The American public has long been supportive of capital punishment for convicted murderers, and that support continues to grow even today. In a Gallup Poll conducted in 1981, two in three Americans expressed overall approval for the death penalty. That support rose to three in four people in 1991, and to four out of five in 1994. Although these polls need to be interpreted with careful attention, it is obvious that there are few issues on which more Americans agree: “in at least some circumstances, death is seen as a justifiable punishment.” (Murray, 751)
Having backed the claim for the ineffectiveness of capital punishments in preventing crime using statistics, an important disclaimer need to be added – “Statistics is not everything”. In other words, even if capital punishment is helpful as a deterrent of violent crime, it cannot justify the execution of a few innocent victims alongside the guilty ones. Hence, the claim that the death penalty was “morally obligatory” based on statistical findings alone is simply insufficient in dealing with the complexities of human nature. For example, Clive Stafford Smith, a renowned expert on ethical aspects of law makes some valid observations in his research article for the New Scientist:
“I have spent more than 20 years representing some 300 men, women and children who faced capital punishment in various US states. I do not think of my clients as statistics. Six of them have died in the execution chamber. Often I have staved off executions only at the last minute. Many of my clients have been innocent: human beings make fallible judges, and no machine has more human parts than the criminal justice system. I therefore feel strongly that when academics step out of the classroom and into public discourse on this matter they must be held responsible for their actions.” (Smith, 21)
The above argument was presented as a polemical response to a paper published by Sunstein and Vermeule in the Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies on March of 2005. In this paper, Sunstien and Vermuele claim that “every death penalty execution saves the lives of 18 potential victims”. First of all, a mathematical approach to solving human fallacies is inappropriate. On top of that, the statistic given in support of the “death penalty efficacy” is largely second-hand. Of the thousands of studies published on the subject over the last decade or so, most of the evidence in support of capital punishment was taken from research findings taken many years back. Also, the findings were carried out by politically conservative organizations like the Brookings Institute, etc., which is likely to be biased in its views. What’s more, “recent evidence” suggests that capital punishment does not save lives more than to a superficial degree (Smith, 22)
While the death penalty should essentially belong to the domain of politics and policy-making, its traditions were based on theology. The United States is presently the leading country in the industrialized world with the greatest following of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. Given that nearly one in four Americans are Catholic, the views of the Church on matters of capital punishment need to be given importance. Studies of Catholic priests and parishioners in the United States support this supposition. For example, a 2003 study of priests and pastors came to the conclusion that the church authorities are unanimously against the concept of death penalty. For example,
“Catholic clergy may be especially influential. In contrast to most other religions, the Catholic faith emphasizes doctrine and tradition over individual conscience on matters of faith and morals. Although many Catholics ignore church doctrine on issues such as divorce, the views of at least some Catholics may be influenced by church teaching. To the extent this is true, one would expect a convergence of opinion between clergy and certain congregants on religious issues that have political implications.” (Mulligan, 741)
Also, devoted Catholics who attend mass on a regular basis and hence are exposed to moral messages from the pulpit are overwhelmingly against death penalty as well as abortion. So, the death penalty debate is played out on the political and personal-values domains. In any sound democracy, personal values should translate into public policies. The fact that the significant Catholic minority in this country don’t find public representation is a statement on the state of democracy in America and not a reflection of true public opinion (Mulligan, 745).
The most influential member of the Catholic Church – the Pope – is someone who wields strong influence upon Catholic followers. During the tenure of late Pope John Paul, the broadcast and print media devoted much attention to John Paul’s proclamations on “abortion, divorce, gay rights, the death penalty, euthanasia, human cloning, and other controversial topics”. If Catholics had paid even a cursory attention to news pieces during his tenure, they might have understood the pope’s views on where public policies should be headed. When the pope proclaims his views, he also “judges and defines what is to be believed or rejected by all the faithful”. It is a failure on part of the Catholics of this country, to not attach weight to the views of its chief moral custodian in matters of “moral policy issues”. It needs to be added that the Catholic example is just one of many in America. Across religions, ethnicity and nativity, Americans when taken as followers of their respective religious faiths fall short of putting its principles to practice (Mulligan, 751).
Ever since the birth of this country, minorities in general and Black Americans in particular were subject to shoddy treatment at social, political and economic domains. Statistics show that the number of Black Americans prosecuted, convicted and executed is disproportionately high. Surely, to conclude that African Americans are racially corrupt would not only be scientifically incorrect but also morally inappropriate. Such an assessment would take America back to the days of Nazi Germany and the racial cleansing of the time. The African American assimilation into the American mainstream is a long, dark and saddening aspect of this country’s history. The right thing to do now would be to correct the aberration. Giving lethal injections to more and more number of Black Americans is equal to refusing to learn from history and against civil progress (Dennis, 175).
Looking at this issue from a systemic view point, it could be discerned that there are many laws that are disadvantageous to citizens involved in a certain ways of life. For example, most Black Americans resort to illegal drug trafficking for economic sustenance. This is more a failure on part of the American government to provide the basic support for this community and not as a result of the moral inferiority of the people involved. In other words, the so called “war on drugs” is essentially a “war on poor blacks”. Such patterns are evident in other areas of law as well including the capital punishment legislations. There is overwhelming proof that the judiciary (more particularly the jury) which is subject to indoctrination by conservative political ideologies makes judgments which are inevitably biased. The bias is not so much a conscious one as a sub-conscious inculcation. In this context, a review of the process of law-making and the process of arriving at court-house decisions need to be reviewed. Once this is done, not only is the number of death penalties bound to fall, but the proportion of minorities and immigrants would also lessen. The Omnibus Crime Act of 1991 is already a move in this direction. This important legislation contains a “racial justice provision” that allows people in death row “to challenge their sentence if they could show statistically that people of their race and within their jurisdiction were more likely to be charged with murder or sentenced to die” (Dennis, 176).
A significant political and legal justification behind the use of the capital punishment in the United States is the so-called “public support”. But, this argument is often based on single-item measures of public sentiment and opinion that have shown a wide support for capital punishment across the board. Yet, measuring death penalty attitudes and opinions are a complex process and adopting a single-item measure does not really capture all the complexities involved in the decision making. More importantly, it is believed by some experts that public support for death penalty would erode drastically once these complexities are elucidated to the survey participants. For example, Zaller (1992) states the following:
“Individuals hold not one but several attitudes about most issues. Furthermore, as respondents answer multiple questions on the same issue, they raise a greater number of pertinent considerations, which leads to a larger pool of information from which to draw for responses to later questions Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s argument against capital punishment captures the complexity of death penalty attitudes. He suggests that Americans know little about capital punishment, and he argues that support would decline if citizens had more knowledge about its application.” (Murray, 756)
In the final analysis, the findings lend substantial support to the Marshall hypothesis. In other words, when more considerations about capital punishment’s administration are provided, attitudes and opinions about its adoption decline drastically. Moreover, given the constraints on attitudes in most survey instruments, the final result may have been an understated one. For instance, on top of constraints imposed by the sample, low informational quality of the questionnaire, and the short time-frame given to the respondents to state their opinion, “instability in these attitudes should also be limited by consistency effects created by the pretest-posttest question order and respondents’ tendency to discount information that conflicts with their attitudes toward capital punishment”. The following passage captures this reality quite lucidly:
“Death penalty attitudes are complex. This complexity likely contributes to the ongoing controversies surrounding capital punishment, as most recently manifested by the uproar caused by the commutation of all death sentences in the state of Illinois. Hence, it is implied that the political and legal justifications of capital punishment may rest on mistaken conceptions of attitudes toward the death penalty and its application.” (Murray, 759)
Expert evidence from renowned criminologists from the United States leads to the inference that death penalty “fails to deter violent crime, and they do not agree with public justifications for its use”. Some of the expert opinion even suggest that death penalty “tends to devalue human life and sends Americans the message that killing is in some circumstances appropriate”. Consider the following statistic taken from The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology:
TABLE 3 RESPONSES OF CRIMINOLOGISTS TO GENERAL QUESTIONS ON DETERRENCE (N=67) (IN PERCENTS) (Radelet, p.6)
A. Overall, over the last twenty years, the threat or use of the death penalty in the United States has been a stronger deterrent to homicide than the threat or use of long (or life) prison sentences.
Strongly agree 0
Agree 4.5
Disagree 43.3
Strongly disagree 49.3
Missing 3.0
B. Overall, how would you evaluate the empirical support for the deterrent effects of the death penalty?
Strong-support 0
Moderate support 4.5
Weak support 44.8
No support 49.3
Missing 1.5
The above results reveal the broad consensus among America’s eminent criminologists that “the death penalty does, and can do, little to reduce rates of criminal violence and that they do not concur with one of the most important public justifications for the death penalty in modern society.” (Radelet, 14)
The following passage serves as a fitting conclusion to the thesis in opposition to capital punishment:
“Capital punishment will continue to generate much public debate in the early decades of the next century and various bodies of opinion will be consulted. The question of whether or not the death penalty can reduce criminal violence is–at least for the presidents of the major scholarly societies in criminology–a settled issue. Hopefully this will provide policy makers with information that might help move political debate beyond “gut” feelings and simplistic demands for the death penalty as a way of “getting tough” on crime. Careful consideration of alternatives can build a public consensus around more effective policies that really hold promise in reducing America’s high rates of criminal violence. Politicians should pay more attention to experts when they develop criminal justice policy as this might move it beyond simplistic debates of “getting tough on crime.”” (Radelet, 12)
Works Cited:
Smith, Clive Stafford. “Forget the statistics, killing is wrong: supporters of the death penalty say it deters murderers. Be careful, says Clive Stafford Smith. Using bald figures to resolve moral dilemmas is fraught with danger. ” New Scientist. 187.2513 (August 20, 2005): 20(2).
Mulligan, Kenneth. “Pope John Paul II and Catholic opinion toward the death penalty and abortion *. ” Social Science Quarterly., 87.3 (Sept 2006): 739(15).
Dennis, Christopher, Marshall H. Medoff, and Michelle N. Gagnier., “The impact of racially disproportionate outcomes on public policy: the U.S. Senate and the death penalty. ” The Social Science Journal., 35.n2 (April 1998): 169(13).
Murray, Gregg R. “Raising considerations: public opinion and the fair application of the death penalty *. ” Social Science Quarterly., 84.4 (Dec 2003): 753(18).
Radelet, Michael L., and Ronald L. Akers., “Deterrence and the death penalty: the views of the experts.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology., 87.n1 (Fall 1996): 1-16.