Capital Punishment Must be Abolished :: The Case Against the Death Penalty

Crimes against children are the most heinous crime. That, for me, would be a reason for capital penalization... -- Clint EastwoodI could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment. -- Werner HerzogIn most of the industrialized world, capital punishment is not apply to punish criminals. However, it is still used in the United States. The capital punishment debate in the United States has raged for almost four hundred years. Supporters of capital punishment often cite its roles as deterrent and retribution as reasons for their support of the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment cite its arbitrariness and finality as reasons for their opposition against the death penalty. Because capital punishment can lead to an unequal application of justice, sometimes to the point of executing innocent persons, no amount of argument from its supporters should encumber it from being abolished. The Arguments of Those Who Favor Capital Punishment Supporters of capital punishment begin by arguing that capital punishment deters murder. This view has been held for thousands of years. In his book The penalisation of Death, Thorsten Sellin notes what the famous 18th century English law commentator William Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries on the Laws of England As to the end or final cause of punishment, this is not by way of atonement...but as a prevention against future offenses of the same kind. This is effected three ways, either by the amendment of the offender...or by deterring others...or lastly by depriving the party injuring of the former to do future mischief. (Sellin 77) This sentiment was expressed by Socrates (in Gorgias) and by his antagonist Demosthenes some 2,000 years before Blackstone (Sellin 3-5). But what evidence is there to support the psyche that the death penalty deters potential murderers better than any other form of punishment? Until Professor Isaac Ehrlich released his study on this subject, only anecdotal evidence existed, and that had been provided by batch in the law enforcement, judicial, and corrections fields. By 1953, the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in England noted ...capital punishment has obviously failed as a deterrent when a murder is committed. We can number its failures. But we cannot number its successes. No one can ever know how many people have refrained from murder because of the fear of being hanged.