The Death Penalty - Should It Still Be an Option?

The Death Penalty - Should It Still Be an Option?

Word Count: 1,987

 

Introduction

In the stimulus material, Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu’s novel, The Book of Joy, it is expounded that the only way for people within a culture or community to experience true happiness is through love, compassion, and generosity. In materialistic societies such as the United States, it makes sense that people may be lacking these personal attributes. Furthermore, it is understood that the foundation on which the country is built and endures lacks them as well. For the sake of simplicity, in this report, compassion is defined as “sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it” (Merriam-Webster 2020). When analyzing an area in which compassion is most critical, the justice system lacks it entirely. This issue is exemplified by the implementation of the death penalty. While it is straightforward to some that the use of capital punishment is the absolute opposite of compassion, many Americans still argue that it is an effective method to handle the offenders of violent crimes. Since the use of the death penalty is still widely debated, and determines the future of many Americans, it is crucial that the question be asked: Should the death penalty still be a viable option for punishing violent offenders?

The Death Penalty - Should It Still Be an Option?

History of the Death Penalty

The death penalty has a long and complex history throughout the United States. In order to maintain a modern viewpoint on the issue, this report will begin with its reinstatement by the Supreme Court in 1976 (CNN 2020). The United States is considered one of the most progressive nations in the global community, yet the reinstatement of the death penalty placed the country in the minority, considering that currently more than 70% of countries globally have abolished capital punishment (Death Penalty Information Center 2020).  Since its reinstatement in 1976, 29 out of 50 states have chosen to implement the death penalty, meaning that in more than half of the United States the death penalty is alive and well (NCSL 2020). 

The Question of Humaneness

Although the death penalty is legal nationwide, 21 states have chosen not adopt it due to the debate over humanitarianism. While it is a conversation that many people do not want to have, former President Obama catalyzed discourse on the topic in 2015 after stating that he had struggled for a long time with regard to the death penalty, and that recent botched executions had caused him to wonder whether the United State’s application of capital punishment was still humane (Liptak 2015). The debate over the humaneness of the death penalty extends even further, as its history has shown various times that methods used for executing prisoners are abusive. Many people believe that lethal injection, the most recent and accepted form of execution, is a medical procedure and thus ethical. This idea is simply not the case, as “Today in the United States [lethal injection] violates ethical codes for physicians to be involved, so usually the people who are involved in the executions are not physicians, and they're not properly trained to do an IV insertion, much less an execution” (Radelet 2015). The idea that medically trained professionals should involve themselves in executions is another widely debated topic throughout the medical community, with many trained professionals standing by the fact that, “[their] job is to be life-affirming, and participating in an execution is inconsistent with that mission because it ends up making [them] agents of the state in killing people'' (Grinberg 2015). Furthermore, not only are physicians not involved with the executions themselves, but no doctors were involved in the design and creation of the process at all. The study The Lethal Injection Quandary: How Medicine Has Dismantled the Death Penalty, explains that since no doctors would get involved in the process due to ethical reasons, Oklahoma politicians Senator Bill Dawson and State Representative Bill Wiseman, who are famed with catalyzing the movement towards lethal injeciton, turned to A. Jay Chapman, the chief medical examiner in Oklahoma. Chapman, upon contact, said that, “[he] was an expert in dead bodies but not an expert in getting them that way” (Denno 2007). In turn, lethal injection has proven to often be ineffective, having a 3% botch rate, higher than any other form of execution (Chalabi 2014). One of the most recent examples of such is the case of Warren Keith Henness, after which Ohio’s governor granted execution reprieve over concerns over the lethal injection process. After analyzing the attempted execution, it was understood that the problem lied in midazolam, the first drug in the lethal injection protocol. The Death Penalty Information Center explains the complexity of the issue, stating that as opposed to being an anaesthetic, it functions only as a sedative, not rendering the prisoner sufficiently unconscious to block the painful effects of pancuronium bromide, a paralytic, and the third drug, potassium chloride, which he said would feel, “as though fire was being poured,” through the prisoner’s veins. He also noted midazolam executions consistently caused the prisoner to experience fluid buildup in the lungs, which he said was ‘painful, both physically and emotionally, inducing a sense of drowning and the attendant panic and terror, much as would occur with the torture tactic known as waterboarding’” (Merza 2019). As horrific as midazolam is now understood to be, it is still commonly used in executions, and when forced to defend its use in court, states often turn to the same expert witness, Dr. Roswell Lee Evans, known for being one of the few medical professionals who supports the use of the drug. However, as The Washington Post provides, Evans has no experience with the drug, and when asked the questions, ‘Have you ever been involved in research regarding midazolam?’ and ‘Have you ever been involved in research regarding anaesthetics of any sort?’, Evans responded ‘no’ to both (Balko 2015). In the end, the only acceptable conclusion is that if the one aspect that’s making the public comfortable with lethal injection is that it’s humane, it is not. As Oliver explains, “the fundamental fact to understand about lethal injection is that it is a show. It is designed not to minimize the pain of people being executed, but to maximize the comfort of those that want to support the death penalty without confronting the reality of it, which is that it’s violent, it’s brutal, and it’s never going to be anything other than that” (Oliver 2019). 

Economics of the Death Penalty

In modernday discourse surrounding the death penalty in the United States, the most common justification for it is the cost efficiency in comparison to alternatives such as life imprisonment. However, while this idea may have been the reality in the past, current studies have shown the  opposite to be true. The 2009 study, Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis, concludes that “all of the studies on the cost of capital punishment conclude it is much more expensive than a system with life sentences as the maximum penalty” (Death Penalty Information Center, 2009). They argue further in stating that the money put towards the death penalty each year could be used much more effectively, as Professor Michael Vitiello, a reasercher of prison reform states, “the savings could be used to make streets safer” (Vitiello 2009). In reality, the use of the death penalty is only driving costs higher as well as driving funds away from where they can be most helpful in creating long term reform and safety in  communities. 

Crime Rates and the Death Penalty

When governments first implemented the death penalty, it was used to make a public show of punishment as a way of  invoking fear throughout the surrounding community. However, the death penalty does not deincentivize crime. In a study conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice, the results are clear that, “[the death penalty] does not have an effect bringing down crime rate” (Eisen 2015). Moreover, not only does the death penalty not reduce crime rates, but a clear trend has shown that states with the death penalty see more crime than states without it, showing that “during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48% - 101% higher than in states without the death penalty” (Death Penalty Information Center 2020). However, it is important to consider the limitations of this study.  When understanding crime rates, it is also critical to take into account a states population, as well as crime rates prior to the implementation or removal of the death penalty, which these numbers do not do.  

Race and the Death Penalty

Race cannot be detached from the United States criminal justice system, which means that racial inequality plays a large role in the inhumane and biased system that is the death penalty. The Equal Justice Intiaive explains in an analysis of a report from the National Registry of Exonerations that African Americans convicted of murder are about 50 percent more likely to be innocent and, on average, African American exonerees waited three years longer before release from prison than whites (Stevenson 2017). The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) further confirms this disproportionality, quantifying that people of color make up 43% of executions and 55% of those awaiting executions (ACLU 2020). A seperate study conducted by the ACLU finds that “black defendents are four times more likely to get death penalty than white defendents” (ACLU 2020). While it is hard to seperate many current issues from race, the disproportional rates at which black Americans are sentenced to death, too often when they are innocent, show that the death penalty is extremely biased, and cannot truly be a system that enforces justice for all people. 

Execution and Error Rates

In order to truly understand the importance of discussion surrounding the death penalty is, it is crucial to quantify the impact it has on communities throughout the country. Currently, throughout the United States roughly 2,656 people are sitting on death row (NAACP 2019). In 2019, 22 people were executed and 1,512 people have been executed since 1976, the year of reinstatement (Death Penalty Information Center 2019). While these proportions may seem small in comparison to the United States prison population, the rate of error in executions in the United States is far too large to be overlooked. A study conducted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America predicts that roughly 4% of all people sentenced to death are innocent of the crimes they were charged with, and since 1973, there have been 166 death row exonerations and more are expected to come, as the use of DNA evidence has become more reliable and accessible (Gross 2014). The error rate in lethal injection and wrongful conviction alone is enough to prove that the death penalty system is lacking all compassion. The want and need to ameliorate other’s pain is a natural human emotion, and the death penalty is a system that functions solely to make others suffer, and should in no way continue to be a considerable form of punishment. 

Conclusion

Compassion is a virtue that is crucial to happiness for all people, but when reflecting on the death penalty, it is clear that it is not a humane or tolerable way for offenders to be punished, and does not benefit any party involved. While many people work to justify it by saying that the people who are being executed are the most violent, heinous offenders, it is not about them. It’s about the systems the government has put in place, and how communities across the country respond to crimes of violence, and whether or not citizens and politicians will continue to allow it to be done in a way that hurts the integrity of the justice system, the economy, racial equity progress, and most profoundly, how it destroys and divides communities. 

References

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Amnesty International. (2009, June 18). A clear scientific consensus that the death penalty does not deter. Retrieved May 26, 2020, from https://www.amnestyusa.org/a-clear-scientific-consensus-that-the-death-penalty-does-not-deter/

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Death Penalty Information Center. (2019, January 28). Governor Grants Execution Reprieve Over Concerns About Ohio's Lethal-Injection Process. Retrieved May 26, 2020, from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/governor-grants-execution-reprieve-over-concerns-about-ohios-lethal-injection-process

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Stevenson, B. (2019, December 11). Innocent african americans more likely to be wrongfully convicted. Retrieved May 26, 2020, from https://eji.org/news/innocent-african-americans-more-likely-wrongfully-convicted/