Clayton Lockett was a 38-year-old murderer of a 19-year-old girl whom he shot twice and then buried while she was still alive (Connor, 2015). Following his conviction, he was sentenced to death in Oklahoma by lethal injection. Fifteen years later in April 2014, his execution was botched when inadequate drugs, an inability to find an adequate vein for instillation, and inappropriate administration into muscle tissue resulted in an agonizing and prolonged death. The public’s response to the news releases ignited again the debate over the use of the death penalty for punishment of the worst offenders in society.
Although there are numerous arguments for and against the use of the death penalty, the main ones include morality, effectiveness as a deterrent, cost, cases of wrongful convictions, and bias against minorities. The United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the use of the death penalty, but also has ruled that in some cases the juries were given the discretion of imposing capital punishment without being informed of proper considerations (Deathpenalty.procon.org, 2016). There have also been cases where murderers have transported victims from a state where murder is a capital crime to a state where murder is punished by life in prison before committing the killing.
Immorality
The first issue with morality in the death penalty involves the use of health personnel to prepare the convict for execution. Death by lethal injection requires the insertion of a patent intravenous line for the administration of the drugs. The code of doctors and nurses is to promote wellness, but to assist in promoting death, particularly of a healthy person. Yet the health care staff participating in a legal execution is required by law to assist authorities. Twelve major medication associations state that participation in legal executions is a breach of ethics for the health care profession, including the American Medical Association, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, and the American Nursing Association (Amnesty International, 2016). In addition, two pharmaceutical companies have written formal letters to their state correctional facilities protesting the use of their medications for executions.
Second, there is a potential for physical and mental anguish on the part of the convict. The drugs used in lethal injections paralyze the individual and suffering cannot be observed while suffocation and other body functions take place. In instances such as that of Clayton Lockett previously mentioned, the convict may call out, convulse, and struggle prior to death more than 20 minutes (Amnesty International, 2016). Supporters of the death penalty contend that there is no intent to inflict pain and suffering in the cases that did so.
Third, opponents of the death sentence believe it gives the government the power of life and death while supporters state that putting the criminal to death gives the family closure, guarantees the convict will not commit another crime, and gives retribution for the offense by murdering the murderer (Deathpenalty.procon.org, 2016). Proponents contend that murderers are free moral agents and their deliberate actions result in their punishment.
Ineffectiveness as a Deterrent
Advocates for the death penalty propose it acts to decrease crime and that the fear of death will deter criminals from murder. Opponents to capital punishment state it has no impact on rates of crime. Statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation indicate that the numbers of people murdered in the fourteen states that have eliminated the death penalty has remained stable or decreased since 2008 (Amnesty International, 2016). As demonstrated in programs such as “Scared Straight”, the criminal mentality does not avoid crime based on the severity of the punishment because he does not believe he will be apprehended (Petrosino, Turpin-Petrosino, Hollis-Peel & Lavenberg, 2013).
Expense
Proponents for the death sentence believe the cost of prosecuting and sentencing a criminal is cheaper than supporting the convict for the rest of his life in jail; opponents to capital punishment disagree. Statistics show that sentences less stringent than the death penalty are less costly that the expenses leading to and during the conviction of the recipient of the death penalty (Amnesty International, 2016). The elimination of the ability to appeal would not change the relationship. A murder trial for an accused person costs approximately $116,000 less if there is not the possibility of a death sentence (Marshall Project, 2014). Part of the reason for this is that there are two components to establishing a sentence of death for a conviction: first the perpetrator must be convicted and then he must go through sentencing. These types of trials involve additional motions and jury selections. Increased costs for intensive investigations for more evidence is required and if the death penalty if overturned, the public pays all the preceding expenses in addition to the cost of a retrial.
When cases are constructed where the prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, there are bills for more lawyers and experts who are paid large sums by the hour for trials that can take over a year. Successful convictions have the option of numerous appeals to judges at state and federal levels and consequently the attorneys for the prosecution and defense review the transcripts while judges and court clerks invest hours into reading the information presented. Jury selection costs approximately $200,000 per trial for a capital punishment case (Marshall Project, 2014). Finally, the housing for murderers awaiting sentencing or living on death row is about twice as expensive as for the convicts living in the general population. Individual cases may be much more expensive, such as the case of Brittany Holberg in Amarillo, Texas. Her initial conviction carried a price tag of between $500,000 and $700,000 (Marshall Project, 2014). When it was determined that she may need a retrial due to new evidence, the Texas Attorney General’s Office spent over $300,000 fighting the appeal. Holberg committed her crime in 1996 and remains on death row today, 20 years later. The country district attorney announced in 2015 he would seek a sentence of life imprisonment due to the continuing costs of the case.
A report generated for the Judicial Conference of the United States in 2010 showed the price of a case seeking the death penalty rose from $269, 139 in 1997 to $620,932 in 2004 (Marshall Project, 2014). The attorneys for both sides in the case hire assistants to help in creating the cases because they have become more complex than in the past. In 1997, attorneys spent an average of 1889 hours on a suspect accused of murder warranting capital punishment; in 2004, it was 3557 hours and many counties in the country were paying $100 per hour for lawyers on the cases. In an effort to determine if the accused is mentally ill, expert witnesses perform a battery of evaluations from interviews to medical physical tests such as CAT scans and MRIs. To compete with the information presented by the other side, the quality of the witnesses are required to be superlative with corresponding costs.
There is also the concern that the money spent by the government for the conviction and sentencing of a person receiving the death penalty might be better spent on programs to treat mental illnesses that lead to crime, drug treatment, and other community outreach and law enforcement activities directed toward prevention. It may also be more beneficial if the money were spend on pursuing criminal activity such as child abuse, illegal drug trafficking, and other types of common crime that may lead to murder.
Wrongful Convictions
Proponents of the death penalty argue there is potential for mistakes in every level of the legal system, but that the extensive investigation and confirmation of evidence against the accused significantly reduces the chances of a wrongful conviction. Since 1973, 1200 individuals have been executed as a result of the death penalty (Amnesty International, 2016). An additional 140 people have been released from death row for wrongful convictions. Advocates against capital punishment use this number as being 1 out of every 7 people on death row as being there without provocation (Deathpenalty.procon.org, 2016).
An additional argument against capital punishment is that since specific executions became legal, there have been periods of time when the United States Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment was unconstitutional or changed the statutes to protect the mentally handicapped or children under the age of 18 years from executions. In these cases, hundreds of people were exonerated or had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. However, if a convict had already been executed that fell under these new statutes, it would be impossible to commute his sentence to life in prison rather than death.
Bias
According to Amnesty International (2016), 77 percent of the criminal executed since 1977 were convicted of the murder of white victims, although over half of the homicides in the United States are African-American. The United State General Accounting Office (1990), headed by now Vice-President Joseph Biden, reported that given all factors are constant, the most reliable indicator of a death sentence is that the murder victim is white. A report by the American Bar Association (2007) stated that of the total number of African Americans on death row in Philadelphia at time, one-third would have received a sentence of life in prison rather than the death penalty if they had been white.
The poor are overwhelmingly recipients of the death penalty; almost all the convictions were for accused individuals who could not afford their own attorney. Since the United States Supreme Court allowed states to use the death penalty since 1976, 82 percent of the executions have taken place in the southern part of the country (Amnesty International, 2016). Proponents of the death sentence reason that the crime of murder is higher among the poor, there is a higher number of minority races among the poor, and therefore the incidence of murder is higher among minorities. This rationale also explains the significantly larger numbers of legal executions in the southern part of the United States (Deathpenalty.procon.org, 2016).
Public Opinion
The Gallup polling company has been questioning the American public concerning their opinions concerning the death penalty since 1936 (Gallup, 2015). During that 79 year period, there was only one year when public opinion supporting capital punishment moved slightly into the majority, the year was 1964 and violent crime was at a historic low (Graph 1). Pew Research
2012 Gallup Poll Regarding the Death Penalty (Gallup, 2015)
Center proposes that declining support for awarding a sentence of death to criminals correlates with a steep decrease in the rate of violent crimes, information in the media concerning wrongful convictions overturned based on genetic (DNA) evidence, disclosures of poor police protocols, and difficulty obtaining and administering lethal injections (DeSilver, 2014).
Conclusion
A review of the information concerning the death penalty points to public opinion supporting capital punishment changing with the amount of violent crime taking place in society at the time. Perhaps fear or anger or a belief that the death sentence is a deterrent prompts the reaction to publicized statistics on murder, but the opinions of the legal system, the government, and researchers point to other options that are less traumatic, cheaper, and able to retract in the event of a mistake. The numbers of judges and juries pronouncing a sentence of death on a convicted criminal has drastically decreased over the last 17 years (Graph 2). Major medical
Graph 2. Number of Legal Execution in the United States 1976-2014 (DeSilver, 2014)
organizations and religious spokespeople denounce the practice, Buddhists promote respect for life and nonviolence, the Catholic Church and leaders of the Jewish faith have urged abolition, the American Baptist Church and U.S. Episcopal Church promote stopping executions, among others (Pew Research Center, 2009). Churches that either support capital punishment or do not consider it an arena for churches are the Hindus, Baptists, and Church of the Latter Day Saints.
There is a correlation between the incidences of violent crime and support for the death penalty. The logical conclusion is that in order to eliminate the need for capital punishment, the causes for murder must be eliminated. According to psychologists and sociologists, the reasons one person kills another include mental illness, associations with criminal elements such as drug dealers, domestic violence, The arguments concerning the cost of prosecuting, sentencing, and maintenance of a murderer until execution vary, although the numbers presented by the legal system support the much higher cost of cases involving the death penalty.
Regardless of the amount required, the money being spent on imposing the death sentence on one individual would be better spend in preventative programs, creating jobs to address the low-income factor for crime, increasing the number and quality of police officers, and putting possibilities in front of endangered youth to shape attitudes of social responsibility. It is unclear what is required to repeal the death sentence a second time before the U.S. Supreme Court, but the dwindling numbers of courts willing to undertake the time and expense required to execute a killer indicate the answer may lie in the lower judicial systems.
References
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