The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty

Since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to reinstate the death penalty in 1976 (following a three-year hiatus), the ultimate penalty for capital crimes has been applied 1, 056 times. Three thousand three hundred seventy inmates remain on death row (Statistics as of September 2006). The death penalty has been applied both by the states and the federal government. The military has the authority to carry out the penalty, but has not carried out an execution since the penalty’s reinstatement.

The death penalty flies in the face of the Judeo-Christian tradition of mercy. It finds it’s legal roots in the ancient Code of Hammurabi that demanded an eye for an eye as an answer to criminal behavior. Hammurabi reigned as king of Babylonia during the 18th century B.C.E.

Many advocates of the death penalty cite the right of the victim’s survivors to feel a sense of closure for heinous crimes. Others cite religious underpinnings for putting to death those convicted of serious crimes, owing to Christ’s admonition to “render unto Caesar,” meaning generally that they view the state as reserving the right to decide matters that belong to the realm of governments.

What’s wrong with the death penalty? Well, first, while there are hideous crimes and grotesque criminals who often leave a wake of pain and mayhem, society has evolved to a point of being somewhat more sophisticated in the twenty-eight centuries since Hammurabi.

Prisons exist to remove violent offenders from the streets and separate them from the rest of society. Most industrialized nation-states now view the latter as an appropriate means to remove dangerous individuals from contact with the rest of society.

Judicial systems are sometimes faulty in trying those condemned eventually to death guilty. Evidence may be lacking, juries can reach wrong decisions, legal representation may be substandard, and as DNA evidence can sometimes indicate, those convicted of capital crimes can sometimes later be found innocent.

In some cases the convicted felon either lacked sufficient mental prowess to comprehend the nature of a crime committed. Alternately, mental illness may preclude the ability to understand what the accused or convicted felon’s mental state was at the time of a crime.

The wealthy are never put to death. Usually the penalty falls on poor individuals. Only infrequently is anyone executed who can afford competent legal counsel. The issue of the cost of putting convicted prisoners to death is best illustrated by the state that executes the most people, Texas. In that state, the cost of trial and appeals of a convicted felon, through the act of execution, totals $2.3 million, or three times the cost of imprisoning a felon for life.

Conclusion
While the death penalty may give a sense of closure to the surviving victims of a crime, family, and large segments of society, the great moral issues about its rightness commands attention. Nowhere, where there is an absence of a death penalty, and felons are sentenced to life imprisonment, do crime rates approach states and nations where the death penalty is widely practiced. The fact is, in places where the death penalty is carried out, crime rates are higher, mistakes are made in the judicial process, legal representation may be lacking, the expense of convicting and carrying out a sentence of death is astronomical, and the innocent and incompetent are sometimes killed. A mark of advanced societies is how they treat the least among their citizenry. The existence of the death penalty, or its absence, is a direct reflection of the moral makeup of a nation.

While revenge is an understandable result of having suffered the consequences of serious crimes, the issue of forgiveness, while ensuring that society is protected against further criminal behavior, must be weighed. Nations and states that attempt to further justice through becoming complicit in premeditated murder leave great moral questions in their wake.