Death Penalty

Introduction

The death penalty has become one of the most controversial issues worldwide in the area of criminal justice. More than half the world's nations have banned the use of the death penalty or no longer apply it, even through the death penalty may remain legal. While the death penalty is not banned under international law, the growing international trend is toward limitations in its use. In recent years, and in opposition to this trend, the imposition and use of the death penalty has increased in the United States, a fact that sparked heated debate. Intensifying the debate is the recent use of DNA evidence and other high technology investigative tools, which have resulted in a large number of reversals of death penalty convictions. In January of 2000, Illinois Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in his state when a thirteenth death penalty conviction was reversed by the state. Illinois has exonerated more death row inmates than it has convicted. This paper discusses Is if the death penalty effective or not.

Discussion

Otherwise known as capital punishment, the death penalty was abolished in the UK in 1965 and replaced with the mandatory life sentence. Although still relatively common in some parts of the world, the only Western democracy to retain the death penalty is the USA.

Supporters of capital punishment firmly believe that it serves as a specific deterrent to crime (once imposed, the criminal clearly may not commit further crimes) and as a general deterrent (it encourages other people not to commit crimes to avoid the imposition of the death penalty). Further, they believe that the punishment should fit the crime and that murderers “deserve” this form of punishment. (Zimring, 52)

Opponents of the death penalty argue that it serves no permissible societal goal and there is no moral justification for state-sanctioned murder. They point to statistics that indicate that the death penalty has no deterrent effect. Some studies do show that the number of homicides is actually higher in states with the death penalty. Murderers have the lowest recidivism (re-commission of the same crime) rate of all criminals. Many opponents feel the death penalty is applied inconsistently and arbitrarily by a legal system that favors the wealthy and discriminates against minorities. Their feelings echo the sentiments of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. In his dissent from the court's decision in Callins v. Collins (1994), Justice Blackmun declared, “Twenty years have passed since this court declared that the death penalty must be imposed fairly and with reasonable consistency or not at all…the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness, discrimination and mistake…From this day forward, I will no longer tinker with the machinery of death…I feel…obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.” Yet the controversy rages on. (Acker, 12)

Particularly controversial is the use of the death penalty to execute juvenile offenders. Few countries authorize the use of the death penalty on juvenile offenders, and among those few, the United States is the ...