ABOLISHING CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Death penalty has been a mode of punishment since time immemorial. The arguments for and against have not changed much over the years. Crime as well as the mode of punishment correlate to the culture and form of civilization from which they emerge. With the march of civilization, the modes of death punishment have witnessed significant humanized changes. However, according to Amnesty International(an international body with over 3million members in 150 countries), the death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It violates the right to life as  as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The great Indian emperor Ashoka once said," State should not punish with vengeance". This quote by the wise emperor is apt in this discussion as it explains that state should attempt to control crime, not commit it by sanctioning a killing on its own citizen regardless of his or her character or action.

Among the most common arguments for abolishing capital punishment is that it is not a deterrent to future murders. Renowned criminologist William Bowers (Northeastern University,USA) maintains that the death penalty has the opposite effect; that is, society is brutalized by the use of capital punishment, and this increases the likelihood of more murder. According to research by a leading American university, States in the US that do not employ the death penalty generally have lower murder rates than states that do. The US itself has a higher murder rate than Europe or Canada, where capital punishment is not practiced. As someone who presided over many of Texas's executions, former Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox has remarked," It is my own experience that those executed in Texas were not deterred by the existence of the death penalty". Also a survey of the former and present presidents of the country's top academic criminological societies found that 84% of these experts rejected the notion that research had demonstrated any deterrent effect from the death penalty. As proof of this, taking excerpts from Austin Fletcher, Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University(Excerpts from “The Case Against The Death Penalty”, 1997, American Civil Liberties Union) says that "there is no support for the view that the death penalty provides a more effective detterent to police homicides than alternative sanctions. Not for a single year was evidence found that police are safer in jurisdictions that provide for capital punishment." (Bailey and Peterson,Criminology(1987)). Evidently, the threat of death penalty 'does not even exert an incremental deterrent effect over the threat of a lesser punishment in the abolitionist states.' (Wolfson, in Bedau, ed., The Death Penalty in America, 3rd ed. (1982)). "Actual experience thus establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty does not deter murder. No comparable body of evidence contradicts that conclusion."(Michigan State University and Death Penalty Information Center,2000)

Another justification for the argument againt death penalty is that the risk of executing the innocent precludes the use of death penalty. The death penalty alone imposes an irrevocable sentence. Once an inmate is executed, nothing can be done to make amends if a mistake has been made. There is considerable evidence that many mistakes have been made in sentencing people to death. Since 1973, at least 88 people have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence emerged. During the same period of time, over 650 people have been executed. Thus, for every seven people executed, we have found one person on death row who never should have been convicted. These statistics represent an intolerable risk of executing the innocent. If an automobile manufacturer operated with similar failure rates, it would be run out of business. A recent study by Columbia University Law School found that two thirds of all capital trials contained serious errors. When the cases were retried, over 80% of the defendants were not sentenced to death and 7% were completely
acquitted. Gerald Kogan, Former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice remarked, " There is no question in my mind that we have certainly, in the past, executed those people who either didn't fit the criteria for execution or who, in fact, were, factually, not guilty of the crime for which they have been executed." Taking the example of Ray Krone, who was released in 2002, he spent 10years in prison in Arizona, including time on death row, for a murder he did not commit.He was the 100th person to be released from death row since 1973.DNA testing proved his innocence. Society takes many risks in which innocent lives can be lost. We build bridges, knowing that statistically some workers will be killed during construction; we take great precautions to reduce the number of unintended fatalities. But wrongful executions are a preventable risk. By substituting a sentence of life without parole, we meet society's needs of punishment and protection without running the risk of an erroneous and irrevocable punishment.

Another irrefutable argument against capital punishment is that the death penalty is applied unfairly. In practice, the death penalty does not single out the worst offenders. Rather, it selects an arbitrary group based on such irrational factors as the quality of the defense counsel, the country in which the crime was committed, or the race of the defendant or victim. According to studies done by the American Civil Liberties Union, approximately 35% of those executed since 1976 have been black, even though blacks constitute only 12% of the population.The odds of receiving a death sentence are nearly four times higher if the defendant is black. Also in states like Illinois, Maryland and Pennsylvania the percentage of blacks on death row are almost 60-70%. In 1990, the U.S.General Accounting Office reviewed numerous studies of patterns of racial discrimination in death penalty sentencing and they found out that it was more likely to receive death penalty if the victim was white.of people currently on death row in U.S, 82% were convicted in cases involving white victims.

Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. quotes," Who receives the death penalty has less to do with the violence of the crime than with the color of the criminal's skin."

It is arbitrary when someone in one county or state receives the death penalty, but someone who
commits a comparable crime in another county or state is given a life sentence. Prosecutors have
enormous discretion about when to seek the death penalty and when to settle for a plea bargain.
Often those who can only afford a minimal defense are selected for the death penalty. Until race
and other arbitrary factors, like economics and geography, can be eliminated as a determinant of
who lives and who dies, the death penalty must not be used.

References :

1>Johnson, J. L., & Johnson, C. F. (2001). Poverty and the death penalty. Journal of Economic Issues, 35(2), doi: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4227684

2>Scheck, Neufeld, and Dwyer, Actual Innocence:Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted (New York,
NY: Doubleday, 2000; New York, NY: Signet, 2001) (hereafter, “Actual Innocence”).

3>Arguments for and against the death penalty. (2000). Informally published manuscript, Michigan State University, Michigan, USA.

4>Huff, “Wrongful Conviction: Societal Tolerance of Injustice,” 4Res. in Soc. Probs. & Pub. Pol’y 99, 103 (1987) 

5>Id.; Radelet, Lofquist, and Bedau,“Prisoners Released from Death Rows Since 1970 Because of Doubts About Their Guilt,” 13 Thomas M.Cooley L.Rev. 907-66 (Michaelmas Term, 1996).

6>Furman, H. P. (2003). Wrongful convictions and the accuracy of the criminal justice system. The Colarado Lawyer, 32(9), 

7>American Civil Liberties Union, Capital Punishment Project. (n.d.). Race and the death penalty. Washington.D.C: