An Old College Paper

When I was in college I had to do a paper on The Death Penalty, Right or Wrong.  I just wanted to share.  Read at your own discretion.  It might make you mad or you may agree.


Still in the twenty-first century, most US citizens find having the government execute criminals to be an acceptable punishment, whether morally, ethically or spiritually correct.  When someone kills in cold-blood are they not sent away and punished for it, by being put in prisons and in some cases put to death.  If they are being punished by execution then why can the government get away with cold-blooded killing?  Is it not killing as well?  Capital punishment is a way of killing a problem, not fixing it.  I believe that all forms of execution are wrong.  capital punishment should be done away with and not used as a form of punishment.

In 1974 James Adams of Florida was convicted of first-degree murder, sentenced to death, and executed in 1984.  Witnesses located Adams' car at the time of the crime at the home of the victim.  Some of the victim's jewelry was found in the car trunk.  Adams maintained his innocence, claiming that he had loaned the car to his girlfriend.  A witness identified Adams as driving the car away from the victim's home shortly after the crime.  This  witness, however, was driving a large truck in the direction opposite to that of Adams' car, and probably could not have had a good look at the driver.  It was later discovered that this witness was angry with Adams for allegedly dating his wife.  A day after the crime a second witness heard a woman's voice inside the victim's home at the time of the crime and saw someone fleeing.  The fleeing person was positively not Adams.  More importantly, a hair sample found clutched in the victim's hand, which in all likelihood had come from the assailant, did not match Adams' hair.  Much of this exculpatory information was not discovered until a skilled investigator, a month before Adams' execution, examined the case. Governor Graham of Florida, however, refused to grant even a short stay so that these questions could be resolved.  A presumed innocent young James Adams was electrocuted in May of 1984.

Let me put some statistics into your head just to give you an idea of the way things are right now in this country.  Currently, there are thirty-six states that retain the death penalty.  Twenty-seven states use lethal injection, twelve use the electric chair, seven use the gas chamber, four still use the technique of hanging, and Utah still uses the firing squad, though only used once.  In Arkansas, you can be as young as fourteen to be put onto death row, in Oregon you have to be at least eighteen.  Texas clearly had led the way in executions since the Gregg decision, executing nineteen people in 1995 for a total of four hundred and eleven since 1976.  Florida's rate of execution is increasing at a rapid rate, with thirty-three executions in 1995.  According to a Gallup poll in 1995, seventy-seven percent favor the death penalty as a punishment for murder.  But if they are given the option of life imprisonment with no possiblility of parole, the things change a bit.  Only fifty percent would take the death penalty, while thirty-two would take the life imprisonment.  The funny thing is that the more education you have, the less likely you are to support the death penalty.  Thirty-seven percent of people surveyed who had post graduate education favored the death penalty as opposed to fifty percent of the people who had no college education who favored it.  Now that you have a basis to work off of, we can now get into the real argument in this essay.

I think we can all agree that killing someone, when it is not in self defense, is wrong.  It is so absolutely wrong that there is no crime worse than this.  it should get the ultimate penalty.  we, therefore, want a society in which nobody ever thinks that cold-blooded killing is the thing to do.  We don't ever want someone to decide that they can kill another person because he deserves to die.

But what is the death penalty?  It is a calculated, premeditated murder.  Sure, they have a reason for it.  A good reason, it says in the Ohio Criminal Code Handbook, but so does, as far as he is concerned, the jealous lover who comes home and finds his wife in bed with another man, or vice-versa.  At that moment, do we want to deep grained patterns of thought, learned by his exposure to society and justice, to be one which says, "all killing is wrong", or do we want it to be, "sometimes people deserve to die"?  The death penalty definitely ingrains the second, that, "somtimes people deserve to die."  The net result is one less life.  The fact that is the government taking the life is meaningless.  Let's be real here, the people most likely to support the death penalty are the people who believe that government officcials have better judgment than most Americans do.  however, if they can't decide what to do with your taxes better than any random individual, why should they be able to decide who should be killed in cold-blood?

For members of society who are pro death and want to keep death as a penalty, deterrent effects are one of their primary arguments.  But, historically, there is no conclusive evidence that the death penalty deters a criminal from their act of violence.  Let me re-emphasize the conclusive evidence.  There have been studies, but they were so full of holes they are completely disregarded by any modern student of the death penalty.  There have been deterrent theories.  Like the theory of the former Governor of New York, George Pataki, stated by bringing back the death penalty in his state, he has taken the fear out of the minds of the people and put it in the criminal's where it belongs.  But is this really valid?  How is he to prove that criminals are rational enough to think things through before they do it?  The only thing that we have in common with criminals is the fact that we are both humans.  other than that, we do not think nearly along the same lines.  He also says to have crafted the death penalty in the state to only include the most inhuman murderers are eligible.  Fantastic, an elected politician, non-schooled in criminal law presumes to write laws governing behavioral punishment.  It is all for votes.  he took the title of Governor, and would like to keep it and this is written so that it appeals to New York readers.  He uses phrases like, honest, hard working people share my vision for a safer New York.  These are just vote getters.  Regardless of his true feelings about the death penalty, he is going to support it fully if it will win him fifty-two percent of the votes.  Thus, becoming a follower rather than a leader.  

In another instance, George Bush claimed during his 1988 presidential compaign that he was strongly for the death penalty.  Regardless if he was or was not, he would still win more votes because the majority supported it.  As if jumping off a bridge, Bill Clinton went back to Arkansas during his 1992 presidential run to witness an execution and reaffirm that he was hard on crime.  Whatever they can do to finagle votes, they are going to do.  Steven Goldberg, the Director of Sociology in New York, also had a theory on the death penalty as a deterrent.  He brings about many myths, in an article in the National Review, that abolitionist use in their fight against the death penalty.  One myth he addresses is, "Since many murders result from emotional impulse, the death penalty would have only the slightest deterrent effect on them."  His claim is death instills a psychological resistance to the act.  Abolitionists continue to say that it is only the legislators who calculate the deterrent effects and potential murderers simply act.  Goldberg states that the deterrent effect of the death penalty, if there is one, acts on them.  If it acts with sufficient strength, it prevents their becoming murderers.  Just ask the confessed murderers if they thought of their own death, before committing a capital crime.  I still don't believe that the death penalty acts as that much of a dedeterrent.  But there is nothing that can shut a person up quicker than plain, hard facts.  According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment, since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the executions per year have gone up, but the murder rate per one hundred thousand.  It is also shown that death penalty states often have a higher murder rate than their non-death penalty neighbors.  Iowa, for example, has less than two murders per one hundred thousand people, while it is pro death and neighbor, Missouri, has a murder rate of nine per one hundred thousand.   It is also shown that in some states the murder rate increases more during execution years then non-execution years.  According to these facts there is no deterrent value in the death penalty.  (there was graphs here, but I am not going to scan them and put them on here.)

What about the save the taxpayers money argument?  I saved this for last because most people already know that it is nonsense.  "Death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a more economical alternative to life imprisonment.", says Spangenberg and Walsh in an article in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review.  A study by the New York State Defenders Association showed that the cost of a capital trial alone, is more than double the cost of life imprisonment.  In Maryland, a comparison of capital trial costs, with and without the death penalty for the years 1979-1984, "approximately forty-two percent more than a case resulting in a non-death sentence," according to the US Government Accounting Office.  In 1988 and 1989 the Kansas legislature voted against reinstating the death penalty after it was informed that reintroduction would involve a first year cost of more than eleven million dollars.  And the Miami Herald reported that Florida, with one of the nation's largest death rows, has estimated that the true cost of each execution is approximately three point two million dollars, or approximately six times the cost of a life imrpisonment sentence.  it costs more because of lengthy appeals process, for the government to kill someone than to keep him or her in prison for life.  And as recent events have proven, even the lengthy appeals process does not  prevent wrongful death of the innocent, which was the spirit or the original intent of Constitutional Law.  And, unless you want to risk being wrongfully killed, appeals are necessary.

If a society is going to empower a government to kill human beings as punishment for crimes against that society, then absolute guilt must be papramount, not a preponderance of evidence.  The truest death penalty society would need the following to prove absolute guilt and must be established through:

•  Absolute and impeccable due process of law.
• Absolute and angelic character of jury, judges and witnesses.
• Absolute unforgiving and presumed superiority of the governing body and its constituents.
• Absolute true respresentation of the pspulace.
• Absolute disregard for the sanctity of life.

Remember that anyone, no matter how innocent and good we are, can get wrongfully convicted of murder, just because of bad circumstances.  In 1999, hundreds of people, who were imprisoned because they were convicted of murder, were found to have actually been innocent every year.  Some of them were not ccareer criminials before they were accused either, but were people like you and me.  I am sure, though the establishment usually stays rather quiet about these mistakes.  More than one instance of a convicted murderer being cleared solely because of recent technology, DNA evidence, for example, showed it to be impossible for him or her to have committed the murder.  In fact, you probably heard about the Republican Governor of Illinois suspending all executions because sixteen, so called, murderers on Death Row were recently found to be innocent solely because of new DNA technology.  Technology, which only saves the innocent people, if, certain kinds of clues were left.  That means all normal methods had failed, and sisteen innocent people, who could have been you, were all going to be, and I use this word carefully, murdered by the Illinois government.  A government with a pretty good record of taking care in these matters, compared to other states.  Imagine, how many people have been wrongfully executed, murdered, by the states, or the Federal Government.  Presidential candidate, George W. Bush, of Texas, alone had killed over a hundred men and women in just the last six years.  How many of them were actually innocent?  Imagine how many innocent men are on death row where DNA evidence didn't happen to be found.  So we must be as careful as possible, and take all of the effort and time necessary, before allowing our government to kill someone, even if we are going to allow the death penalty in the first place.

although I am a Christian and not a death penalties advocate, I am coninually surprised at how many people are both.  I find capital punishment to be completely inconsistent with Christian belief.  How many people point to the passage in Leviticus, which states that, an eye for an eye is God's decree?  However, Jesus Christ over turns this decree.  Matthew 5:38-41 says, "you have heard that it was said, 'An eye for aneye and a tooth for a tooth.' but I say to you, do not resist an evildoer.  but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile."  Matthew 5:43-44 says, "You heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemies.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..."  Remember, when Jesus came upon the crowd stoning a prostitute, he told them, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."  Christ taught a doctrine of peace, love and forgiveness, not revenge, retribution and death.

So the fight continues.  it is tempting to view it in terms of black vs. white, the good vs. evil.  More accurately, it is the enlightened vs. the deceived.  If the American people knew the truth about capital punishment, and that it is expensive, ineffective and kills innocent people, they would no doubt demand its removal.  But sadly, the masses are horribly uninformed, despite the best efforts of such groups as Amnesty International.  But there are other ways to help.  write your Congressman, or write to President Obama at this email address, feedback@www.whitehouse.gov.  Make sure they know your opinion.  Join groups like Amnesty International and The Friends Coalition against the Death Penalty.  And above all, tell your friends.  When you hear someone expounding an untruth about capital punishment, correct him or her.  Make sure everyone knows the facts.  Ignorance may be bliss, but it is also dangerous.