Free Essay Sample on Death Penalty: Background and Problem

Introduction

Data on death penalty indicate that execution has declined significantly in the United States in the last two decades. In 1994, a survey on this subject showed that the majority (80%) of Americans supported the death penalty, but this proportion reduced to 60% in 2014 (Williams, 2016). Similarly, the number of death sentences delivered by judges and juries has reduced from 311 in 1994 to 73 in 2014, and only 49 in 2015 (Williams, 2016). Interestingly, crime rate statistics have shown that states where the death penalty is a legal punishment such as Louisiana have higher rates of murder than their counterparts such as New York that have abolished it (DICP, 2019). Such contrasts demonstrate that the death penalty is not effective in averting capital crimes as it is usually purported to do. Therefore, the death penalty should be abolished across the country because of inefficacious crime inhibition.

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Literature Review

The debate on the abolishment of the death penalty revolves around the question of whether the risk of execution is a better homicide deterrent than other alternative criminal sanctions. In the recent past, a few economists analyzing US data have claimed that every death penalty averts up to 74 homicides (Zimring et al., 2010). Among the prominent contributors to this debate are Harvard professors, Sunstein and Vermeule (2005), who have stated that the death penalty is both morally necessary and reasonable because execution seems to prevent crime. However, scholars from across the world have disputed these conclusions, for several reasons.

The main reason is that the evidence that the claims were based upon is weak. Notably, most deterrence studies have focused on the United States yet it has very few executions as a country. Besides, at the national level, the United States' data on the death penalty and crime is inherently inconsistent because some of its states still use capital punishment while others have already abolished it. Moreover, today, some countries boast of a diminished crime rate but have no capital punishment. For example, in 2018, Norway only had 28 murders in total despite having abolished capital punishment in 1905 (Wijnen, 2018).

Zimring eta al. (2010) conducted a study to compare the impact of the death penalty on homicide rates in Hong Kong and Singapore and noted that there was no significant correlation between the rate of execution risk and homicide rates. Notably, the researchers chose the two cities because they are closely matched in many aspects including homicide rates, yet they had held divergent views on the death penalty for more than three decades. On the one hand, Singapore has always had an execution policy. Its annual execution rate rose from one per million to 20 per million between 1994 and 1996 before dropping by almost 95 % over the next decade. On the other hand, Hong Kong did not have any execution throughout this period and went even further to end capital punishment in 1993. Despite the vast difference in the execution risks between the two places, they recorded remarkably similar homicide levels between 1973 and 2010. Not even the dramatic rise and the subsequent steep fall in Singapore executions had a differential impact. The vast contrasts in execution rates of the two cities with the same homicide trends demonstrated that the death penalty does not deter homicide.

Comparatively, Donohue III and Wolfers (2009) observed that the levels of execution in modern Singapore remained significantly higher than in Texas over the 35 years. Based on a systematic review of recent literature on the question of whether the death penalty deters murders more than a life sentence, they stated that there is no viable proxy that can be used to accurately correlate the two phenomena in the United States due to inconsistencies in time path of murder crimes across states. However, they agreed that the execution trends in Singapore show that potential homicide offenders are not responsive to the risk of execution. Moreover, Donohue III and Wolfers (2009) noted that unlike in the US states, the time path of homicide in Singapore was amazingly similar to Hong Kong, and that validates the recent comparison in the two countries.

The United States is often criticized for being the only country that retained capital punishment in the industrialized West. The US Supreme Court made complicated the country’s capital justice system even further when it abolished capital punishment only to revive the death penalty through new capital statutes that claimed to provide constitutional oversight over the process. Steiker and Steiker (2019) have described the death penalty in America as an alternative ordinary criminal justice model. However, they have observed that there has been and there will continue to be pressure to limit the use of the death penalty and add more special protections.

Moreover, the history of the death penalty is characterized by widespread racial disparities and this remains a key concern for many individuals and organizations demanding its abolishment. Kort-Butler and Ray (2019) examined the public support for the death penalty in the state of Nebraska following its legislation that abolished capital punishment in 2015 and subsequent reinstatement through an election in 2016. They found that Americans in red states who supported the death penalty as well as those who were not sure perceived it to be used more fairly and were angrier about crimes.

Discussion and Findings

Arguably, the idea of the American death penalty was a dishonest way of perpetuating the same cruel punishment that the Supreme Court was supposed to abolish. It continues to legalize capital punishment, breaching the offender’s right to life contrary to the Eighth Amendment of the US constitution (Barry, 2019). The heightened protections provided by the court are subject to abuse in capital cases. Therefore, the American death penalty should be ended as it hinders broader reform while achieved so little in promoting change.

Moreover, Americans are aware of the discriminatory application of the death penalty, and that is why it has consistently received strong support in the red states, where most of the poor who cannot afford to pay good attorneys to protect them from death belong to the minority groups. The 2016 electoral reinstatement of the death penalty in Nebraska was a bad sign for the gains made in promoting justice and equality before the law.

Another important aspect of the death penalty debate in the United States in the cost of sustaining the practice compared to alternative forms of punishment. While it does not receive prominence in the selected literature, findings from other sources show that states spend a fortune to keep on with capital punishment. For example, California spends over $180 million on capital punishment every year (Engle, 2019). Such resources could be channeled to other more effective crime-prevention measures like recruiting more police officers and civic education.

Conclusion

Retaining the death penalty in the United States today beats the purpose envisaged for it in the federal constitution as it is clear from statistics that having the death penalty has no definite correlation with the number of murder cases. Similarly, being a practice rife with racial inequality, the death penalty continues to entrench hatred and mistrust, which are major contributors to capital crimes. Besides, it is a form of punishment that violates the constitution by infringing a person's right to life. Lastly, the death penalty is not a cost-effective method of punishing civil offenders as compared to other available alternatives. Therefore, capital punishment should be abolished across the entire United States.

References

Barry, K. M. (2019). The death penalty & The fundamental right to life. B.C.L.R, 60(6), 1545.
https://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/bclr/vol60/iss6/3

Donohue, J. J., & Wolfers, J. (2009). undefined. American Law and Economics Review, 11(2), 249-309.
https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahp024

DPIC. (2019, May 22). Murder rate of death penalty states compared to non-death penalty states. Death Penalty Information Center.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/murder-rates/murder-rate-of-death-penalty-states-compared-to-non-death-penalty-states

Engle, J. (2019, March 20). Should we abolish the death penalty? The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/learning/should-we-abolish-the-death-penalty.html

Kort-Butler, L. A., & Ray, C. M. (2019). Public support for the death penalty in a red state: The distrustful, the angry, and the unsure. Punishment & Society, 21(4), 473-495.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474518795896

Steiker, C. S., & Steiker, J. M. (2019). The American death penalty. New Criminal Law Review, 22(4), 359-390.
https://doi.org/10.1525/nclr.2019.22.4.359

Wijnen, P. (2018, December 28). Killings and murders in Norway 2018. Norway Today.
https://norwaytoday.info/news/murder-norway-2018/

Williams, K. (2016). Why the Death Penalty is Slowly Dying. Sw. L. Rev., 46, 253.

Zimring, F. E., Fagan, J., & Johnson, D. T. (2010). undefined. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 7(1), 1-29.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2009.01168.