The Banyan--Timothy Hughes

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	A Matter of Life and Death: Why the Death Penalty Should Be Abolished by Timothy Hughes
1	"Death is a unique punishment in the United States. In a society that so strongly affirms the sanctity of life, not surprisingly the common view is that death is the ultimate sanction… There has been no national debate about punishment in general or by imprisonment, comparable to the debate about the punishment of death" (Brennan).
2	Indeed, the issue of capital punishment is one that has been widely debated and for which many persuasive arguments of distinctly opposing viewpoints are available. The issue at hand is and always has been about whether or not we, as a society, should presume to enforce a penalty that by definition irrevocably extinguishes the existence of another autonomous human being. Is it a responsible and mature decision to implement a penalty of such resounding finality merely because the convicted offender has been found to be guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt?" It has long been argued that an appropriate term of imprisonment should be the maximum available penalty for a violent offense. This argument has been supported by the fact that our legal system, though highly evolved and altogether expedient, is far from infallible, and in recognition of this the penalties imposed under it should be both reversible and humane. The imposition of the penalty of death should no longer be exercised in the United States of America. A socially mature and morally established country should refrain from taking the lives of any of its citizens.
3	The death penalty is indefensible on three distinct and specific grounds: pragmatic, legal, and moral. The penalty of death is not economically efficient, and is indeed a drain upon the financial resources of our country. Also, it can be proven that the death penalty does not act as a deterrent to violent crime. The death penalty inherently violates both the eighth and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution and should therefore be declared illegal in practice. Finally, the death penalty is an altogether unethical and immoral violation of fundamental human rights under any and all circumstances.
4	Proponents of the current system of capital punishment defend this system as beneficial to society on these same grounds. It is argued that putting prisoners to death saves money over the alternative option of imprisoning them for a formidable amount of time, and acts as a deterrent to violent crime. It is further argued that the death penalty is in perfect accordance with all principles and protections set forth in the Constitution. Finally, the contention is offered that the death penalty is morally acceptable and permissible in that a violent offender has forfeited his or her right to life in the commission of his crime. Through the use of evidence consisting of both statistics and expert opinions on all three of the aforementioned grounds it can be clearly shown that the death penalty should be abolished once and for all.
5	The cost benefit analysis is an all-important aspect of the pragmatic argument. Be it good or ill, modern society is preoccupied with money and many people may support a system on the grounds that it is simply more cost efficient than an offered alternative. It has been the commonly held belief of many that costs for a lengthy prison term are higher than the cost of carrying out the process of the death penalty. Upon examination, this argument does not appear to hold up. Journalist Robert Sherrill of Nation magazine reported that the State of California spent almost 1 billion dollars processing death penalty cases between 1977 and 1993 even though only two people were put to death in that state during that time period. Further, the average cost of sending a killer to death row in Texas is about 2.3 million dollars, an amount which is close to three times the cost of keeping someone in prison in a single cell at the maximum level of security for forty years. Finally, the cost of a trial in which the death penalty is sought in Indiana is about 4 million dollars, and this figure comes before the appellate stage of the trial.
6	In addition, a trial at which the death penalty is sought by a prosecutor is by nature an expensive one. These lengthy trials can often cost great amounts of money for both the defendant's attorneys and the state prosecutorial staff. Even after a verdict is rendered in a capital trial the expense continues. The appeals process can often go on at great length and is another drain of significant financial resources. A murder trial normally takes much longer when the death penalty is at issue than when it is not. Litigation costs - including the time of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and court reporters, and the high costs of briefs - are all borne by the taxpayer. . . . The only way to make the death penalty a 'better buy' than imprisonment is to weaken due process and curtail appellate review, which are the defendant's, (and society's,) only protections against the grossest miscarriages of justice. (Bedau) As Professor Hugo Adam Bedau of Tufts University writes, the process of appellate review is by nature a lengthy and quite expensive one. However, this process is of vital importance because without it the death penalty could not continue. As long as we have the death penalty we will have lengthy trials that continue to drain monetary resources long after a verdict is rendered by a jury. In short, the death penalty operates at great cost and is much more lengthy, complex, and inefficient than is commonly believed.
7	The second angle of approach to the pragmatic argument is viewing the death penalty as a deterrent. It is offered that the threat of being put to death after capture and conviction will deter those considering committing a violent crime. This is a very strong argument put forth by death penalty proponents, one that merits thorough and complete examination because it resonates closely with society's deep-seated fears of violent crime.
8	Two flaws are evident in this line of argument. In the first place, the argument hinges upon an ungrounded premise: it makes the assumption that prospective criminals will be completely rational and weigh the positive and negative repercussions of a crime before committing to action. Even if the threat of being put to death does enter the person's mind, it is uncertain that they will be sufficiently frightened of the consequence to be deterred. It is evident that they would not based upon the imperfections of our current system of capital punishment. Dr. Elizabeth Linehan of St. Joseph's University writes: The deterrence question is not whether most people would be deterred from committing murder by the threat of possible execution. Rather, it is whether there are people who are not deterred by the threat of a lengthy prison term who would be deterred by the threat of death. . . . It is intuitively implausible that the death penalty as we have it now is effective as a deterrent. In reality, because of the appeals process, the death penalty does carry with it a lengthy term of imprisonment. The question that Dr. Linehan poses is a pertinent one: how do we know that a long prison sentence is any less effective as a deterrent?
9	If the penalty of death does act as a deterrent, it would seem to logically follow that the states without a death penalty would have a significantly higher homicide rate than those that do. The second flaw that can be found in the pragmatic arguments for the death penalty as a deterrent is that this does not appear to be the case when the facts are examined. Currently, 38 of the 50 states enforce capital punishment. It would seem that, were this argument to hold, these states would have very low homicide rates, and the states without the death penalty would have significantly higher ones. Actually, 10 of the 12 states that do not have the death penalty have homicide rates that are below the national average according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Further, during the last 20 years the homicide rate in states that do enforce the death penalty has been 48% to 101% higher than in those that do not (Bonner and Fessenden). The death penalty clearly does not act as a deterrent to violent crime and does not save the American taxpayer money.
10	Having examined the pragmatic arguments for and against the death penalty, it is now time for the focus to shift to capital punishment not as a social issue but as a legal one. Over the years, it has often been argued that the death penalty is in violation of the United States Constitution, namely the eighth and fourteenth amendments. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to ban capital punishment in 1972 and then voted to reinstate it in 1976. Although it is currently legal to put a prisoner to death in this country, the debate persists as strongly as ever.
11	The eighth amendment of the Constitution protects citizens from punishment by cruel and unusual means. In accordance with this amendment, a form of punishment is only legal if it can also be considered humane. Capital punishment is in direct violation of these principles outlined as protections for all American citizens. Simply speaking, it should not be a legal form of punishment. The death penalty is inherently cruel and unusual in that a person is forced to suffer months and years of living with the imminent prospect of death at the hands of the state. Indeed, Albert Camus once pointed out the fact that the death penalty can be likened to a murderer warning his victims years in advance that they were to be killed, and said that kind of premeditation and cruelty could not be found in a single citizen, but only in a state-imposed death (qtd in Prejean 22). This penalty is psychologically cruel and unusual, unspeakably inhumane, and therefore clearly unconstitutional.
12	The fourteenth amendment guarantees all U.S. citizens equal protection under the laws by which they live. The death penalty violates this amendment as well in that it has clearly been employed in discriminatory patterns over the years. The simple fact is that minority defendants are much more likely to have the death penalty imposed upon them. As a result of this alarming fact, the American Bar Association has called for a moratorium on the death penalty. Martha Barnett, president of the ABA, wrote: "Neither race nor geography should be a factor in administering federal death penalty laws - but clearly both are." In her article, Barnett offered the information that in the last five years in federal courts, 74% of people on whom the death penalty was imposed were minorities. She also called to our attention the fact that 40% of these death penalty cases were tried in only 5 of the 94 federal judicial districts. This clearly shows that both minorities and those who live in certain states are more likely to get the death penalty than others. In fact 75% of the inmates on federal death row as of December 2000 were minorities (Baldauf). Even President Clinton has doubts about the death penalty on the grounds of racial bias. In December of 2000, he stayed the execution of federal death row inmate Juan Raul Garza on the grounds that the government needed time to look into the issues of racial bias in the implementation of capital punishment. The death penalty is clearly unconstitutional in that it does not treat people equally.
13	On constitutional issues, there is no higher authority than the United States Supreme Court. Throughout the history of this contentious issue, justices have authored passionate and resounding opinions on both sides of the debate. In his concurring opinion in the case of Furman v. Georgia, which briefly outlawed the death penalty from 1972 to 1976, Justice William Brennan articulates thoughts that resonate strongly with an anti-capital punishment stance on this matter: Today death is a uniquely and unusually severe punishment. When examined by the principles applicable under the cruel and unusual punishments clause, death stands condemned as fatally offensive to human dignity. The punishment of death is therefore 'cruel and unusual,' and the states may no longer inflict it as a punishment for crimes. Rather than kill an arbitrary handful of criminals each year, the states will confine them in prison.
14	There is also the issue of error within the death penalty. It is a fact that mistakes are always possible, and it is imperative to have a system of punishment that takes into account these possibilities. A prisoner can be released if it is determined that they were wrongly convicted. However, we are not endowed with the ability to give life back to someone wrongly executed. In their book Actual Innocence, attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld and journalist Jim Dwyer tell of how new advances in DNA testing have provided proof that 67 people sent to death row were there for crimes they did not commit (xiv-xv). Just last year, Illinois governor George Ryan called a halt to all executions within that state because of the exoneration of thirteen death row inmates due to DNA evidence and other oversights and legal errors (Sherrill). Justice Harry Blackmun also recognized this flaw of the death penalty in his 1994 dissenting opinion in the case of Callins v. Collins: "The problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal, and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent, and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution."
15	Now that the legal argument has been made, it is time to look at the death penalty from a moral perspective. The death penalty presents profound moral questions. Do we have the right to take away that which we cannot return? Can we take away the ever-present hope of a new day from a fellow human being, no matter what their crime? In short, we must examine whether or not the death penalty is an ethical form of punishment. On the grounds that any action that takes the life of a human is an act of murder even when sanctioned by the procedures of the state, it clearly is not.
16	In looking at the death penalty from a moral perspective, it is important to never forget that society is speaking about people, not statistics. It is often easy to see numbers on a page and fail to see the individuals behind them. No matter how separated from the prisoners on death row we are, both physically and socially, it is society's moral duty to remember that a common humanity is shared by all. Sister Helen Prejean wrote of her life changing experience befriending death row inmate Patrick Sonnier in her book Dead Man Walking: "I am beginning to notice something about Pat Sonnier. . . . The sheer weight of his loneliness, his abandonment draws me. I abhor the evil he has done. But I sense something, some sheer and essential humanness, and that, perhaps, is what draws me most of all" (22). Even though Sonnier was convicted of a terrible crime, Sister Prejean still was able to identify with him as a human being. An acknowledgement of our common humanity serves as the basis for a moral argument against the death penalty.
17	It has often been said that through a tough death penalty society is sending a message to murderers that we value human life enough to give them the ultimate punishment. It would be sending an even more profound message to clearly state that society values human life enough to preserve it in all circumstances by abolishing the death penalty. As Professor Bedau writes: "Opposition to the death penalty does not arise from misplaced sympathy for convicted murderers. On the contrary, murder demonstrates a lack of respect for human life. For this very reason, murder is abhorrent, and any policy of state-authorized killing is immoral." A stance against capital punishment is one that respects life in all circumstances. These moral arguments weigh in quite strongly in favor of the abolition of the death penalty. The United States of America would be taking a bold step in joining the 108 countries in the world that have already made the exemplary and admirable choice to abolish the death penalty (Amnesty).
18	After a thorough examination of the facts and issues, the death penalty can be found to be completely out of place in today's society. It is pragmatically unnecessary and inefficient, unconstitutional, and decidedly immoral. The abolition of the death penalty would be an admirable action for a moral and compassionate society. It would be difficult to find anyone who has expressed this sentiment in more profound words than Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall when he wrote: "In striking down capital punishment, this Court does not malign our system of government. On the contrary, it pays homage to it. Only in a free society could right triumph in difficult times, and could civilization record its magnificent advancement. In recognizing the humanity of our fellow human beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute."
	Works Cited "Abolitionist and Retentionist Countries." Amnesty International Website Against the Death Penalty 12 May 2000 http://www.web.amnesty.org/rmp/dplibrary.nsf/ ba4275cdead20d858025677e0059735b/daa2b602299dded0802568810050f6b1?OpenDocument 11 Feb. 2001. Baldauf, Scott. "Federal Death-Row Case Casts Spotlight On Racial Injustices." Christian Science Monitor 12 Dec. 2000. Online. EBSCO. 13 Feb. 2001. Barnett, Martha. "Need for moratorium so overwhelming that even death penalty supporters call for halt to executions." ABA Network http://www.abanet.org/media/oct00/death.html 11 Feb. 2001. Bedau, Hugo Adam. "The Case Against The Death Penalty." http://ethics.acusd.edu/Bedeau.html 28 Feb. 2001. Blackmun, Harry. "Dissenting Opinion: Callins v. Collins." No. 93-7054 Supreme Court Of The United States 22 Feb. 1994 http://ethics.acusd.edu/Blackmun.html 11 Feb. 2001. Bonner, Raymond, and Ford Fessenden. "States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates." 22 Sept. 2001. http://www.moratorium2000.org/index.lasso?-database=m2000content.fp3&-layout=web&-response=%2fnews%2fnews_detail.lasso&-recordID=69&-search 11 Feb. 2001. Brennan, William. "Concurring Opinion: Furman v. Georgia." No. 69-5003 Supreme Court Of The United States 29 June 1972 http://www.fedworld.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate?waisdocid=468986201+0+0+0&waisaction=retrieve 28 Feb. 2001. Linehan, Elizabeth A. "Executing the Innocent." http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Huma/HumaLine.htm 28 Feb. 2001. Marshall, Thurgood. "Concurring Opinion: Furman v. Georgia." No. 69-5003 Supreme Court Of The United States 29 June 1972 http://www.fedworld.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate?waisdocid=468986201+0+0+0&waisaction=retrieve 28 Feb. 2001. Prejean, Helen. Dead Man Walking. New York: Vintage, 1993. Scheck, Barry, Peter Neufeld, and Jim Dwyer. Actual Innocence. New York: Doubleday, 2000. Sherrill, Robert. "Death Trip; The American Way Of Execution." Nation 8 Jan.200. Online. EBSCO. 13 Feb. 2001. Nominated by Dr. Bradley J. Stiles, Writing Instructor