FREE ESSAY ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Capital Punishment
Capital punishment is one of the most popularly debated topics in the nation today. Since
colonial times, more than 13,000 people have been legally executed and a large percentage
of these executions occurred during the early 1900's. In the 1930's, approximately 150
people were being legally executed each year. However, the number of executions started
to decrease, as public outrage became apparent. Currently, over 3,500 people are on death
row. The death penalty violates the Eight Amendment because the act is cruel and unusual,
and because the punishment discriminates against the poor and the minorities, the
punishment also violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Surprisingly, many victims on death
row are mentally retarded or disabled. Unfortunately, the death penalty has many
supporters, and their main claim to why the death penalty should be constitutional is
that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime, but research has proved their claim to be
false. The most disturbing factor of all is that a significant number of the inmates are
innocent. For many reasons, capital punishment should be illegal throughout the nation. 
Capital punishment is not acceptable because it is unconstitutional. Capital punishment
has been proven to violate the Eighth Amendment, which is the prohibition against cruel
and unusual punishment. It is also a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which
guarantees equal protection of the laws and due process. The death penalty, which was
legal with no objections through the 1900's, became a controversial issue in 1972. In
1972, the Furman vs. Georgia trial caused the Supreme Court to cancel hundreds of
scheduled executions and to declare the death penalty unconstitutional. However, in 1976
in Gregg vs. Georgia, the Court reinstated the death penalty. After this decision,
several states reenacted the capital punishment laws. However, capital punishment indeed
violates the Eighth Amendment, which became a part of the United States Constitution in
1789. Capital punishment is both a cruel and an unusual punishment. No punishment can be
crueler than death, especially if it is applied to an innocent person. In Wendy Kaminer's
book, It's All the Rage, Kaminer describes the death penalty as, "barbarously cruel . . .
. shocking, unjust, and unacceptable" (106). The Fourteenth Amendment is also violated in
cases of the death penalty. Once again, the Fourteenth Amendment in the United States
Constitution promises equal protection of the laws and due process to everyone, but
Vilbig says, "Death penalty critics say defendants, many of whom are poor, frequently get
a poor legal defense, often by court-appointed lawyers" (4). This fact indicates that the
unfortunate are not being given equal protection under the law. However, the death
penalty was found to be discriminatory based on the color of one's skin (Bedau 6).
Therefore, the death penalty clearly violates the Fourteenth Amendment. 
The application of the death penalty sentence shows racial discrimination, sex
discrimination, and socio-economic class discrimination all over the nation. Over the
years, the statistics of the executions have been studied. According to these statistics,
from 1930 to 1990 the Government Accounting Office (GAO) reports an interesting
conclusion about racial discrimination. The GAO confirmed that, ". . . a consistent
pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in charging, sentencing and the
imposition of the death penalty after the Furman decision . . . . race of victim
influence was found at all stages of the criminal justice system process . . . " (Bedau
5). Along with this finding, they also asserted that ". . . those who murdered whites
were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks" (Bedau 6). This
information revealed that the convict's race, as well as the race of the victim,
influenced the criminal justice process. In 1987, a study taken in New Jersey showed that
of all the executions made that year, fifty percent of the cases involved a black
defendant with a white victim, while only twenty-eight percent of the cases involved a
white defendant with a black victim. In California, studies indicated that while six
percent of those convicted of killing whites got the death penalty, only three percent of
those convicted of killing blacks got the death penalty; "Since 1976 only four executions
involved a white defendant who killed a black victim" (Bedau 6). In 1986, studies in
Georgia demonstrated that those convicted of killing whites were four times more likely
to be sentenced to death than convicted killers of non-whites were. African Americans are
only about twelve percent of the United States' population. Of the 3,859 persons executed
for a crime since 1930, fifty percent have been black. Also, the application of the death
penalty was disproportionate to other minority populations (Bedau 6). It could be argued
that minorities do not commit more crime than whites, but rather they are more often
punished with the death penalty. In all, only thirty-one of the eighteen thousand
executions in this country's history involved a white person being punished for killing a
black person. Sex discrimination is another factor that enters into determining the death
sentence. During the ten years from the 1980's to the 1990's, only about one percent of
those on the death row were women while a disproportionate number, fifteen- percent, of
the criminal homicides were committed by women. Furthermore, research indicates that only
thirty-three (twelve of them black) women were executed in the United States since 1930
compared to 3,826 men. Finally, socio-economic class discrimination influences judgments
made about the death sentence. Statistics showed that ninety percent of those on the
death row are too poor to hire a lawyer. A man named Clinton Duffy, former warden at
California's San Quentin Prison once said, ". . . the term capital punishment is ironic
because only those without capital get the punishment" (Bedau 6). This statement seems to
be true today. Without capital, one cannot be tried equally, since he or she cannot
afford private investigators, psychiatrists, and expert criminal lawyers to help with the
trial. Therefore, the poor suffer the harshest punishment. Racial, sex, and
socio-economic discrimination plays an important role in deciding the punishment placed
on the crime, which is clearly not equal protection from the law.
Capital punishment has many supporters. One of the major arguments that these supporters
express is that the death penalty serves as a deterrent to crime. The supporters argue
that if the death penalty is legalized and practiced, it will discourage others from
committing a crime. However, by comparing the data of the states with the death penalty
and the states without the death penalty, one can easily see that the death penalty has
no effect in deterring crime. According to the National Research Council in 1976, "the
available studies provide no useful evidence on the deterrent effect of capital
punishment" (Bedau 141-42). The states that use the death penalty laws do not have lower
crime rates than the states without such laws because according to an FBI report, which
states that ". . . states which have abolished the death penalty averaged lower murder
rates than states which have not" (Bedau 142). Furthermore, the states that establish
death penalty laws do not reap any significant benefits in reducing crime or murder
rates. Research shows that a large percentage of the murderers do what they do because of
passion, malevolence, and/or because they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs
(Bedau 170). This statistic demonstrates the fact that the murderer gives little thought
to the consequences he or she might have to face later on for the crime. According to
Bedau, murderers are not influenced by the death penalty as a punishment, since they
carefully plan their murders thinking that they will not get caught (171). Therefore, the
criminals do not think about the consequences they will face if they are captured. 
Although many arguments can be made in favor of capital punishment, the arguments against
capital punishment are more convincing. First, the justice system is not infallible. Too
many innocent people lose their lives for a crime they never committed; "At a time when
capital punishment has become widely accepted for the worst crimes, critics say a strange
brew of prosecutorial misconduct, racial bias and inadequate legal defense is sending
innocent people to death row" (Vilbig 2). The risk of executing the innocent is too high.
Unlike the other criminal punishments, the death penalty is final. If new evidence is
brought up proving the innocence of a convicted criminal, he or she would lose this
chance at freedom since the death penalty was already applied. Once the court rules that
one is guilty and the state executes that person, it is impossible to reverse the
execution. Since 1973, 1,861 cases, thirty-five percent, of all death row cases were
called back for process reasons. From those 1,861 cases, as many as 52 of those cases
were invalidated based on some evidence of innocence. Even with those destructions,
further studies demonstrated that at least twenty-three innocent persons were executed
since 1900. Additionally, another 350 cases, out of the 7,200 cases, were considered
wrongly convicted. That is almost four cases per year in which an innocent person was
convicted for a murder. These statistics show the fallibility of human judgment and how
erroneous a decision of death penalty can be. As Marquis de Lafayette from the French
Chamber of Deputies once said, I shall ask for the abolition of the punishment of death
until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me (Bedau 8).
In all, there are many different difficulties exist with the use of the death penalty as
an attempt to decrease and prevent crime. Since the issue of capital punishment started
in the early 1900's, it has been a burning issue throughout the nation. The country is
divided between people who support capital punishment and people who are against capital
punishment. After evaluating the arguments on both sides, it is very clear that the death
penalty is unreasonable and should be illegal. Capital punishment is not deterrence to
crime. Although it does eliminate the chance of a criminal to commit another crime
because the person is dead, it could also end the life of an innocent person. Statistics
gathered from comparisons between the states with and without capital punishment reveal
that the death penalty does not deter criminals from committing crimes. There are many
arguments against capital punishment including its unconstitutionality because capital
punishment violates two amendments, the Eighth Amendment, since the death penalty is a
cruel and unusual punishment, and secondly, the Fourteenth Amendment, since it displays
unequal protection of the laws and due process. Racial discrimination, sex
discrimination, and socio-economic class discrimination are factors that unfairly decide
the death penalty. The last two reasons that support the claim that the death penalty
should be illegal are the risks of executing an innocent person and the obvious fact that
the death penalty does not deter crime. For these reasons, capital punishment should be
illegal throughout the nation.
Works Cited
Bedau, Peter. Death is Different. Massachusetts: Northeastern University Press, 1987.
Kaminer, Wendy. It's All the Rage: Crime and Culture. New York: Addison-Wesley 
Publishing Company, 1995.
Vilbig, Peter. "Innocent on Death Row." New York Times Upfront 18 Sept 2000: 1-11.