Disputes Concerning Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment

Capital punishment is a legal penalty used by twenty nine states in the United States. It is the only nation in the developed western world that applies this form of punishment regularly. People who have committed serious crimes deserving of hefty punishments are usually issued the death penalty. The widespread belief that the horror of their crimes justifies such a punishment, to ensure public safety, and justice for the victims are few of the reasons why such a punishment still exists today, and is largely supported by retentionists. But, along with the justice comes the negative outcomes of this irreversible act.

There are five reasons why a criminal is punished (Rosentsand 351). Deterrence: it may change his or her mind before breaking the law again, and it can also cause future law breakers to think twice before they commit a crime. Rehabilitation: it aims to make criminals good citizens by indulging them in behavioral programs during imprisonment, or by punishment alone, so that they do not break the law again. Incapacitation: if the criminal is absent from the streets then the public is guaranteed their safety, and innocents will be spared. Retribution: a person should be punished because he or she has broken the law, and their punishment should be in proportion to their crime. Vengeance: although not legitimate, it is a very popular approach to punishing the guilty.

A person is someone who is capable of psychological and social interaction with others, capable of deciding on a course of action and being held responsible for that action (Rosenstand 313). And any such person has a right to life, even if he or she has lost the right to liberty. Criminals retain their personhood even though they have been convicted of a crime. By imprisoning the criminal, and not executing them, the state is in fact respecting his or her personhood and their right to life. Furthermore, the various methods of executions are inhumane, causing pain and suffering to the convicted person. This is a violation of humanity. Dennis McGuire was executed by lethal injection which took nearly 26 minutes to lead him to his death. All the while, he experienced stomach swelling, coughing and he was seen gasping for air, with his fists clenched during the entire time (Salk 285).

According to Immanuel Kant, if a criminal is executed either to provide justice to the victim or to cause deterrence, he or she is being used by the state to achieve either of these outcomes. A criminal sentenced to death is being used as a means to the state’s ends, and that is unacceptable according to Kant. But being a firm supporter of capital punishment, he applied lex talionis or the law of retaliation to justify the execution of a criminal, which suggests that the criminal should pay in proportion for his or her crime, that is, an eye for an eye. Therefore, a death penalty is befitting for a murder. If this concept is applied, thieves should be punished by stealing a valuable from their homes rather than imprisoning them. Domestic abusers, drunk drivers, drug dealers, etc would be punished in proportion to their crimes. But there is only one form of punishment for these types of crimes: imprisonment. And this principle seems to be used only in the case of murders, and not any other forms of crimes (Rosenstand 700). Although this is a literal interpretation of the theory, lex talionis fails to establish the death penalty as a necessary punishment for serious crimes. The idea behind proportionality is to rank crimes and punishments in terms of their severity, and to make sure that the severity of a punishment is equivalent to the severity of the crime. Whatever is the most severe punishment must be reserved for only the most severe crimes (Stichter 132). But it does not state that capital punishment is the severest form of punishment for murder. This makes it merely an option and not a requirement. Furthermore, the death penalty stoops as low as the criminal, by responding to violence with violence. Thus, it is also a form of vengeance. It is a way to get back at the criminal to even the score (Rosenstand 354). But a retentionist can argue that the criminal chose with his or her own free will to commit a crime and the state, by imposing the death penalty, is only providing justice by executing them. But then, justice also comes in the form of life imprisonment.

The prevention of future murderers from killing, or deterrence, is probably the most popular benefit of issuing the death penalty, since it can lead to innocent lives being spared. However, there is a general lack of evidence that the death penalty actually deters more than imprisonment, which undermines its status as a benefit (141). And even if capital punishment has a deterrent effect, the effect is trivial because of the relatively small number of capital sentences and the long time lags between sentencing and execution and the system of capital punishment is rife with error and arbitrariness (Sunstein; Vermeule 748).

The death penalty, unlike many other punishments, is irrevocable. Thus, the execution of an innocent person is permanent. Furthermore, there exists a degree of arbitrariness in decisions regarding which murderers are assigned the death penalty and which aren’t, and this leads to unjust results (Stichter 134). Poor, illiterate or black people are more likely to be given harsher punishments and death penalties than their white counterparts. This means that a white criminal is not getting the punishment he deserves compared to a black criminal. Thus, a Louisiana study found that prosecutor case files were significantly thicker when victims were white women, and thinnest when victims were black, which in turn correlated with severer sentences for those convicted of killing whites and women (Cholbi; Madhva 529). Retentionists can argue that as long as the guilt of the black criminal prevails he or she has received the deserving punishment, and such unfairness can only seem to be existent when sentencing a person and not in the punishment itself (136). But the main problem arises when innocent black lives are lost. Because no justice system is 100% accurate, there is a huge possibility in convicting an innocent person. Even staunch supporters of the death penalty have accepted this idea (Sarver 812). There have been countless cases where innocents were executed, and it was only after their demise that some of them were proven innocent by the court. The revocation of wrongful punishment requires the return of control over one’s life, and this requirement cannot be met in the case of execution (Yost 333). Revocation is not the same as compensation. If one believes that benefits can be extended beyond a person’s biological life, a wrongly convicted person can receive benefits even after his or her death, and this is termed as compensation. Thus the wrongfully executed can be compensated, but they cannot be given back the most important requirement of revocability: their life, which was taken by the state (335). Imprisonment, on the other hand, is revocable, even though the lost time is permanent. An imprisoned person can regain his or her liberty, but an executed innocent cannot regain his or her life. But retentionists will argue that imprisonment alone will not guarantee the lock up of a criminal and the safety of the public, since no prison is 100% secure. As the adage goes, it is better for ten guilty persons to walk free than to execute one innocent person.

Contractualism states that an act is permissible if it is justifiable to everyone affected by it. But capital punishment is not justifiable to the innocents who have been executed. A contractualist will disagree with utilitarians who hold that the death penalty is justifiable despite the existence of wrong convictions (Li 153). A utilitarian would only care about the majority. The issue with this is that, it is okay if an innocent life is lost provided that the convicts are punished deservingly, and the public is safe from such criminals. A contractualist believes that it is a mistake to maximize a utility so that it outweighs a significant matter, such as a life (160).

Moreover, the cost of conducting such executions is expensive. In California sentencing convicts to death costs $114 million per year more than imprisoning them for life and in Florida having the death penalty costs $51 million more (Rosenstand 699). A study by Duke University revealed that North Carolina taxpayers pay $2.16 million more for capital punishments than for life sentences. All these expenses can be attributed to court appeals which can linger on for more than fifteen years. But retentionists insist that justice has no price tag, and that limited access to appeals will solve the problem of wasting time and money. But if appeals are not permitted, more innocents will fall prey to this system of capital punishment (699).

The death penalty is an immoral and inappropriate approach to seeking justice for the vicitm. And it is not a solid requirement. Even though it aims to punish the criminal for his or her crime, the possibility of executing an innocent poses a serious risk. But such risks can be avoided by abolishing the death penalty. The state should instead focus on making criminals better individuals, and retain to other forms of punishments like imprisonment which still remains a legitimate form of punishment of the state.