A 19-year-old high school girl was shot twice and buried while still alive in 1998 and Clayton Lockett was convicted of her murder (“Clayton Lockett” 1). After conviction, he was given the death penalty to be imposed by lethal injection and fifteen years later, his execution was botched when drug dosage was not adequate for death, finding veins for giving the drugs required multiple attempts, and the medications leaked into his muscle tissue (Connor). Witnesses to his death described it as agonizing and the response of the public again stirred the debate concerning using government sanctions to kill in the name of justice. Arguments for and against the use of capital punishment for the worst convictions in the United States include cost, the effectiveness as a deterrent, morality, inability to reverse the final decision, and racism. This paper presents these arguments and promotes the conclusion that the death penalty should be abolished.
IMMORALITY
The three primary topics related to the morality of the death penalty involve giving the government the power of life and death, the requirement of doctors to be involved when they have taken an oath to preserve life, and the mental torment inflicted on the convict as he awaits his execution. First, supporters of capital punishment state that the families and friends of the victims are given closure and a sense of retribution by the execution of the killer while opponents argue that the government is allowed to make a ruling without proper authority. Religiously, in the Bible, St. Matthew 5:38 states capital punishment is acceptable in the idea of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (Bible Gateway); supporters also state that the definition of murder is different from that of capital punishment in that it involves malice of forethought.
Second, death by lethal injection involves insertion of a line for intravenous instillation into the bloodstream and formally requires the participation of a doctor or nurse. In addition, a physician must be present to pronounce the state of death. Health care professional are dedicated to promoting health, not death. To date, twelve associations of medicine state that being part of an execution is a breach of ethics including the American Nursing Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Society of Anesthesiologists (Amnesty International); in addition, two pharmaceutical companies have written letter to protest concerning the use of their products to deliberately induce death.
Finally, there is the immorality of the anguish inflicted on the convict before and during his death. It was reported that it was necessary to pry Clayton Leggett from his cell to take him to his execution (Cannon). In addition, the drugs used for capital punishment result in paralysis and it is not known how much the convict suffers prior to death. Supporters of death by injection state that in the cases where there is suffering on the part of the convict, it was not done intentionally.
EFFECTIVENESS AS A DETERRENT
Supporters of the death penalty state that after execution, a convicted killer cannot commit another crime, but they also contend that fear of the punishment prevents other criminals from murdering. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows statistics demonstrating that in the fourteen states without the death penalty, the numbers of murders have either stayed the same or decreased since 2008 (FBI). Analysis of programs such as “Scared Straight” show that crime is not affected by threat of punishment because a criminal does not believe he will be caught (Petrosino, Turpin-Petrosino, Hollis-Peel & Lavenberg).
EXPENSE
The average cost for a trial for murder is about $17.2 million (IAState.edu). The reason is that first the accused must be convicted, and then he must be sentenced. This involves motions, attorney fees, assistants for the attorneys, jury selections, appeals, housing of the accused outside the general population of the prison, additional investigations, expert witnesses, and more even if there is not a retrial. There is public concern that the money spent on convicting and housing a murderer would not be better spend on social programs such as mental instability leading to criminal activity, treatment for drug addiction, enhanced law enforcement, and other community outreach for crime prevention. In addition, putting the funds toward police activity that prevents murder such as child abuse and drug trafficking may be more beneficial than putting one person in jail for years before executing him or her.
WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS
There is always the possibility that an executed convict was innocent. Supporters of the death penalty propose that the intensive investigations conducted in the course of the trial and evidence confirmations lower the chances of a wrongful conviction. Opponents argue that based on statistics of the number of individuals released from death row on the basis of a wrongful conviction, as many as one out of every seven convicts awaiting execution are innocent (Amnesty International). An additional argument against the death penalty is that the United States Supreme Court has changed the criteria for capital punishment in the past, such as modifying definitions of mental illness or raising the age of the convict; if additional changes occur, executed murders may have been exonerated.
RACIAL BIAS
In 1990, the United States General Accounting Office reported that if all factors in a murder trial were the same, the best influence against the death sentence would be that the convicted murder would be Caucasian (US General Accounting Office 6). If the victim was white, a convicted murderer stands a 97 percent higher possibility of receiving the death sentence in Louisiana (Pierce and Redelet 649). Statistics conflict on the division between death sentences for white convicted killers and black ones, but a 2014 report states that in the state of Washington, a black convicted murderer is at a three times higher risk of receiving a sentence of capital punishment and a white one (Beckett and Evans 9).
CONCLUSION
Public opinion concerning the death penalty is influenced by politics, current events, and changing rates of crime. Regardless of the views of the general public, sentences of capital punishment have decreased over the past years as professional medical organizations and religious spokespeople reject the practice on the basis of morality. The expense of taking an accused murderer from being charged to being executed runs in the millions of dollars and the money may be better spent applied to programs such as dealing with mental illness, drug trafficking and use, and domestic violence while supplying jobs to assist low-income families to prevent their resorting to criminal activity, improving the quality and numbers of law enforcement officials, and promoting education for at-risk youth. Capital punishment is not a deterrent to murder, it is more expensive than life imprisonment, and it does not force individuals opposed to the death penalty to participate in it, such as prison officers or health care professionals. A prisoner wrongfully executed cannot be freed on exoneration of later evidence, while a prisoner serving a life sent has that ability. For these reasons alone, capital punishment should be repealed.
Works Cited
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