A Deeper Look at the Death Penalty

Through our class discussions and the articles and books I’ve read about the death penalty, there seems to be a fairly common array of arguments against the death penalty which appear over and over again. Innocent people have been sentenced to death, it has not shown to be an effective deterrent, and finally, it is viewed as a violation of human rights. However, when examining these arguments against the death penalty, many times it appears these arguments are actually attacking our justice system as a whole and the way in which it implements the death penalty, not necessarily the theory behind the death penalty itself.

To begin with, one of the major problems associated with the death penalty is the fact that innocent lives have been sentenced to death. However, I do not believe this to be a failure of the death penalty; I see this as a failure of our justice system. Police abusing their power during their investigation and interrogation where they falsify evidence and coerce false confessions, defendants who are assigned overworked and underpaid attorneys who have neither the time nor the resources to provide an adequate defense, and the judges and juries who become emotional and biased when dealing with heinous crimes are the things responsible for innocent lives being unjustly punished. Merely abolishing the death penalty will not fix these problems; it will only remove one of the consequences of these problems. If we can fix our justice system at every stage, from the initial arrest to conviction, we can greatly reduce the number of innocent people found guilty and therefore greatly reduce the chances of innocent people being sentenced to death.

The prevalence of innocent people being found guilty of crimes they did not commit is also one of the reasons why the death penalty is not effective as a deterrent. For a punishment to be effective it must occur fairly quickly after the offense, must be applied consistently, and must fit the crime. The court’s usage of the death penalty does none of these things. Generally, inmates spent an average of 8 to 10 years on death row. They spend this much time on death row so that their case can be reviewed and appeals can be made in order to ensure this person did in fact commit the crime they were found guilty of and also to ensure their crime is indeed worthy of the death penalty. If our system could be reworked as stated before to reduce the number of innocent lives being found guilty, perhaps we would be able to reduce the number of years inmates spend on death row. Furthermore, the death penalty is currently employed sporadically at best. It is used inconsistently across the United States and within individual states as well. If the death penalty became a national punishment, one whose usage was carefully restricted so as to guarantee it would only be applied when dealing with those crimes of the most heinous nature (although I realize this criteria would be difficult to define), and one which was applied on a consistent basis with similar crimes receiving similar punishments, perhaps it would have the chance to become a more effective deterrent.

If the death penalty did in fact become a consistently used national punishment, one which was only employed when dealing with the most terrible of offenses, I do not see how it could still be viewed as a violation of human rights. If our justice system laid out the specific crimes which would justify the usage of the death penalty and applied that punishment consistently when dealing with those specific crimes, then anyone who would still choose to commit those crimes is voluntarily forfeiting their right to life. They would know their actions would bring about the death penalty if arrested and convicted, and yet, if they still choose to engage in those behaviors despite the consequences, then they are voluntarily giving up their right to life. Their execution would therefore not be a violation of their rights but rather the consequence to their behaviors which they agreed to.

The fact of the matter is there are some crimes which are so horrible that merely sentencing that individual to life in prison without the possibility of parole feels completely and inherently unjust. It is what Scott Turow refers to as “moral proportion” (Ultimate Punishment pp 63). The idea of letting a man like Gacy or Dahmer live day in and day out fantasizing and reliving each and every moment they spent torturing their victims feels unjust. The only punishment which is morally proportional to the acts they committed is execution. If our system could fix its internal problems of corruption, inefficiency, and subjectivity and change the way it implements the death penalty (as discussed above), then the current problems associated with the death penalty would be greatly reduced giving it the chance to be used in the way it was meant to be used.