Capital Punishment - Essay Example

Capital Punishment Capital punishment is morally impermissible because it violates the most fundamental human right: the right to life. When court declares capital punishment to a criminal, he or she is put to death by the State for his or her crime. The practice is not uniform across the states in the US. Some of the states do not allow capital punishment while others have the law permitting capital punishment. However, execution procedures may differ. As of May 2013, the District of Columbia and 18 other States have abolished the capital punishment for any kind of crime whatsoever. States employ different methods of execution such as lethal injection or gas, electrocution, firing squad, hanging in executing the criminal. I, for one, am not in favor of capital punishment and strongly oppose this law of land for various reasons. The first and foremost is capital punishment does not serve the purpose for which it was made out to be. It has failed to work as a deterrent at all. Radelet and LaCock (2009) show in their research that capital punishment has failed to act as deterrent for hard core criminals. Surprisingly, police officers are at more risk in the region that supports capital punishment. California, Texas and Florida support capital punishment. However, between 1989 and 1998, the largest number of cases of felonious killing of law enforcement officers occurred in these states. And the Northeast region where capital punishment is not legislated; the numbers of police officers killed remained at its lowest (Deterrence). 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 South 32 31 31 29 28 31 24 32 24 32 29 West 9 9 9 7 13 11 18 23 6 15 14 Northeast 9 7 7 7 8 9 12 8 10 7 3 Midwest 8 14 14 20 8 11 16 8 15 11 10 Source: http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=82 Moreover, the states that do not exercise death penalty show consistently lower murder rates. There is absolutely no moral need for capital punishment. Bonner and Fessenden argue that “10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average, Federal Bureau of Investigation data shows, while half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average”(Para 2). The following table demonstrates the difference in murder rates per 100,000 between two kinds of states. 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 Murder Rate in Death Penalty States 5.9 5.87 5.71 5.91 5.82 5.82 5.7 5.86 6.51 7.09 Murder Rate in Non-death Penalty States 4.22 4.03 4.02 4.1 4.27 4.25 4.25 4.59 4.61 5.00 Source: http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=82 From the above table, it is evident that murder rates are consistently more in states where death penalty is applicable; in contrast, non-death penalty states show consistently lower murder rates. The other strong reason to oppose capital punishment is that it infringes the most basic human right: the right to life. Critiques of capital punishment have always questioned the morality in correcting a wrong with a wrong. Even though the supporters of death penalty argue that it deters people from committing serious offenses, this claim is far from the truth. Death penalty is indeed a perpetuation of murder in the society. How right is it to appeal to a person not to killing by killing? Clearly, capital punishment has no moral dimension as serves to inculcate the most vicious vice in the society: murder. Death penalty violates people’s right to life (Wicks 111). Apart from the deterrent factor, many people in support of capital punishment argue that it is a majority view so capital punishment must continue. It is correct that majority of the population supports capital punishment as is evident in the poll survey done by Pew Research Center. The survey was conducted between November 9 and November 14 in 2011 and 2001 adults responded to this survey and 62% supported the death penalty for homicides. In 1996, 78% respondents favored death penalty and for last 4 decades the public opinion has consistently remained in favor of capital punishment. Based on these results, one can argue that capital punishment is essential in fostering a moral society. Perhaps, in the mind of people, capital punishment acts as a deterrent for people not to commit crime; otherwise, criminals will become fearless and commit more crimes. Consequently, it is morally right to implement capital punishment for serious offenses, but is the process itself just? It will be interesting to go deeper into these arguments and understand how far they are correct. Source: http://www.people-press.org/2012/01/06/continued-majority-support-for-death-penalty/?src=prc-twitter Capital punishment is usually applied in discriminative way. It only works in the best interest of the rich, who are well represented in courts. It is quite possible that expert view differs from the majority view. When car breaks down on the way, a single expert mechanic is needed to fix the issue; hundreds and thousands of passersby who stop at the car guessing on possible fault cannot help. In line with this philosophy, several retired and existing judges of Supreme Court have spoken, in their personal interviews and not in the court verdicts, against the provisions of capital punishment in law. Justice Ginsburg says, "People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty" (Death Penalty Information Center). That means many resource-strained defendants are likely to get capital punishment because they are not well represented in the court of law. Is this justified at all? It is amply clear that capital punishment only works in the interest of the rich in the society. It lacks any moral sense. It is a fallacy that capital punishment creates fear in the mind of a criminal. In fact, everything is finished in a few seconds when the criminal is given lethal injection or hanged. That suffering can never act as a deterrent. Usually, die-hard criminals are highly courageous in their endeavors, and procedures such as capital punishment cannot deter them at all. On the contrary, capital punishment fosters racial disparity in the society and any effort to correct it goes in vain, if the practice of capital punishment continues. Racial discrimination is an evil and any measures that directly or indirectly promote it must be done away with; capital punishment, at least indirectly, certainly acts in promoting racial discrimination in the society and hampers the way to create healthy society. The most degrading aspect with capital punishment is that it does not give any chance of judicial correction once it is executed. Works Cited Bonner, Raymond and Ford Fessenden. States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates, 2000. Accessed May 16, 2014 Deterrence. The death penalty fails to deter crime. Web. Apr 9, 2014 Racial Disparities. Working for alternatives to the death penalty. Web. Apr 9, 2014 Death Penalty Information Center. Statements on the Death Penalty by Supreme Court Justices. Web. Apr 9, 2014 Wicks, Elizabeth. The Right to Life and Conflicting Interests. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Print. Read More