Capital Punishment in America

Capital Punishment in America

Capital punishment or the death penalty as it is commonly termed is of all the penal practices, the most controversial. This is not at all surprising, concerning the fact that it involves taking a human life. Because it is the most severe of all sentences, there have been countless efforts to abolish the death penalty, and these efforts have proved effective in most of the industrialized nations, with the exception of Japan and the United States of America. It is very important to know the issues surrounding capital punishment, because it occurs in the country we live in and affects us even if we are not on death row. Because capital punishment occurs in just about half of the world, it would be difficult to talk about all of the circumstances and issues of capital punishment in each country, and because of this, the focus of this analysis will be the United States of America.

It is difficult to describe the death penalty without discussing the methods used to carry out this punishment. In the past there have been various means to accomplishing it. For instance, crucifixion, drowning, burning, impaling, hangings and shootings have all been used as methods to inflicting a legal death upon an individual. However, most of these have been dubbed inhumane and therefore eliminated in most lands. So, in efforts to "civilize" executing a person, new techniques have been developed. For example, in France the guillotine was created as a quick and civilized means for meting out death as an alternative to beheading the criminals with a sword, which was sometimes too dull and required that the executer swing multiple times before the job was complete.

But today in the United States, capital punishment is typically met out by lethal gas, injection or electrocution. Three states execute by hanging, and another three do so by a firing squad. In the United States, there is a distribution of authority. On the federal level, the death penalty is provided for over forty crimes including premeditated murder, drug-trafficking and treason. But the federal government allows for the individual states to define crimes and choose their own penalties for crimes committed. Twelve of these fifty states have abolished the death penalty entirely.

Currently, in the US there are about 3,500 people on death row. California heads the list with 603 offenders awaiting their deaths and it is possible that by the end of the year another man, Scott Peterson, may join these ranks. The reason that the numbers are so high is there is a necessary gap between conviction and the actual carrying out of the sentence. Usually a criminal will wait a decade or two before he is actually executed. There are two chief reasons for that: the first being that executions cannot be immediate because this would not allow for the appeals process and the second called the "exhaustion of remedies". This is a legal term meaning that the defendant is required to finish appeals at the state level before the case even goes to the federal courts. This provides the state governments time to correct any mistakes or problems before turning the case over to the federal governments.

Also it is extremely expensive to put criminals to death. Proponents of the abolishment of death penalty argue that it costs way more money to execute a criminal than to keep them in prisons for life. On average it costs about $3.3 million dollars to execute a convict while it cost only $805,000 to keep an inmate in prison for fifty years. So it would be extremely costly to put all the convicts to death at once.

As I have mentioned previously, the first noteworthy movements towards the eradication of the death penalty were in the 1700's during the Age of Enlightenment. During this time, men such as Voltaire, Beccaria, Adam Smith and Thomas Paine wrote books and essays describing the injustices of capital punishment. However, these men did not get the responses they wanted and some even died because of expressing their opinions. In more recent times, there have also been efforts to change the law. For example, in 1972 Furman v. Georgia was a major case that changed the death penalty laws in the US forever. This was a case where three men claimed their 8th and 14th amendment rights were violated when they were condemned to death by the states of Georgia and Texas. The Supreme Court with a 5-4 vote declared that capital punishment was unconstitutional at that time. This forced the states to rewrite their death penalty laws to guard against discrimination and bias. In 1977 the new laws were completed and into effect when Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah.

As aforementioned, there has been an ongoing debate over the death penalty in America. The chief argument for death sentences is that it can be used as a deterrent. Deterrence is the idea that executing murderers will decrease the rates of homicide by discouraging future murderers for fear

that they themselves will suffer the penalty of death. This is what is called "general deterrence". The second type of deterrence is called "specific deterrence" because if that murderer is killed,