rabidhatrabbit

Capital punishment is alive and well, but more states are giving it the death penalty March 17, 2013

The recent decision by the Maryland state legislature to abolish capital punishment makes Maryland the 18th U.S. State to give the death penalty its own death sentence. As of March 16th of  2013, the states which have no legal form of capital punishment are listed with the date of abolition and include: Wisconsin (1853), West Virginia (1965),  Vermont (1964), Rhode Island (1984), North Dakota (1973), New York (2007), New Mexico (2009), New Jersey (2007), Minnesota (1911), Michigan (1846), Massachusetts (1984), Maryland (2013), Maine (1887), Iowa (1965), Illinois (2011), Hawaii (1957), Connecticut (2012), and Alaska (1957)[1]. While still in the minority, these states are kept in good company by the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and a host of overseas territories. The federal government of the United States and the U.S. Armed services, on the other hand, reserve the capacity to perform executions for capital offenses.

I know that it’s an old saw among English instructors that freshman composition classes always want to write about topics like abortion, immigration, and of course capital punishment, but I never took such a class so this is new to me. To put it bluntly, I am an opponent of capital punishment; I am also a human being. When I read about the suffering of other human beings at the hands of violent or treacherous criminals, I have the same reaction of anger, disgust, and fear that anyone else would, but I temper these base feelings with the ideals that I strive to uphold. In a not too distant conversation with my wife, she confessed that she wanted a confessed murderer and rapist to die for the crimes that he comitted. My reply was that I too can want a thing, yet still realize that wanting it is wrong.

To me, capital punishment is immoral to its core and simply a placation of our instincts toward wrath and retribution. The foremost issue that favors abolishing capital punishment is the difficulty inherent in establishing the guilt of the accused. This alone should be reason enough to abolish the death penalty, given that countless confessed criminals have later been exonerated of crimes by contradictory evidence in cases ranging from murder to rape. Guilt, grief, and the questioning tactics employed by investigators can all contribute to a person giving a false confession and legal professionals know this [2]. So, too, can faulty evidence collection and handling techniques lead to errors in analysis and false convictions. It is for these reasons that guilt can be in question despite the best efforts of everyone involved in the legal process.

Second in importance is the issue of fairness with regard to sentencing. While we idealize our justice system as a mechanical process devoid of prejudice or bias, the reality is that many things that shouldn’t contribute to the outcome of cases do play a role. This is reflected in statistically significant differences in conviction rates and sentencing for crimes based on factors ranging from income to gender, and most notoriously by race. I expect that every one of us, to the last man or woman would hope to have a jury like the one described in Twelve Angry Men were we wrongfully accused of a crime, yet juror selection frequently weeds out exactly the type of people with strong convictions, and the death qualification process significantly alters the composition of juries to include fewer minorities and women. Most damning of all,  the death qualification process also produces juries that render higher conviction rates than their unscreened counterparts[3].

While many states have abolished the death penalty based on the economic inefficiency of the appeals process, I plan to handle this summarily. Quite simply, due to the numerous procedural hurdles that have been built into the legal system to guard against both wrongful convictions and unfair trials, it is more expensive to sentence a convicted prisoner to death than to imprison him or her for life. Obviously, this is a necessary safeguard for an irreversible verdict. Yet while a hotly contested debate continues over whether capital punishment serves as a deterrent against violent crime, the cost of prosecuting capital cases diminishes the funding available for proven deterrents such as additional law enforcement personnel.

The final piece of the puzzle regarding capital punishment are the moral issues which manifest themselves. Naturally, the argument differs from person to person depending on their unique philosophy and values. To briefly explain mine, I have three objections. First, I feel that it is deeply disturbing that the state employs people for the purpose of killing other human beings who are in a state of incapacitation. This differs greatly from giving a soldier, police officer, or even a private citizen the authorization to use deadly force in protecting themselves from harm. Instead, it is a clinical and highly procedural way of ending the life of another human being who has been rendered to a state of helplessness.

Second, I feel that retribution should not be the primary goal of the justice system. Altogether, I strongly lean towards the rehabilitation of criminals over the use of punitive actions. While I understand that most persons convicted of capital crimes would otherwise never be eligible for reintroduction to society, I wonder if they can play a useful role in determining the best methods of rehabilitating less violent offenders. In other words, I am advocating using capital punishment worthy criminals as guinea pigs for rehabilitative psychology and conditioning.

Finally and most importantly, I fear that execution prevents the condemned from making progress toward redemption. Redemption has no outwardly verifiable effects, but occurs within the mind and soul of the individual. It is the act of coming to terms with one’s self and with it one’s baser instincts and vile inclinations. Christians see redemption as the bestowal of forgiveness by God, while Muslims view it as a form of surrender, and stoics think of it as a process of separating themselves from their emotional ties, but prophets, philosophers, and kings have all sought the redemption of their selves. When a person, even a guilty person, is sentenced to death and executed, where is the redemption? Of course, some traditions maintain that redemption can be conferred as with the granting of abolition by a Catholic priest, but not everyone holds this view. Instead, I feel that the remorseful and contrite should be afforded this one act of grace and granted the time they need to make peace with their inner demons without the duress of condemnation.

The fact of the matter is that the number of countries that officially sanction capital punishment has been shrinking in modern times, such that the United States finds itself increasingly isolated on this issue among its international peers. Instead, capital punishment is retained in use by countries which we would be hesistant to be associated with on any other list. As of 2011, the only countries to conduct more executions than the United States are China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq [4]. Since then, Connecticut and now Maryland have banned the use of capital punishment; it will be interesting to see if countries like North Korea and Yemen will surpass the U.S. now that these states are no longer sentencing prisoners to death row.

[1] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/states-and-without-death-penalty

[2] http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php

[3] http://www.capitalpunishmentincontext.org/resources/deathqualification

[4] http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ACT50/001/2012/en/241a8301-05b4-41c0-bfd9-2fe72899cda4/act500012012en.pdf