Death_Penalty_Analysis

Fighting the Death Penalty On Friday November 18, 2011 in Boise, Idaho two groups of men and women stood in the cold morning hours on opposite sides of the road awaiting word from the maximum security prison nearby of the first state sanctioned execution since 1994. One group held signs denouncing the death penalty while the other, composed of the family and friends of the victims, awaited word that justice had been served. At approximately 9:15 AM Paul Rhodes was pronounced dead inside the walls of the prison and those outside dispersed. The protesters left with a sense of defeat yet hoped that the news report of their objections to the death penalty would inspire others to analyze its use and condemn the death penalty before it is too late for another man or woman. The family and friends of the victim left with a belief that the ordeal was done, they could move on with their lives now that this murderer has been served his justice. They hoped that his death will serve as a deterrent for others and were assured he can no longer harm another individual. Instances like the one described are almost common place in the United States since 1977. The issue of the death penalty has been called to question a number of times in various state and federal courts with a large discrepancy of its use from state to state. Upon full analysis of its use there can be little doubt that the death penalty is an ineffective means of punishment with the potential to harm innocent people and fails to deter others. The most substantial argument against the death penalty is the possibility that an innocent person may be killed by the state. A 2009 Gallup poll has shown that despite 61% favorability for the death penalty, 59% of the poll believed that there has been at least one wrongful execution in the past five years. A 2006 episode of the TV show BullSh*t reveals this plausibility with the interview from a former death row inmate, Allen Gell, retelling the story of his murder conviction and sentence to death row despite being in jail at the time of the murder. Northwestern University Law School has established a foundation for aiding wrongfully convicted inmates including those on death row. As of current figures, they have contributed to the exoneration of 13 Illinois death row inmates. A national advocacy group called the Death Penalty Information Center has found that there have been at least 138 people exonerated since 1973 in the country. Death penalty advocates usually state that the legal process has appeals for these reasons, to ensure people wrongfully convicted are given an opportunity to be exonerated through proper legal channels. They go on to point out that no person has ever been convicted of murder and later found to be innocent. This latter statement is untrue. There have been at least two cases of exonerated people decades after their executions. The case of Lena Baker was mentioned in The Guardian in 2005 as one such example of exoneration after execution. Lena Baker was a black maid convicted by an all white male jury after a trial that lasted less than a full day. She claimed being held at gun point by her employer and eventually managed to kill him in self-defense, but was still executed in 1945. The Georgia board of Paroles and Pardons commuted her sentence down to manslaughter in 2005. Similar cases have arisen from the South displaying acts of racism and sexism in the past. NBC Nightly News reporter Mark Manning discussed one such conviction and execution of 14 year old George Stinney in 1944 for murder and rape. Reporter Manning explained Sitnney, a boy so small he had to sit on a book to reach the electric chair, was convicted despite any evidence or a single eyewitness. Many advocates for the death penalty note there have been a number of injustices in the past but new methods of investigation, including DNA and the 1972 Supreme Court case of Furman v. Georgia, ensure equality in the use of the death penalty. They note that there have been no people exonerated after being executed since the 1972 capital punishment reforms. The difficulty their opponents have in finding a case of exonerated executed prisoners since 1977, the year the Supreme Court ended the moratorium on capital punishment, is that many of the governors, judges, attorneys, and other representatives of the judicial review are still in power or at least in a circle of influence to those who are in power. An example of this is the arson and murder case of Cameron Willingham who was executed in 2004. David Grann wrote a piece in The New Yorker describing Willingham’s case and appeals in great detail. According to Grann, the evidence used in the case was found to be misleading and a number of qualified experts, notably a well respected arson investigator, requested clemency to the Texas governor to no avail. The state of Texas has still shown no interest in conducting a re-investigation of the case despite the fact that, “The Innocence Project [had] assembled five of the nation’s leading independent arson experts to review the evidence in the case, and this prestigious group issued a 48-page report finding that none of the scientific analysis used to convict Willingham was valid” (Cameron Todd Willingham). Deterrence is a common justification for the death penalty, but it is also a common fallacy for one reason, murder has not been shown to be deterred by capital punishment. Dozens of articles have discussed the various facts and figures related to homicide and execution rates among states. The figures seem to give a straight forward projection that executions have no effect or even a negative effect on homicide rates. The DPIC has shown that the average homicide rate since 1990 has been marginally smaller in non-death penalty states. The rates in 1990 were 9.5 homicides per 100,000 for death penalty states and 9.16 in non-death penalty states. The numbers have moved dramatically down in both to a rate of 5 per hundred thousand homicides in death penalty states and 4.01 in non-death penalty states as of 2010. A number of studies have used this empirical evidence to prove the opinions of sociologists and economists that the death penalty is effective. A paper by Professor Radelet and one of his students, Tracy Lacock, at the University of Colorado have gone a step further than these rates and debunked those studies that promote the deterrence effect. These two have shown that nearly all recent studies for the deterrence effect on capital punishment are flawed. One such example would be Capital Punishment Works by Roy Adler and Michael Summons. This article claimed a shockingly high prevention rate of homicides at 74 per execution between 1974 and 2004. Radelet and Lacock discovered that, “No attempt was made to see if more murders are prevented in states that execute prisoners, or in states that execute the most, compared to states where the death penalty is not used” (Radelet, 498). They also noted the Adler and Summons calculations “was premised solely on the basis of that observation” (Radelet, 498). The Radelet/Lacock study ended with a questionnaire of the most prominent criminologists in the American Society of Criminology. This study found that “88.2% of the polled criminologists do not believe that the death penalty is a deterrent” (Redelet, 501). There is a rationale explanation of why the deterrence effect does not work. “According to Agnes Heller, a professor at the New School for Social Research, murders occur for three reasons: passion, profit and compulsion” (Narr. Jilette, 2006). If these are truly the only motives for murder, then no murder will be deterred. Murders of passion are done in a moment, with no thought to the consequences of one’s actions and thus, can not be deterred. To kill one for profit will mean that the murderer will be of the impression that they will not be caught and will therefore commit the murder regardless of the consequences, because they believe there will not be any legal consequences. Crimes of compulsion are usually the most heinous and these are committed by the mentally ill, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc. These people have no moral foundation and kill for their own demented pleasure. They attempt to cover up their bloodlust, but they are only concerned with not getting caught, regardless of the punishment. Advocates for the death penalty believe it is an effective means of retributive punishment for crimes of murder but a number of philosophers have argued against this claim for many years. One such philosopher, Hugo Bedau Professor of Tufts University and staunch ACLU advocate, has written a number of papers regarding this issue. In The Case Against the Death Penalty he states “punishment by its nature is retributive, not only the death penalty” and literal retribution would “require us to betray traitors and kill multiple murderers again and again, punishments impossible to inflict” (Bedau). The use of confinement as punishment is a mainstay of the American Judicial System and, along with fines, the only real form of punishment accessible for nearly every other crime. Convicted rapists are not punished by being raped and those convicted of assault and battery are not taken behind the courthouse and roughed up as part of their sentencing. A final reason the death penalty should be stopped in this country is purely a legal reason, it denies due process of the law. The ACLU reasons that, “Its [the Death Penalty’s] imposition is often arbitrary, and always irrevocable – forever depriving an individual of the opportunity to benefit from new evidence or new laws that might warrant the reversal of a conviction, or the setting aside of a death sentence” (ACLU, 2011). For example, the discovery of DNA and its application as evidence in the 1990’s provided dozens of people on death row acquittals. There may have been others prior to this that never had the opportunity to prove their innocence before their executions. It is impossible to predict the advances medical and forensic science may provide for future court cases and possible exonerations for future death row inmates. A final argument death penalty advocates give is that the death penalty prevents the murder of further individuals at the hands of the convicted. There can be no doubt that convicted murders can and do escape prison, but the failure of the prisons to hold inmates appears more of a call for prison security reform than a demand to lethally inject all convicted murderers. A converse view of this is that prison should be feared for this reason and although the death sentence may not be a deterrent, prison sentences are a major deterrent for most crimes. Prison is feared because of the company and not the bars or sub par food. People do not fear prison because they are forced to sleep in a small concrete room and are taken away from other comforts of normal society. The death penalty is an old tradition in American society that many believe to be flawed. The idea of an eye for an eye is a philosophy as old as stoning to death unfaithful women or cutting the hand off a thief. Capital punishment does not provide equitable justice, ties up courts from hearing other cases, and will ultimately result beyond a reasonable doubt that the state has executed an innocent man unless we manage to end this practice before its too late. Works Cited Adler, Roy. Summers, Michael. “Capital Punishment Works.” Wall Street Journal Eastern Edition. 02 Nov. 2007. Web. 14 Nov. 2011. Bedau, Hugo. “The Case Against the Death Penalty.” RCN Business Services. 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2011. “Cameron Todd Willingham: Wrongfully Convicted and Executed in Texas.” The Innocence Project. 2010. Web. 13 Nov. 2011. “Death Penalty.” Penn & Teller Bullsh*t: The Complete Fourth Season. Writ. Penn Jillette and Teller. Dir. Star Price. Showtime, 2007. DVD “Death Penalty.” Gallup Poll 1606. Gallup, Inc. 11 Oct. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. “Facts About the Death Penalty.” Death Penalty Information Center. 18 Nov. 2011. Web. 19 Nov. 2011. Gran, David. “Trial by Fire.” The New Yorker. 7 Sep. 2009: 1-17. Web. 18 Nov. 2011. Radelet, Michael. Lacock, Traci. “Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates' The Leading View of Criminologists.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 99.2 (2009): 489-508. EBSCO Publishing. Web. 14 Nov, 2011. “Rush to Judgment.” NBC Nightly News. Reported by Mark Potter. NBC. 28 Sep. 2011. Web. 13 Nov. 2011. “The Case Against the Death Penalty.” American Civil Liberties Union. 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2011. Younge, Gary. “Pardon For Maid Executed in 1945.” The Guardian. 16 Aug, 2005. Web. 14 Nov. 2011.