A Closer Look at Death Penalty Arguments – Logic Final
Word Count: 2,289
- Introduction
The United States political system divides the country into two main parties that, in general, disagree on most prominent issues. One of the few topics of discussion that the majority of the country is actually able to agree on, however, is the practice of capital punishment, or the death penalty. The death penalty is a punishment that the United States, as a culture, is still very split on. According to a study done last year, of over 2,000 people polled, 52% said that, for a person convicted of murder, the right punishment is life without parole while 47% revealed that they would prefer the same criminal be given the death penalty (Jones, 2015). Taking someone’s life for a crime that they committed is not trivial thing to do, and I believe that it is for this reason that there is such a divide between the supporters and the opponents. In this paper I will outline two arguments surrounding the death penalty; one arguing for its continued utilization and one detailing why the practice should be abandoned.
2. Argument for the Death Penalty
One of the main ideas in support of the death penalty is the thought of deterrence and the belief that, in order to save their own life, an individual will not commit the murder. The Michigan State Communication Technology Laboratory created a website that presents both sides of the argument the controversial points separating death penalty supporters and opponents (Michigan State, 2000). For example, discrimination and innocence are two of these controversial points written about in the website. Another one of their pages discusses the effectiveness of deterrence and holds, as their bottom line, that we need the death penalty in order to deter murders and other unlawful crimes. Below are the steps leading to their conclusion.
Firstly our society, just as all other modern day societies, utilize punishment in order to decrease the frequency of unlawful action (Michigan State, 2000). By punishment, Michigan State is referring to anything negative that comes as a result of a criminal act; prison time, monetary fines, probation or even a simple warning. These punishments are used by societies because they deem it important to prevent unlawful action. Unlawful action can be defined as meaning anything outlawed by the U.S. Code, be it trespassing on private property to assault or murder. Of course, with these differing levels of unlawful actions, or crimes, comes differing levels of punishment (Michigan State, 2000). Michigan State, in this article, believes that as the harshness of a punishment increases its effectiveness as a deterrent will, necessarily, rise equally because they state that “Punishments which are swift and sure are the best deterrent (Michigan State, 2000).” Because we, as a society, do not want the worst crimes to be committed often, we must utilize a very harsh punishment in order to be an effective deterrent. The 8th amendment of the Bill of Rights outlaws any punishment that is “cruel and unusual” and therefore, short of torture, to take someone’s life is the harshest punishment an individual can suffer (Michigan State, 2000). It follows then, according to Michigan State, that because taking someone’s life as punishment is the harshest penalty, it must also be the most effective deterrent for criminals.
Furthermore, a reasonable person would agree that the most heinous crime should be the crime that society has the most interest in preventing (Michigan State, 2000). In the article there is an implicit assumption that much of society would likely agree that to take a life of someone else is the most heinous of crimes. A second implicit argument is that the only effective way to prevent murder, the most heinous crime, is the death penalty. And because our society does not want there to be murders, we should utilize the punishment with the most effective deterrent effect, the death penalty, should be given to those that commit this crime (Michigan State, 2000). Therefore, our society needs the death penalty as the form of punishment in order to deter murders.
3. Argument against the Death Penalty
In 2014, Nick Gillespie wrote an article for The Daily Beast online news site titled “Why the Death Penalty Needs to Die.” Gillespie has been declared by The Daily Beast to be “among the foremost libertarians in the country” and he is a very vocal writer when it comes to his belief that the death penalty has not been proven to be an effective deterrent. Because it lacks a deterrent effect and has the ability to kill innocent people Gillespie’s bottom line, presented in this specific article, is that the death penalty needs to be abandoned (Gillespie, 2014).
In order to argue that the death penalty is not a deterrent, countering Michigan State’s argument in their argument, Gillespie begins by writing that “… fully 88% of criminal justice experts responding to a poll saying the death penalty does not act as a deterrent of murder… (Gillespie, 2014)” Therefore, implicitly, if these experts are correct and capital punishment is not an effective deterrent to the most heinous crime, murder, then the death penalty will, obviously, not have any impact on future murderers. Thereby proving the premise given by Michigan State, that the death penalty is a deterrent to heinous crime, false and supporting the idea that the death penalty should be abandoned.
Gillespie’s second argument deals with the issue of such an irreversible punishment, taking their life, being inflicted upon innocent individuals because of a mistake made by juries based on either insufficient or false evidence and ultimately effecting tens of people and their families. He writes that “The Innocence Project has documented that at least 18 innocent people, who have served a combined 229 years in prison before being exonerated, have been saved from possible execution over the past 15 years. (Gillespie, 2014)” This means that there have been more than zero innocent people wrongly sentenced to death and forced to live on death row for differing amounts of time. Not only have there been more than 18 people released from death row, but 11 people have been recognized as possibly being innocent after being executed. Implicitly, Gillespie is assuming that to the average citizen, even one innocent person wrongfully sentenced to death and either being executed or being forced to serve years in prison is unacceptable. If this qualification is accepted, then it is clear that an unacceptable number of innocent people have been condemned to death row and everything that accompanies this sentencing. Furthermore, while it is not directly stated in his argument, there is an assumption being made that an action that is killing an unacceptable amount of innocent people must be stopped.
The third argument that Gillespie brings up is that the death penalty costs an obscene amount of money each year (Gillespie, 2014). He writes of a Loyola Marymount Law Professor that says, when the death penalty is on the table, “the legal costs skyrocket to an extra $134 million per year, well above the cost to implement life without parole. (Gillespie, 2014)” This means that if all criminals who committed the most heinous crimes were sentenced to life without parole instead of sentenced to death, states and their taxpayers would save a large amount of money. Taxpayers should not be willing to vote to keep an action that is wasting their money. Therefore, since the death penalty is causing trials to cost more money and waste the state’s and taxpayers’ money, both the state and taxpayers should be against the death penalty.
After presenting these three arguments, Gillespie believes he is able to conclude that, because it .
4. Discussion
We, as a society and as a species, use punishment on a regular basis, which is taking away something positive, such as freedom, as repercussions for a certain behavior. Should an individual commit a robbery, there is a possibility that they are sentenced to about 10 years in prison. The likelihood of being sent to prison is, often times, the reason why people do not commit such a crime. In this discussion, I will talk about the claims that the death penalty acts as a deterrent, whether or not death penalty cases are decided based on attorney costs and public opinion has been moving away from endorsing the death penalty.
Firstly, while the idea that the death penalty would serve as a deterrent is not an unreasonable concept, there are too many contradictory studies finding opposite outcomes for there to be substantial evidence favoring either side. Even though the studies that are attempting to prove the same thing, and are assumedly unbiased, that the death penalty is effective in deterring murders after an execution, display extremely different results. Currently published studies say that the death penalty ranges from causing an increase in murders by an unknown amount every time there is an execution to, oppositely, saving 18 lives per known execution (Simson, 2001). This means that the practice of executing a criminal has not been proven to be a deterrent for future murders, as proponents advocate. Furthermore, if something as permanent as killing someone has not been proven to be effective in a major aspect of its existence, the courts should not be able to use it as punishment. Therefore, because capital punishment has not been proven to be effective as a deterrent, the courts should not be able to use it as a punishment.
Secondly, the total amount of money that is put into a death penalty trial and sentencing is too high to be worth the end result. The Death Penalty Information Center says that the average cost of a death penalty case is $620,932, which is eight times that of a murder case in which the death penalty is not sought (Gould, 2010). This is extremely expensive and when selecting lawyers the cheaper they are, the worse or less experienced they are. Better, more expensive lawyers are able to influence the jury in ways that cheaper lawyers cannot. If a more expensive lawyer knows different ways to influence juries, the juries are now not deciding the case because of the facts, they are deciding the case because of the skill of the lawyer. If the juries are not deciding a case based on the facts, then there is a chance for the jury to make a mistake. There is evidence, presented by Jon Gould, showing that an attorney’s skill and price are negatively correlated; meaning that as the price of the attorney goes up, the skill also rises and therefore the conviction rate lowers. If the defendant spends less than $320,000 on representation costs, the bottom third of average costs, then they have a 44% chance of receiving the death penalty at trial (Gould, 2010). On the other hand, if the defendants are able to pay more than $320,000, or the upper two thirds, they only have 19% chance of receiving the death penalty (Gould, 2010). Because, sometimes, the jury makes decisions based on the skill of the lawyer and not the facts of the case, there is a possibility that they are wrong and make an incorrect decision. As a society, we should not punish someone with death if there is a possibility that the case was decided because someone has more money to spend on a better lawyer. Therefore, because death is permanent and should not be decided based on how much money a person has to spend towards their legal fees, it should not be an available punishment.
The third reason that the death penalty should be abandoned as a punishment is that over time, it is losing the support of the American people. University of Chicago Law professor Edward Levi wrote in his book An Introduction to Legal Reasoning, “the adoption of an idea by a court reflects the power… in the community.” This suggests that even though the death penalty is something that comes from the Legislative branch of the government, through public opinion, it can be changed. An example of this is the Obergafell v. Hodges (2015) because, arguably, the Supreme Court did not have any reason to deem banning same sex marriage unconstitutional, except that public opinion was in favor of doing so. Furthermore, a writer for The Innocence Project, Barry Sheck, wrote an article in 2012 about the push towards a repeal in multiple states. Sheck wrote, “An extraordinary movement towards repeal of the death penalty has swept the United States in the past few years – New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois, and Connecticut have all taken this step legislatively and a repeal referendum is now on the ballot in California that has an excellent chance of passing. (Sheck, 2012)” This claim, that support for the death penalty is decreasing, is supported according to public polls showing that as the number of executions drops per year, support from the general population does as well (Baumgartner, 2015).
Based Sheck’s article, and the example of Obergafell v. Hodges (2015), the United States government is able change the law regarding the practice of capital punishment because of public opinion. Also, a government that is “by the people, for the people”, should be willing to do what the people want. With that said, it is able to follow that if the government is able to change a law based on public opinion and the public does, in fact, want the change, the government should comply. Therefore, because public support of the death penalty is dropping and the government has the ability to stop sentencing people to death, the death penalty should be abandoned.
Works Cited
Baumgartner, Frank R., Emily Williams, and Kaneesha Johnson. “Americans Are Turning against the Death Penalty. Are Politicians Far Behind?” Washington Post. The Washington Post, 7 Dec. 2015. Web. 30 Apr. 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/12/07/americans-are-turning-against-the-death-penalty-are-politicians-far-behind/
“Deterrence (In Support of the Death Penalty).” Death Penalty Curriculum. Michigan State University, 2000. Web. 27 Mar. 2016.
Gillespie, Nick. “Why the Death Penalty Needs to Die.” The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 31 July 2014. Web. 27 Mar. 2016. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/31/why-the-death-penalty-needs-to-die.html
Gould, Jon B., and Lisa Greenman. “Update on the Cost and Quality of Defense Representation in Federal Death Penalty Cases.” Report to the Committee on Defender Services Judicial Conference of the United States (2010): 53-55. Web. 30 Apr. 2016. http://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/defender-services/publications/update-cost-and-quality-defense-representation-federal
Jones, Robert P., Daniel Cox, Betsy Cooper, and Rachel Leinesch. “ANXIETY, NOSTALGIA, AND MISTRUST.” 2015 American Values Survey (2015): 47. Public Religion Research Institute. Web. 30 Apr. 2016. http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PRRI-AVS-2015.pdf
Levi, Edward H. An Introduction to Legal Reasoning. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1949. Print.
Sheck, Barry. “Towards a Repeal of the Death Penalty – Innocence Project.” Innocence Project RSS. Innocence Project RSS, 16 July 2012. Web. 30 Apr. 2016. http://www.innocenceproject.org/towards-a-repeal-of-the-death-penalty/
Simson, R. S. (2001). Does Capital Punishment Deter Homicide?: A Case Study of Epidemiological Objectivity. Metaphilosophy, 32(3), 293-307. Retrieved March 12, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24439254.pdf