Why I oppose Capital Punishment.

Introduction

Recent events in the UK have led to calls from some for the re-introduction of Capital Punishment. I have to state that I am completely opposed to it, this article is my attempt to set out my position.

Generally, I write shortish blog posts and split long items over multiple posts, this approach doesn’t seem right in this instance, so I’ll do it this way instead.

It seems to me that when there is a very serious crime reported in the media, such as the recent Suffolk murder trial, there is a knee jerk call for the Death Penalty to be reintroduced, this isn’t helped by some of the inflammatory media coverage. I’ve been reading some of the letters written to newspapers calling for Capital Punishment to be reintroduced, the language is normally very much aimed at the readers emotions, the murderers are always “heinous” and “inhuman” or “monstrous”, I’ll leave my views on the “inhuman” part till another day. The problem is that this is exactly the wrong way to discuss something as serious as Capital Punishment, the discusion requires a clear head, not emotive ranting.

My point here is that while there are a number of arguments made in favour of Capital Punishment, there are some serious problems with it, which I think are complete deal breakers.

The problem of an innocent person.

The most awful problem is the virtual certainty that an innocent person will sooner or later be executed. This isn’t avoidable, eventually it will happen, the justice system is not perfect. When this does happen, there is no way of pardoning that person, no way of compensating them, they were murdered by the state and there is nothing that can be done to wash their blood from the states hands or exonerate the state from the responsibility for that murder. The American Civil Liberties Union points out in the Capital Punishment section of their website that in the course of the last 3 decades, 124 prisoners have been found to be innocent and released from Death Row. I’d like to add my own comment; it’s 124 that we found out about, how many slipped through?

Many point to DNA evidence as a solution to this, but there are cases in which it will not be useful or conclusive. For example, in a domestic murder, what good is it to say the murderers’ DNA is at the scene? Of course it is, they live there! Similar claims were made for fingerprinting, though time has shown that it can be fallible. For example in 2002, journalists in the United States uncovered serious mistakes that had been made by the Houston Police Crime Laboratory [1], these serious errors in procedure and misrepresentation of scientific findings had gone unnoticed for years!

The problem for the family of the convicted.

In most of the arguments about Capital Punishment, we never really seem to hear about a group of people who seem to have been utterly forgotten by most people: the family of the convicted. To be completely honest with ourselves, we need to consider the effect of an execution on the murderers’ family and relatives; they are innocent of any wrongdoing and will suffer the loss of a loved one, with all the emotional trauma that the loss will bring.

Should these innocent relatives suffer for something they didn’t do? Of course not, who in their right mind would deprive a wife of her husband or a child of their father in such a manner? You may say that in the case of a murder this was already done, I say, why compound the misery by making even more innocents suffer? Plus, if it turns out that the criminal was innocent, how much worse will their suffering be then?

It’s an almost impossible part of the question isn’t it? I’m not suprised it’s been avoided in some areas.

The problem for the victims’ family

What of the victim’s family? If we are to believe that Capital Punishment is a good thing then it can only be to their benefit …. can’t it?

Actually, that isn’t always the case. In 2007, the US State of New Jersey was considering it’s position on the death penalty, testimony was heard from the families of victims, to quote a New York Times article on the subject[2]:

“And while some victims’ families do long to see their loved one’s killer executed, when the bipartisan New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission heard testimony from victims’ families, a majority spoke in favor of repealing the death penalty.

Amid trauma and grief over the horrific death of a family member, these victims acknowledged the possibility that an innocent person could be executed by the state. After having survived the ordeal of a loved one’s murder, they questioned the morality of taking another life.

They described the “grief of the never-ending appellate process,” feeling “violated by having been given the responsibilities of both executioner and rescuer.” Victims’ families do not have the luxury of thinking about the death penalty in the abstract.”

So, the position for the victims families is not as cut and dried as we would immediately think.

The problem of the crime figures.

It’s usually claimed that Capital Punishment will reduce crime. The truth of the matter is that the death penalty has little impact on the overall crime rate as it will, firstly, only apply for a minority of offences and secondly it will not always be used. I’ve read an argument in the book “Freakonomics” that in the US, statistically speaking, a drug dealer is less likely to be killed on death row than he is on the street, Some deterrent! You can find a bit more info in a blog post by one the of the books authors[3, I'm going to be annoying and quote the conclusion of the post:

"Analyses of data stretching farther back in time, when there were many more executions and thus more opportunities to test the hypothesis, are far less charitable to death penalty advocates. On top of that, as we wrote in Freakonomics, if you do back-of-the-envelope calculations, it becomes clear that no rational criminal should be deterred by the death penalty, since the punishment is too distant and too unlikely to merit much attention. As such, economists who argue that the death penalty works are put in the uncomfortable position of having to argue that criminals are irrationally overreacting when they are deterred by it."

The problem of cost.

An argument is also made based on cost of life imprisonment vs execution. The thing is that the death penalty is usually proceeded with a spell in prison on a “Death Row”, this can last for many years in some cases so the argument based on reduced costs to the taxpayer is a heck of a lot less powerful than you would think. To lift another quote from Death To Capital Punishment[2]:

“From a financial standpoint, replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment can save taxpayers money. The state’s bipartisan Office of Legislative Services estimates that repealing the death penalty will save taxpayers $32,481 per death row inmate annually because the costs of housing inmates on death row are much greater than housing them with the general prison population. Given that there are 8 people on New Jersey’s death row, and assuming that they live 20 more years each, taxpayers could save nearly $5.2 million — money that could go to victims’ families. Taxpayers would also save the $93,018 per death row inmate it costs to conduct what is called a proportionality review, which determines if the death penalty is justified given the circumstances of the crime.

In addition, the public defender’s office estimates that taxpayers would save about $1.46 million annually in costs associated with trying death penalty cases. Abolishing the death penalty would also lower other judicial costs (by reducing the number of appeals, for instance) but these savings are difficult to estimate.”

My take on this, just a few more words.

As I’ve said before I’m totally opposed to Capital Punishment, the fact is that we are supposed to be an advanced 21st century society, is this really an acceptable way for such a society to conduct itself? In my own view is that life imprisonment is a perfectly acceptable punishment, the prisoner should simply made to contribute to society in some form.This could be Chain Gangs, or whatever is an acceptable or workable alternative. I think it’s time we moved our societys’ morality beyond primitive revenge impulses.

I was thinking of a way of rounding this article of, then a couple of quotes popped in my head, which I think fit the discussion perfectly, so as he said it much better than myself, I’m going to leave the final words here to Mohandas K. Ghandi:

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

“There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”

23rd February 2008

References

1. The Houston Police Crime Laboratory.

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/1/8/3/4/p18344_index.html

2. Death to Capital Punishment by Brigid C. Harrison, December 2nd 2007.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/opinion/nyregionopinions/02NJharrison.html?ref=nyregionopinions

3. Does The Death Penalty Really Reduce Crime? Steven D. Levitt, June 11th 2007.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/does-the-death-penalty-really-reduce-crime/