.  “Nowhere is the U.S. in such clear and direct conflict with the consensus of international law as with the execution of juvenile offenders. The practice of executing those who were under 18 at the time of their crime is directly prohibited by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the American Convention on Human Rights.  So broad is the acceptance of this ban that it is widely recognized as a norm of customary international law, i.e., a principle so universally accepted that it supersedes specific laws and treaties (Dieter, 1999).”  The reason that the international community is so opposed to the execution of juveniles is similar to the reasons why it should be unthinkable to execute the mentally challenged or mentally ill.  If it is unjust to execute those with lowered mental capacity, is it not also logical to conclude that it is wrong to execute juveniles, who society agrees do not have the developed judgment of an adult?

I am sincerely hopeful that in the years to come the United States continues to consider the effects of the death penalty in our society and more and more states move to abolish it completely until the U.S. joins the rest of the civilized world and stops executing its citizens.  “Even formerly strong supporters now express doubts.  For example, associate justice Sandra Day O'Conner, who authored some severe death penalty opinions, apparently has changed her mind.  When she addressed the Minnesota bar, she congratulated the citizens of that state for not legalizing the death penalty in part because probabilistic reasoning strongly suggests that some states have executed people who were innocent in the 30 years since the High Court relegalized this penalty (Jacobs, 2008).”  In the meantime, I believe it would be very productive to look at the most egregious aspects of capital punishment and make a concerted effort to remove as much as possible the social and racial bias and the inclusion of juveniles and others with diminished mental capacity.

References

Dieter, R. (October 1999). International Perspectives on the Death Penalty: A Costly Isolation for the U.S.  Retrieved August 7, 2010, from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/international-perspectives-death-penalty-costly-isolation-us

Donohue, J. & Wolfers, J. (April, 2006). The death penalty: no evidence for deterrence.  Economists’ Voice.  Retrieved from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/DonohueDeter.pdf

Jacobs, D. (2008). Politics, racial inequality and punishment. Contemporary Sociology,  37(2), 111-114.  Retrieved August 6, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 1441543631).

Radelet, M. & Borg, M. (2000). The changing nature of death penalty debates. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 43-61.  Retrieved August 6, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 63046717).

Schaefer, R.T. (2009) Sociology: A brief introduction (8th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill