the death penalty thesis

Top 10 Pro & Con Arguments

Life without Parole

Retribution

Victims’ Families

Methods of Execution

Medical Professionals’ Participation

Federal Death Penalty

1. Legality

The United States is one of 55 countries globally with a legal death penalty, according to Amnesty International. As of Mar. 24, 2021, within the US, 27 states had a legal death penalty (though 3 of those states had a moratorium on the punishment’s use).

Proponents of the death penalty being legal argue that such a harsh penalty is needed for criminals who have committed the worst crimes, that the punishment deters crime, and that the US Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty as constitutional.

Opponents of the death penalty being legal argue that the punishment is cruel and unusual, and, thus, unconstitutional, that innocent people are put to death for crimes they did not commit, and that the penalty is disproportionately applied to people of color.

Read More about This Debate:

Should the Death Penalty Be Legal?

ProCon.org, “International Death Penalty Status,” deathpenalty.procon.org, May 19, 2021 ProCon.org, “Should the Death Penalty Be Legal?,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Sep. 20, 2021 ProCon.org, “States with the Death Penalty, Death Penalty Bans, and Death Penalty Moratoriums,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Mar. 24, 2021

2. Life without Parole

Life without Parole (also called LWOP) is suggested by some as an alternative punishment for the death penalty.

Proponents of replacing the death penalty with life without parole argue that imprisoning someone for the duration of their life is more humane than the death penalty, that LWOP is a more fitting penalty that allows the criminal to think about what they’ve done, and that LWOP reduces the chances of executing an innocent person.

Opponents of replacing the death penalty with life without parole argue that LWOP is just an alternate death penalty and parole should always be a consideration even if the prisoner never earns the privilege. While other opponents argue that life without parole is not a harsh enough punishment for murderers and terrorists.

Should Life without Parole Replace the Death Penalty?

ProCon.org, “Should Life without Parole Replace the Death Penalty?,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Sep. 20, 2021

3. Deterrence

One of the main justifications for maintaining a death penalty is that the punishment may prevent people from committing crimes so as to not risk being sentenced to death.

Proponents who argue that the death penalty is a deterrent to capital crimes state that such a harsh penalty is needed to discourage people from murder and terrorism.

Opponents who argue that the death penalty is not a deterrent to capital crimes state that there is no evidence to support the claim that the penalty is a deterrent.

Does the Death Penalty Deter Crime?

ProCon.org, “Does the Death Penalty Deter Crime?,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Sep. 20, 2021

4. Retribution

Retribution in this debate is the idea that the death penalty is needed to bring about justice for the victims, the victims’ families, and/or society at large.

Proponents who argue that the death penalty is needed as retribution argue that “an eye for an eye” is appropriate, that the punishment should match the crime, and that the penalty is needed as a moral balance to the wrong done by the criminal.

Opponents who argue that the death penalty is not needed as retribution argue that reformative justice is more productive, that innocent people are often killed in the search for retribution, and that “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Should the Death Penalty Be Used for Retribution for Victims and/or Society?

ProCon.org, “Should the Death Penalty Be Used for Retribution for Victims and/or Society?,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Sep. 20, 2021

5. Victims’ Families

Whether the death penalty can bring about some sort of closure or solace to the victims’ families after a horrible, life-changing experience has long been debated and used by both proponents and opponents of the death penalty.

Proponents who argue that the death penalty is needed to bring about closure and solace to victims’ families argue that the finality of the death penalty is needed for families to move on and not live in fear of the criminal getting out of prison.

Opponents who argue that the death penalty is needed to bring about closure and solace to victims’ families argue that retributive “justice” does not bring closure for anyone and that the death penalty can take years of media-friendly appeals to enact.

Does the Death Penalty Offer Closure or Solace to Victims’ Families?

ProCon.org, “Does the Death Penalty Offer Closure or Solace to Victims’ Families?,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Sep. 20, 2021

6. Methods of Execution

Because the drugs used for lethal injection have become difficult to obtain, some states are turning to other methods of execution. For example, South Carolina recently enacted legislation to allow for the firing squad and electric chair if lethal injection is not available at the time of the execution.

Proponents of alternate methods of execution argue that the state and federal government have an obligation to carry out the sentence handed down, and that, given the recent botched lethal injection executions, other methods may be more humane.

Opponents of alternate methods of execution argue that we should not be reverting to less humane methods of execution, and that the drug companies’ objection to use of lethal injection drugs should signal a need to abolish the penalty altogether.

Should States Authorize Other Methods of Execution Such as Hanging or the Firing Squad?

ProCon.org, “Should States Authorize Other Methods of Execution Such as Hanging or the Firing Squad?,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Sep. 20, 2021

7. Innocence

Reports indicate over 150 innocent people have been found not-guilty and exonerated since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973.

Proponents of abolishing the death penalty because innocent people may be executed argue that humans are fallible and the justice system is flawed, putting more Black and brown people on death row than are guilty of capital crimes, and that we cannot risk executing one innocent person just to carry about retributive “justice.”

Opponents of abolishing the death penalty because innocent people may be executed argue that the fact that death row inmates have been exonerated proves that the checks and balances to prevent innocent people from being executed are in place and working well, almost eliminating the chance that an innocent person will be executed.

Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished Because Innocent People May Be Executed?

ProCon.org, “Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished Because Innocent People May Be Executed?,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Sep. 20, 2021

8. Morality

Both religious and secular debates have continued about whether it is moral for humans to kill one another, even in the name of justice, and whether executing people makes for a moral and just government.

Proponents who argue that the death penalty is a moral punishment state that “an eye for an eye” is justified to promote a good and just society than shuns evil.

Opponents who argue that the death penalty is an immoral punishment state that humans should not kill other humans, no matter the reasons, because killing is killing.

Is the Death Penalty Immoral?

ProCon.org, “Is the Death Penalty Immoral?,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Sep. 20, 2021

9. Medical Professionals’ Participation

With the introduction of lethal injection as execution method, states began asking that medical professionals participate in executions to ensure the injections were administered properly and to provide medical care if the execution were botched.

Proponents who argue that medical professionals can participate in executions ethically state that doctors and others ensure that the execution is not “cruel or unusual,” and ensure that the person being executed receives medical care during the execution.

Opponents who argue that medical professionals cannot participate in executions ethically state that doctors and others should keep people alive instead of participate in killing, and that the medicalization of execution leads to a false acceptance of the practice.

Is Participation in Executions Ethical for Medical Professionals?

ProCon.org, “Is Participation in Executions Ethical for Medical Professionals?,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Sep. 20, 2021

10. Federal Death Penalty

The federal death penalty has only been carried out 16 times since its reinstatement after Furman v. Georgia in 1988: twice in 2001, once in 2003, ten times in 2020, and three times in 2021. Several moratoriums have been put in place by presidents in the interims. Under President Joe Biden, the US Justice Department has enacted a moratorium on the death penalty, reversing President Donald Trump’s policy of carrying out federal executions.

Proponents of keeping the federal death penalty argue that justice must be carried out to deter crime and offer closure to families, and that the federal government has an obligation to enact the sentences handed down by the courts.

Proponents of banning the federal death penalty argue that the United States federal government should set an example for the states with a ban, and that only a ban will prevent the next president from executing the prisoners on death row.

Should the US President Reinstate the Federal Death Penalty?

ProCon.org, “Most Recent Executions in Each US State,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Aug. 26, 2021 ProCon.org, “Should the US President Reinstate the Federal Death Penalty?,” deathpenalty.procon.org, Sep. 20, 2021

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Criminal Justice

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The death penalty: debate and procedures.

This article explores the multifaceted dimensions of the death penalty within the United States criminal justice process . The introduction provides a historical and contextual overview of the death penalty, emphasizing its significance in the criminal justice system. The debate surrounding the death penalty is examined through moral and ethical lenses, constitutional and legal challenges, and considerations of deterrence and efficacy. The subsequent section delves into the intricate procedures involved in the application of the death penalty, encompassing sentencing criteria, trial processes, execution methods, and avenues for appeals and clemency. Critiques and reform proposals constitute a critical examination of systemic flaws, injustices, and international perspectives on the death penalty. The article concludes by summarizing key points, discussing future implications, and providing recommendations for further research and policy considerations. Throughout, formal scientific language and adherence to APA style guidelines contribute to the scholarly rigor of this exploration into the contentious and complex realm of the death penalty.

Introduction

The death penalty, a topic of enduring controversy, serves as a focal point in the criminal justice system, reflecting societal values, legal principles, and moral considerations. Defined as the state-sanctioned execution of a person as a punishment for a crime, the death penalty has a rich historical context deeply rooted in diverse cultural and legal traditions. From ancient civilizations to modern nation-states, the practice has evolved, garnering both staunch proponents and vehement opponents. Its significance within the criminal justice system is multifaceted, extending beyond its punitive function to encompass issues of justice, human rights, and societal retribution. As we delve into the nuanced facets of the death penalty, this article aims to dissect its complexities, evaluating the various perspectives that have shaped its discourse.

The thesis of this article is to critically examine the death penalty in the United States, navigating through the intricate web of moral, legal, and societal considerations. We contend that a comprehensive understanding of the death penalty necessitates an exploration of its historical roots, ethical implications, and the evolving legal landscape. As we embark on this exploration, the central argument posits that the death penalty debate extends beyond mere policy discussions; it encapsulates profound questions about justice, human rights, and the efficacy of the criminal justice system. To support this thesis, the article will unfold in three main sections. First, we provide a nuanced analysis of the debate surrounding the death penalty, considering moral, ethical, constitutional, and legal dimensions. Following this, we delve into the procedural aspects of the death penalty in the United States, scrutinizing sentencing criteria, trial processes, execution methods, and avenues for appeals and clemency. Lastly, the article critically evaluates critiques and reform proposals, offering insights into systemic flaws, international perspectives, and potential alternatives. Through these sections, we aim to present a comprehensive examination of the death penalty, fostering informed discourse on its role and implications within the realm of criminal justice.

The Debate Surrounding the Death Penalty

The moral and ethical dimensions of the death penalty form a central battleground in the ongoing debate. Proponents argue that capital punishment serves as a just response to heinous crimes, offering retribution and closure to victims’ families. On the contrary, opponents question the morality of state-sanctioned killing, contending that it violates the fundamental principle that all life is sacrosanct. The examination of moral arguments extends beyond retribution, exploring concepts of forgiveness, redemption, and the possibility of rehabilitation. Furthermore, ethical considerations in the application of the death penalty delve into issues such as the potential for racial or socio-economic bias in sentencing, the humane treatment of individuals on death row, and the ethical responsibilities of a society that endorses capital punishment.

Constitutional implications play a pivotal role in the ongoing discourse surrounding the death penalty, particularly concerning the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Legal challenges often revolve around questions of fairness, arbitrariness, and the evolving standards of decency in society. This section explores the constitutional tensions inherent in the death penalty, evaluating how evolving societal norms intersect with the interpretation of the Eighth Amendment. Additionally, landmark legal cases have left an indelible mark on the death penalty debate, shaping the contours of its application and sparking discussions about due process, the role of mitigating factors, and the appropriate standards for determining intellectual disability and mental illness in capital cases.

The argument that the death penalty serves as a deterrent to crime is a cornerstone of its justification. Proponents assert that the severity of the punishment dissuades potential offenders, contributing to public safety. This section critically analyzes the deterrence argument, considering the complexities of cause-and-effect relationships in criminal behavior. Empirical evidence regarding the efficacy of the death penalty in preventing crime is scrutinized, with an exploration of statistical methodologies and their limitations. Counterarguments challenging the notion of deterrence are examined, highlighting studies suggesting that the death penalty may not provide a measurable deterrent effect and may even perpetuate a cycle of violence. This section aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the deterrence argument, acknowledging the intricacies involved in assessing its effectiveness within the broader landscape of criminal justice policy.

Death Penalty Procedures in the United States

The death penalty in the United States follows a complex sentencing and trial process that reflects the gravity of the punishment involved. Eligibility criteria for the death penalty vary across jurisdictions but often include factors such as the nature of the crime, the presence of aggravating circumstances, and sometimes the defendant’s criminal history. The phases of a death penalty trial are meticulously structured, involving jury selection, presentation of evidence, and legal arguments. The guilt phase determines the defendant’s culpability, while the penalty phase examines whether aggravating factors outweigh mitigating factors, ultimately deciding whether the death penalty is warranted. This section provides an in-depth examination of the criteria that render an individual eligible for the death penalty and the procedural intricacies of the trial phases, shedding light on the legal standards and challenges that characterize capital cases.

The historical evolution of execution methods in the United States traces a path from traditional means, such as hanging and firing squads, to more modern practices like lethal injection, electrocution, gas chambers, and, in some cases, the use of the electric chair. The adoption and subsequent abandonment of different methods reflect societal attitudes towards cruelty and the evolving quest for more humane practices. Contemporary debates over execution methods revolve around concerns of botched executions, the availability of drugs for lethal injection, and the psychological toll on executioners. This section delves into the historical trajectory of execution methods, providing insights into the societal and legal shifts that have influenced their adoption and subsequent abandonment. Additionally, it explores ongoing debates surrounding the humaneness and efficacy of contemporary execution practices.

The death penalty process does not conclude with the trial and sentencing. Instead, it extends through a complex system of appeals, designed to ensure the thorough examination of legal and factual issues. The overview of the appeals process for death row inmates involves multiple levels, including direct appeals and post-conviction proceedings. This section analyzes the various grounds for appeal, emphasizing the significance of legal representation and the potential for errors in the judicial process. Simultaneously, the role of clemency and the executive branch emerges as a critical component of the death penalty process. Governors or the President may grant clemency, reducing a death sentence to life imprisonment or halting an execution. This aspect introduces a humanitarian element, as executive officials navigate the delicate balance between justice and mercy. The section explores the complexities of the appeals process, shedding light on its crucial role in safeguarding against miscarriages of justice, while also considering the nuanced dynamics of clemency within the death penalty landscape.

Critiques and Reform Proposals

The application of the death penalty in the United States is not immune to systemic flaws and injustices. This section critically examines key issues within the system, including disparities in legal representation, racial and socio-economic biases in sentencing, and the impact of prosecutorial misconduct. The disproportionate application of the death penalty raises concerns about the fairness and equity of its imposition. Additionally, cases of wrongful convictions underscore the fallibility of the justice system. Innocent individuals sentenced to death, only later to be exonerated, bring into stark relief the potential for irreversible errors. The exploration of systemic flaws and instances of injustice sheds light on the moral, legal, and ethical challenges embedded in the death penalty, fostering a critical understanding of its limitations and potential for miscarriages of justice.

A comparative analysis of the death penalty in global contexts reveals a diverse array of approaches and attitudes toward capital punishment. This section explores international perspectives on the death penalty, contrasting the prevalence and methods of execution in different countries. A consideration of global trends in the abolition or retention of the death penalty provides valuable insights into the broader context of the debate. Moreover, examining international opinions on capital punishment highlights the evolving consensus regarding the human rights implications of state-sanctioned executions. The insights gained from a global perspective contribute to a nuanced understanding of the United States’ position within the international community concerning the death penalty.

Given the complexities and critiques surrounding the death penalty, this section delves into proposed reforms aimed at addressing inherent issues within the system. The examination of proposed reforms includes considerations of improved legal representation for defendants, standardized sentencing procedures, and efforts to mitigate biases in the application of the death penalty. Moreover, exploring alternatives to the death penalty becomes integral to envisioning a criminal justice system that balances the imperative of public safety with humane and just practices. Alternatives may include life imprisonment without parole, restorative justice models, or enhanced support for rehabilitation programs. Evaluating the feasibility of these proposals requires a careful consideration of societal attitudes, legal frameworks, and the potential impact on crime rates. Through a thorough analysis of reform proposals and alternatives, this section contributes to the ongoing discourse on how the death penalty can be refined or replaced to align with evolving societal values and the principles of justice.

In conclusion, this comprehensive exploration of the death penalty within the United States has illuminated the intricate web of moral, ethical, legal, and procedural considerations that define its presence in the criminal justice system. From the historical roots and significance of the death penalty to the multifaceted debate surrounding its moral, ethical, and constitutional dimensions, this article has delved into the complexities that shape and challenge its application. Systemic flaws, instances of injustice, and international perspectives have been critically examined, providing a nuanced understanding of the strengths and shortcomings of the death penalty within a global context. The examination of reform proposals and alternatives underscores the imperative of continual evaluation and improvement within the criminal justice system.

Looking ahead, the death penalty debate is poised at a critical juncture, with evolving societal values, legal precedents, and international trends influencing its trajectory. The potential for future developments in the death penalty discourse suggests the need for ongoing research and policy considerations. As public attitudes shift and legal landscapes evolve, policymakers must remain attuned to the nuances of this debate. Recommendations for future research include a focus on the impact of evolving Eighth Amendment interpretations, an in-depth analysis of international abolitionist movements, and continued scrutiny of the systemic issues plaguing the application of the death penalty. Moreover, policy considerations should prioritize the implementation of reforms aimed at mitigating biases, ensuring due process, and exploring alternatives that align with principles of justice and humanity. The significance of this debate extends beyond its immediate implications for individuals sentenced to death; it resonates with broader questions about the role of punishment in society, the protection of human rights, and the ongoing quest for a criminal justice system that is both just and humane. As we navigate the future of the death penalty, it is incumbent upon scholars, policymakers, and the public to engage in informed, thoughtful, and ethical discussions that contribute to the continual evolution of our criminal justice system.

Bibliography

• Amnesty International. (2022). Death penalty. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/death-penalty/
• Banner, S. (2002). The death penalty: An American history. Harvard University Press.
• Baumgartner, F. R., & De Boef, S. L. (1999). The racial geography of the federal death penalty. University of Illinois Law Review, 1121-1162.
• Bedau, H. A. (1997). The death penalty in America: Current controversies. Oxford University Press.
• Bedau, H. A. (2007). The case against the death penalty. American Civil Liberties Union.
• Bedau, H. A., & Cassell, P. G. (Eds.). (2004). Debating the death penalty: Should America have capital punishment? Oxford University Press.
• Bessler, J. D. (2013). Cruel and unusual: The American death penalty and the founders’ Eighth Amendment. Northeastern University Press.
• Bohm, R. M. (2011). DeathQuest: An introduction to the theory and practice of capital punishment in the United States. Routledge.
• Death Penalty Information Center. (2022). Facts about the death penalty. Retrieved from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf
• Hood, R. (2007). The death penalty: A worldwide perspective. Oxford University Press.
• Jackson, J. M. (2005). Introduction: Due process in the post-Furman era. Ohio State Law Journal, 66, 1039-1054.
• Johnson, R. (2010). Long-term changes in attitudes toward the death penalty: Are the American public’s views moving in a libertarian direction? In The Future of America’s Death Penalty (pp. 47-74). University of Missouri Press.
• LaFollette, H. (Ed.). (2007). Ethics in practice: An anthology. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Oshinsky, D. M. (1997). Worse than slavery: Parchman Farm and the ordeal of Jim Crow justice. Free Press.
• Radelet, M. L., & Akers, R. L. (1996). Deterrence and the death penalty: The views of the experts. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 87(1), 1-16.
• Radelet, M. L., & Borg, M. J. (2000). The changing nature of death penalty debates. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 43-61.
• Sarat, A. (Ed.). (2001). The killing state: Capital punishment in law, politics, and culture. Oxford University Press.
• Steiker, C. S., & Steiker, J. M. (2010). The American death penalty and the (in) visibility of race. Law and Contemporary Problems, 73(1), 145-169.
• Streib, V. L. (2007). Death penalty for juveniles. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 14(1), 81-113.
• Zimring, F. E., & Hawkins, G. (1986). Capital punishment and the American agenda. Cambridge University Press.

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Moral arguments

Utilitarian arguments, practical arguments, the abolition movement.

• Capital punishment in the early 21st century

Arguments for and against capital punishment

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Capital punishment has long engendered considerable debate about both its morality and its effect on criminal behaviour. Contemporary arguments for and against capital punishment fall under three general headings: moral , utilitarian, and practical.

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Supporters of the death penalty believe that those who commit murder , because they have taken the life of another, have forfeited their own right to life. Furthermore, they believe, capital punishment is a just form of retribution , expressing and reinforcing the moral indignation not only of the victim’s relatives but of law-abiding citizens in general. By contrast, opponents of capital punishment, following the writings of Cesare Beccaria (in particular On Crimes and Punishments [1764]), argue that, by legitimizing the very behaviour that the law seeks to repress—killing—capital punishment is counterproductive in the moral message it conveys. Moreover, they urge, when it is used for lesser crimes, capital punishment is immoral because it is wholly disproportionate to the harm done. Abolitionists also claim that capital punishment violates the condemned person’s right to life and is fundamentally inhuman and degrading.

Although death was prescribed for crimes in many sacred religious documents and historically was practiced widely with the support of religious hierarchies , today there is no agreement among religious faiths, or among denominations or sects within them, on the morality of capital punishment. Beginning in the last half of the 20th century, increasing numbers of religious leaders—particularly within Judaism and Roman Catholicism—campaigned against it. Capital punishment was abolished by the state of Israel for all offenses except treason and crimes against humanity, and Pope John Paul II condemned it as “cruel and unnecessary.”

Supporters of capital punishment also claim that it has a uniquely potent deterrent effect on potentially violent offenders for whom the threat of imprisonment is not a sufficient restraint. Opponents, however, point to research that generally has demonstrated that the death penalty is not a more effective deterrent than the alternative sanction of life or long-term imprisonment.

There also are disputes about whether capital punishment can be administered in a manner consistent with justice . Those who support capital punishment believe that it is possible to fashion laws and procedures that ensure that only those who are really deserving of death are executed. By contrast, opponents maintain that the historical application of capital punishment shows that any attempt to single out certain kinds of crime as deserving of death will inevitably be arbitrary and discriminatory. They also point to other factors that they think preclude the possibility that capital punishment can be fairly applied, arguing that the poor and ethnic and religious minorities often do not have access to good legal assistance, that racial prejudice motivates predominantly white juries in capital cases to convict black and other nonwhite defendants in disproportionate numbers, and that, because errors are inevitable even in a well-run criminal justice system, some people will be executed for crimes they did not commit. Finally, they argue that, because the appeals process for death sentences is protracted, those condemned to death are often cruelly forced to endure long periods of uncertainty about their fate.

Under the influence of the European Enlightenment , in the latter part of the 18th century there began a movement to limit the scope of capital punishment. Until that time a very wide range of offenses, including even common theft, were punishable by death—though the punishment was not always enforced , in part because juries tended to acquit defendants against the evidence in minor cases. In 1794 the U.S. state of Pennsylvania became the first jurisdiction to restrict the death penalty to first-degree murder, and in 1846 the state of Michigan abolished capital punishment for all murders and other common crimes. In 1863 Venezuela became the first country to abolish capital punishment for all crimes, including serious offenses against the state (e.g., treason and military offenses in time of war). San Marino was the first European country to abolish the death penalty, doing so in 1865; by the early 20th century several other countries, including the Netherlands, Norway , Sweden , Denmark , and Italy , had followed suit (though it was reintroduced in Italy under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini ). By the mid-1960s some 25 countries had abolished the death penalty for murder, though only about half of them also had abolished it for offenses against the state or the military code. For example, Britain abolished capital punishment for murder in 1965, but treason, piracy, and military crimes remained capital offenses until 1998.

During the last third of the 20th century, the number of abolitionist countries increased more than threefold. These countries, together with those that are “de facto” abolitionist—i.e., those in which capital punishment is legal but not exercised—now represent more than half the countries of the world. One reason for the significant increase in the number of abolitionist states was that the abolition movement was successful in making capital punishment an international human rights issue, whereas formerly it had been regarded as solely an internal matter for the countries concerned.

In 1971 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that, “in order fully to guarantee the right to life, provided for in…the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” called for restricting the number of offenses for which the death penalty could be imposed, with a view toward abolishing it altogether. This resolution was reaffirmed by the General Assembly in 1977. Optional protocols to the European Convention on Human Rights (1983) and to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1989) have been established, under which countries party to the convention and the covenant undertake not to carry out executions. The Council of Europe (1994) and the EU (1998) established as a condition of membership in their organizations the requirement that prospective member countries suspend executions and commit themselves to abolition. This decision had a remarkable impact on the countries of central and eastern Europe , prompting several of them—e.g., the Czech Republic , Hungary , Romania , Slovakia , and Slovenia—to abolish capital punishment.

In the 1990s many African countries—including Angola, Djibouti, Mozambique, and Namibia—abolished capital punishment, though most African countries retained it. In South Africa , which formerly had one of the world’s highest execution rates, capital punishment was outlawed in 1995 by the Constitutional Court, which declared that it was incompatible with the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment and with “a human rights culture.”

Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty

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The death penalty deters future murders.

Retribution

A just society requires the taking of a life for a life.

The risk of executing the innocent precludes the use of the death penalty.

Arbitrariness & Discrimination

The death penalty is applied unfairly and should not be used.

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Capital Punishment: A Philosophical Rejection of Punishment by Death Public Deposited

• Experiencing ubiquitous contention, the correlation between execution as a form of legal punishment and morality pervades in the modern era to form a central concern for examination. Competing accounts of moral theories have provided dichotomous vindications for capital punishment, indicating a substantial strife in criminal justice morality. This thesis will examine these rival philosophies in order to assess the gravity of moral theories in Supreme Court decisions. In particular, both consequentialist and retributivist theories are analyzed with respect to their conceptualizations of punishment. After examining the death penalty’s legal history and the components of morality inherent in Supreme Court decisions, I assess that both consequentialist and retributive moral theories cannot account for the justification of the death penalty. Overall, an inherent association between morality and legal decisions is revealed that affirms that philosophy calls for the abolishment of capital punishment.
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Death Penalty - Essay Samples And Topic Ideas For Free

The death penalty, also known as capital punishment, remains a contentious issue in many societies. Essays on this topic could explore the moral, legal, and social arguments surrounding the practice, including discussions on retribution, deterrence, and justice. They might delve into historical trends in the application of the death penalty, the potential for judicial error, and the disparities in its application across different demographic groups. Discussions might also explore the psychological impact on inmates, the families involved, and the society at large. They could also analyze the global trends toward abolition or retention of the death penalty and the factors influencing these trends. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Death Penalty you can find at Papersowl. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Death Penalty and Justice

By now, many of us are familiar with the statement, "an eye for an eye," which came from the bible, so it should be followed as holy writ. Then there was Gandhi, who inspired thousands and said, "an eye for an eye will leave us all blind." This begs the question, which option do we pick to be a good moral agent, in the terms of justice that is. Some states in America practice the death penalty, where some states […]

The Controversy of Death Penalty

The death penalty is a very controversial topic in many states. Although the idea of the death penalty does sound terrifying, would you really want a murderer to be given food and shelter for free? Would you want a murderer to get out of jail and still end up killing another innocent person? Imagine if that murder gets out of jail and kills someone in your family; Wouldn’t you want that murderer to be killed as well? Murderers can kill […]

Stephen Nathanson’s “An Eye for an Eye”

According to Stephen Nathanson's "An Eye for an Eye?", he believes that capital punishment should be immediately abolished and that the principle of punishment, "lex talionis" which correlates to the classic saying "an eye for an eye" is not a valid reason for issuing the death penalty in any country, thus, abolishment of Capital Punishment should follow. Throughout the excerpt from his book, Nathanson argues against this principle believing that one, it forces us to "commit highly immoral actions”raping a […]

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Does the Death Penalty Effectively Deter Crime?

The death penalty in America has been effective since 1608. Throughout the years following the first execution, criminal behaviors have begun to deteriorate. Capital punishment was first formed to deter crime and treason. As a result, it increased the rate of crime, according to researchers. Punishing criminals by death does not effectively deter crime because criminals are not concerned with consequences, apprehension, and judges are not willing to pay the expenses. During the stage of mens rea, thoughts of committing […]

The Death Penalty: Right or Wrong?

The death penalty has been a controversial topic throughout the years and now more than ever, as we argue; Right or Wrong? Moral or Immoral? Constitutional or Unconstitutional? The death penalty also known as capital punishment is a legal process where the state justice sentences an individual to be executed as punishment for a crime committed. The death penalty sentence strongly depends on the severity of the crime, in the US there are 41 crimes that can lead to being […]

About Carlton Franklin

In most other situations, the long-unsolved Westfield Murder would have been a death penalty case. A 57-year-old legal secretary, Lena Triano, was found tied up, raped, beaten, and stabbed in her New Jersey home. A DNA sample from her undergarments connected Carlton Franklin to the scene of the crime. However, fortunately enough for Franklin, he was not convicted until almost four decades after the murder and, in an unusual turn of events, was tried in juvenile court. Franklin was fifteen […]

About the Death Penalty

The death penalty has been a method used as far back as the Eighteenth century B.C. The use of the death penalty was for punishing people for committing relentless crimes. The severity of the punishment were much more inferior in comparison to modern day. These inferior punishments included boiling live bodies, burning at the stake, hanging, and extensive use of the guillotine to decapitate criminals. In the ancient days no laws were established to dictate and regulate the type of […]

The Death Penalty should not be Legal

Imagine you hit your sibling and your mom hits you back to teach that you shouldn't be hitting anyone. Do you really learn not to be violent from that or instead do you learn how it is okay for moms or dads to hit their children in order to teach them something? This is exactly how the death penalty works. The death penalty has been a form of punishment for decades. There are several methods of execution and those are […]

Effectively Solving Society’s Criminality

Has one ever wondered if the person standing or sitting next to them has the potential to be a murderer or a rapist? What do those who are victimized personally or have suffered from a tragic event involving a loved-one or someone near and dear to their heart, expect from the government? Convicted felons of this nature and degree of unlawfulness should be sentenced to death. Psychotic killers and rapists need the ultimate consequences such as the death penalty for […]

Religious Values and Death Penalty

Religious and moral values tell us that killing is wrong. Thou shall not kill. To me, the death penalty is inhumane. Killing people makes us like the murderers that most of us despise. No imperfect system should have the right to decide who lives and who dies. The government is made up of imperfect humans, who make mistakes. The only person that should be able to take life, is god. "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind". […]

Abolishment of the Death Penalty

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to relate many different criminological theories in regard to capital punishment. We relate many criminological theories such as; cognitive theory, deviant place theory, latent trait theory, differential association theory, behavioral theory, attachment theory, lifestyle theory, and biosocial theory. This paper empirically analyzes the idea that capital punishment is inhumane and should be abolished. We analyze this by taking into consideration false convictions, deterrence of crime, attitudes towards capital punishment, mental illness and juvenile […]

Punishment and the Nature of the Crime

When an individual commits a crime then he/she is given punishment depending on the nature of the crime committed. The US's way of giving punishment to an offender has been criticized for many years. There are 2 types of cases; civil and criminal cases. In civil cases, most of the verdict comprises of jail time or fine amount to be paid. These are not as severe except the one related to money laundering and forgery. On the other hand, criminal […]

The Death Penalty and Juveniles

Introduction: In today's society, many juveniles are being sent to trial without having the chance of getting a fair trial as anyone else would. Many citizens would see juveniles as dangerous individuals, but in my opinion how a teenager acts at home starts at home. Punishing a child for something that could have been solved at home is something that should not have to get worse by giving them the death penalty. The death penalty should not be imposed on […]

Is the Death Penalty “Humane”

What’s the first thing that pops up in your mind when you hear the words Capital Punishment? I’m assuming for most people the first thing that pops up is a criminal sitting on a chair, with all limbs tied down, and some type of mechanism connected to their head. Even though this really isn't the way that it is done, I do not blame people for imagining that type of image because that is how movies usually portray capital punishment. […]

Euthanasia and Death Penalty

Euthanasia and death penalty are two controversy topics, that get a lot of attention in today's life. The subject itself has the roots deep in the beginning of the humankind. It is interesting and maybe useful to learn the answer and if there is right or wrong in those actions. The decision if a person should live or die depends on the state laws. There are both opponents and supporters of the subject. However different the opinions are, the state […]

The Death Penalty is not Worth the Cost

The death penalty is a government practice, used as a punishment for capital crimes such as treason, murder, and genocide to name a few. It has been a controversial topic for many years some countries still use it while others don't. In the United States, each state gets to choose whether they consider it to be legal or not. Which is why in this country 30 states allow it while 20 states have gotten rid of it. It is controversial […]

Ineffectiveness of Death Penalty

Death penalty as a means of punishing crime and discouraging wrong behaviour has suffered opposition from various fronts. Religious leaders argue that it is morally wrong to take someone's life while liberal thinkers claim that there are better ways to punish wrong behaviour other than the death penalty. This debate rages on while statistically, Texas executes more individuals than any other state in the United States of America. America itself also has the highest number of death penalty related deaths […]

Is the Death Penalty Morally Right?

There have been several disputes on whether the death penalty is morally right. Considering the ethical issues with this punishment can help distinguish if it should be denied or accepted. For example, it can be argued that a criminal of extreme offenses should be granted the same level of penance as their crime. During the duration of their sentencing they could repent on their actions and desire another opportunity of freedom. The death penalty should be outlawed because of too […]

Why the Death Penalty is Unjust

Capital punishment being either a justifiable law, or a horrendous, unjust act can be determined based on the perspective of different worldviews. In a traditional Christian perspective, the word of God given to the world in The Holy Bible should only be abided by. The Holy Bible states that no man (or woman) should shed the blood of another man (or woman). Christians are taught to teach a greater amount of sacrifice for the sake of the Lord. Social justice […]

The Death Penalty and People’s Opinions

The death penalty is a highly debated topic that often divided opinion amongst people all around the world. Firstly, let's take a look at our capital punishments, with certain crimes, come different serving times. Most crimes include treason, espionage, murder, large-scale drug trafficking, and murder towards a juror, witness, or a court officer in some cases. These are a few examples compared to the forty-one federal capital offenses to date. When it comes to the death penalty, there are certain […]

The Debate of the Death Penalty

Capital punishment is a moral issue that is often scrutinized due to the taking of someone’s life. This is in large part because of the views many have toward the rule of law or an acceptance to the status quo. In order to get a true scope of the death penalty, it is best to address potential biases from a particular ethical viewpoint. By looking at it from several theories of punishment, selecting the most viable theory makes it a […]

The History of the Death Penalty

The History of the death penalty goes as far back as ancient China and Babylon. However, the first recorded death sentence took place in 16th Century BC Egypt, where executions were carried out with an ax. Since the very beginning, people were treated according to their social status; those wealthy were rarely facing brutal executions; on the contrary, most of the population was facing cruel executions. For instance, in the 5th Century BC, the Roman Law of the Twelve Tablets […]

Death Penalty is Immoral

Let's say your child grabs a plate purposely. You see them grab the plate, smash it on the ground and look you straight in the eyes. Are they deserving of a punishment? Now what if I say your child is three years old. A three year old typically doesn't know they have done something wrong. But since your child broke that one plate, your kid is being put on death row. You may be thinking, that is too harsh of […]

The Death Penalty in the United States

The United States is the "land of the free, home of the brave" and the death penalty (American National Anthem). Globally, America stands number five in carrying executions (Lockie). Since its resurrection in 1976, the year in which the Supreme Court reestablished the constitutionality of the death penalty, more than 1,264 people have been executed, predominantly by the medium of lethal injection (The Guardian). Almost all death penalty cases entangle the execution of assassins; although, they may also be applied […]

Cost of the Death Penalty

The death penalty costs more than life in prison. According to Fox News correspondent Dan Springer, the State of California spent 4 billion dollars to execute 13 individuals, in addition to the net spend of an estimated $64,000 per prisoner every year. Springer (2011) documents how the death penalty convictions declined due to economic reasons. The state spends up to 3 times more when seeking a death penalty than when pursuing a life in prison without the possibility of parole. […]

The Solution to the Death Penalty

There has never been a time when the United States of America was free from criminals indulging in killing, stealing, exploiting people, and even selling illegal items. Naturally, America refuses to tolerate the crimes committed by those who view themselves as above the law. Once these convicts are apprehended, they are brought to justice. In the past, these criminals often faced an ultimate punishment: the death penalty. Mercy was a foreign concept due to their underdeveloped understanding of the value […]

Costs: Death Penalty Versus Prison Costs

The Conservatives Concerned Organization challenges the notion that the death penalty is more cost effective compared to prison housing and feeding costs. The organization argues that the death penalty is an expensive lengthy and complicated process concluding that it is not only a bloated program that delays justice and bogs down the enforcement of the law, it is also an inefficient justice process that diverts financial resources from law enforcement programs that could protect individuals and save lives. According to […]

Death Penalty as a Source of Constant Controversy

The death penalty has been a source of almost constant controversy for hundreds of years, splitting the population down the middle with people supporting the death penalty and people that think it is unnecessary. The amount of people that are been against the death penalty has grown in recent years, causing the amount of executions to dwindle down to where there is less than one hundred every year. This number will continue to lessen as more and more people decide […]

Death Penalty is Politically Just?

Being wrongfully accused is unimaginable, but think if you were wrongfully accused and the ultimate punishment was death. Death penalty is one of the most controversial issues in today's society, but what is politically just? When a crime is committed most assume that the only acceptable consequence is to be put to death rather than thinking of another form of punishment. Religiously the death penalty is unfair because the, "USCCB concludes prisoners can change and find redemption through ministry outreach, […]

George Walker Bush and Death Penalty

George Walker Bush, a former U.S. president, and governor of Texas, once spoke, "I don't think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I don't think that's right. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people's lives." The death penalty, or capital punishment, refers to the execution of a criminal convicted of a capital offense. With many criminals awaiting execution on death row, the death penalty has been a debated topic […]

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How To Write an Essay About Death Penalty

Understanding the topic.

When writing an essay about the death penalty, the first step is to understand the depth and complexities of the topic. The death penalty, also known as capital punishment, is a legal process where a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime. This topic is highly controversial and evokes strong emotions on both sides of the debate. It's crucial to approach this subject with sensitivity and a balanced perspective, acknowledging the moral, legal, and ethical considerations involved. Research is key in this initial phase, as it's important to gather facts, statistics, and viewpoints from various sources to have a well-rounded understanding of the topic. This foundation will set the tone for your essay, guiding your argument and supporting your thesis.

Structuring the Argument

The next step is structuring your argument. In an essay about the death penalty, it's vital to present a clear thesis statement that outlines your stance on the issue. Are you for or against it? What are the reasons behind your position? The body of your essay should then systematically support your thesis through well-structured arguments. Each paragraph should focus on a specific aspect of the death penalty, such as its ethical implications, its effectiveness as a deterrent to crime, or the risk of wrongful convictions. Ensure that each point is backed up by evidence and examples, and remember to address counterarguments. This not only shows that you have considered multiple viewpoints but also strengthens your position by demonstrating why these opposing arguments may be less valid.

Exploring Ethical and Moral Dimensions

An essential aspect of writing an essay on the death penalty is exploring its ethical and moral dimensions. This involves delving into philosophical debates about the value of human life, justice, and retribution. It's important to discuss the moral justifications that are often used to defend the death penalty, such as the idea of 'an eye for an eye,' and to critically evaluate these arguments. Equally important is exploring the ethical arguments against the death penalty, including the potential for innocent people to be executed and the question of whether the state should have the power to take a life. This section of the essay should challenge readers to think deeply about their values and the principles of a just society.

Concluding Thoughts

In conclusion, revisit your thesis and summarize the key points made in your essay. This is your final opportunity to reinforce your argument and leave a lasting impression on your readers. Discuss the broader implications of the death penalty in society and consider potential future developments in this area. You might also want to offer recommendations or pose questions that encourage further reflection on the topic. Remember, a strong conclusion doesn't just restate what has been said; it provides closure and offers new insights, prompting readers to continue thinking about the subject long after they have finished reading your essay.

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5 Death Penalty Essays Everyone Should Know

Capital punishment is an ancient practice. It’s one that human rights defenders strongly oppose and consider as inhumane and cruel. In 2019, Amnesty International reported the lowest number of executions in about a decade. Most executions occurred in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt . The United States is the only developed western country still using capital punishment. What does this say about the US? Here are five essays about the death penalty everyone should read:

“When We Kill”

By: Nicholas Kristof | From: The New York Times 2019

In this excellent essay, Pulitizer-winner Nicholas Kristof explains how he first became interested in the death penalty. He failed to write about a man on death row in Texas. The man, Cameron Todd Willingham, was executed in 2004. Later evidence showed that the crime he supposedly committed – lighting his house on fire and killing his three kids – was more likely an accident. In “When We Kill,” Kristof puts preconceived notions about the death penalty under the microscope. These include opinions such as only guilty people are executed, that those guilty people “deserve” to die, and the death penalty deters crime and saves money. Based on his investigations, Kristof concludes that they are all wrong.

Nicholas Kristof has been a Times columnist since 2001. He’s the winner of two Pulitizer Prices for his coverage of China and the Darfur genocide.

“An Inhumane Way of Death”

By: Willie Jasper Darden, Jr.

Willie Jasper Darden, Jr. was on death row for 14 years. In his essay, he opens with the line, “Ironically, there is probably more hope on death row than would be found in most other places.” He states that everyone is capable of murder, questioning if people who support capital punishment are just as guilty as the people they execute. Darden goes on to say that if every murderer was executed, there would be 20,000 killed per day. Instead, a person is put on death row for something like flawed wording in an appeal. Darden feels like he was picked at random, like someone who gets a terminal illness. This essay is important to read as it gives readers a deeper, more personal insight into death row.

Willie Jasper Darden, Jr. was sentenced to death in 1974 for murder. During his time on death row, he advocated for his innocence and pointed out problems with his trial, such as the jury pool that excluded black people. Despite worldwide support for Darden from public figures like the Pope, Darden was executed in 1988.

“We Need To Talk About An Injustice”

By: Bryan Stevenson | From: TED 2012

This piece is a transcript of Bryan Stevenson’s 2012 TED talk, but we feel it’s important to include because of Stevenson’s contributions to criminal justice. In the talk, Stevenson discusses the death penalty at several points. He points out that for years, we’ve been taught to ask the question, “Do people deserve to die for their crimes?” Stevenson brings up another question we should ask: “Do we deserve to kill?” He also describes the American death penalty system as defined by “error.” Somehow, society has been able to disconnect itself from this problem even as minorities are disproportionately executed in a country with a history of slavery.

Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, and author. He’s argued in courts, including the Supreme Court, on behalf of the poor, minorities, and children. A film based on his book Just Mercy was released in 2019 starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx.

“I Know What It’s Like To Carry Out Executions”

By: S. Frank Thompson | From: The Atlantic 2019

In the death penalty debate, we often hear from the family of the victims and sometimes from those on death row. What about those responsible for facilitating an execution? In this opinion piece, a former superintendent from the Oregon State Penitentiary outlines his background. He carried out the only two executions in Oregon in the past 55 years, describing it as having a “profound and traumatic effect” on him. In his decades working as a correctional officer, he concluded that the death penalty is not working . The United States should not enact federal capital punishment.

Frank Thompson served as the superintendent of OSP from 1994-1998. Before that, he served in the military and law enforcement. When he first started at OSP, he supported the death penalty. He changed his mind when he observed the protocols firsthand and then had to conduct an execution.

“There Is No Such Thing As Closure on Death Row”

By: Paul Brown | From: The Marshall Project 2019

This essay is from Paul Brown, a death row inmate in Raleigh, North Carolina. He recalls the moment of his sentencing in a cold courtroom in August. The prosecutor used the term “closure” when justifying a death sentence. Who is this closure for? Brown theorizes that the prosecutors are getting closure as they end another case, but even then, the cases are just a way to further their careers. Is it for victims’ families? Brown is doubtful, as the death sentence is pursued even when the families don’t support it. There is no closure for Brown or his family as they wait for his execution. Vivid and deeply-personal, this essay is a must-read for anyone who wonders what it’s like inside the mind of a death row inmate.

Paul Brown has been on death row since 2000 for a double murder. He is a contributing writer to Prison Writers and shares essays on topics such as his childhood, his life as a prisoner, and more.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

The Case Against the Death Penalty

The American Civil Liberties Union believes the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantees of due process of law and of equal protection under the law. Furthermore, we believe that the state should not give itself the right to kill human beings – especially when it kills with premeditation and ceremony, in the name of the law or in the name of its people, and when it does so in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion.

Capital punishment is an intolerable denial of civil liberties and is inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system. The death penalty is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice. Through litigation, legislation, and advocacy against this barbaric and brutal institution, we strive to prevent executions and seek the abolition of capital punishment.

The ACLU’s opposition to capital punishment incorporates the following fundamental concerns:

The death penalty system in the US is applied in an unfair and unjust manner against people, largely dependent on how much money they have, the skill of their attorneys, race of the victim and where the crime took place . People of color are far more likely to be executed than white people, especially if thevictim is white

The death penalty is a waste of taxpayer funds and has no public safety benefit. The vast majority of law enforcement professionals surveyed agree that capital punishment does not deter violent crime; a survey of police chiefs nationwide found they rank the death penalty lowest among ways to reduce violent crime. They ranked increasing the number of police officers, reducing drug abuse, and creating a better economy with more jobs higher than the death penalty as the best ways to reduce violence. The FBI has found the states with the death penalty have the highest murder rates.

Innocent people are too often sentenced to death. Since 1973, over 156 people have been released from death rows in 26 states because of innocence. Nationally, at least one person is exonerated for every 10 that are executed.

INTRODUCTION TO THE “MODERN ERA” OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED STATES

In 1972, the Supreme Court declared that under then-existing laws “the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty… constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.” ( Furman v. Georgia , 408 U.S. 238). The Court, concentrating its objections on the manner in which death penalty laws had been applied, found the result so “harsh, freakish, and arbitrary” as to be constitutionally unacceptable. Making the nationwide impact of its decision unmistakable, the Court summarily reversed death sentences in the many cases then before it, which involved a wide range of state statutes, crimes and factual situations.

But within four years after the Furman decision, several hundred persons had been sentenced to death under new state capital punishment statutes written to provide guidance to juries in sentencing. These statutes require a two-stage trial procedure, in which the jury first determines guilt or innocence and then chooses imprisonment or death in the light of aggravating or mitigating circumstances.

In 1976, the Supreme Court moved away from abolition, holding that “the punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution.” The Court ruled that the new death penalty statutes contained “objective standards to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing the sentence of death.” ( Gregg v. Georgia , 428 U.S. 153). Subsequently 38 state legislatures and the Federal government enacted death penalty statutes patterned after those the Court upheld in Gregg. Congress also enacted and expanded federal death penalty statutes for peacetime espionage by military personnel and for a vast range of categories of murder.

Executions resumed in 1977. In 2002, the Supreme Court held executions of mentally retarded criminals are “cruel and unusual punishments” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. Since then, states have developed a range of processes to ensure that mentally retarded individuals are not executed. Many have elected to hold proceedings prior to the merits trial, many with juries, to determine whether an accused is mentally retarded. In 2005, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed, resulting in commutation of death sentences to life for dozens of individuals across the country. As of August 2012, over 3,200 men and women are under a death sentence and more than 1,300 men, women and children (at the time of the crime) have been executed since 1976 .

ACLU OBJECTIONS TO THE DEATH PENALTY

Despite the Supreme Court’s 1976 ruling in Gregg v. Georgia , et al, the ACLU continues to oppose capital punishment on moral, practical, and constitutional grounds:

Capital punishment is cruel and unusual . It is cruel because it is a relic of the earliest days of penology, when slavery, branding, and other corporal punishments were commonplace. Like those barbaric practices, executions have no place in a civilized society. It is unusual because only the United States of all the western industrialized nations engages in this punishment. It is also unusual because only a random sampling of convicted murderers in the United States receive a sentence of death.

Capital punishment denies due process of law. Its imposition is often arbitrary, and always irrevocable – forever depriving an individual of the opportunity to benefit from new evidence or new laws that might warrant the reversal of a conviction, or the setting aside of a death sentence.

The death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection . It is applied randomly – and discriminatorily. It is imposed disproportionately upon those whose victims are white, offenders who are people of color, and on those who are poor and uneducated and concentrated in certain geographic regions of the country.

The death penalty is not a viable form of crime control. When police chiefs were asked to rank the factors that, in their judgment, reduce the rate of violent crime, they mentioned curbing drug use and putting more officers on the street, longer sentences and gun control. They ranked the death penalty as least effective . Politicians who preach the desirability of executions as a method of crime control deceive the public and mask their own failure to identify and confront the true causes of crime.

Capital punishment wastes limited resources . It squanders the time and energy of courts, prosecuting attorneys, defense counsel, juries, and courtroom and law enforcement personnel. It unduly burdens the criminal justice system, and it is thus counterproductive as an instrument for society’s control of violent crime. Limited funds that could be used to prevent and solve crime (and provide education and jobs) are spent on capital punishment.

Opposing the death penalty does not indicate a lack of sympathy for murder victims . On the contrary, murder demonstrates a lack of respect for human life. Because life is precious and death irrevocable, murder is abhorrent, and a policy of state-authorized killings is immoral. It epitomizes the tragic inefficacy and brutality of violence, rather than reason, as the solution to difficult social problems. Many murder victims do not support state-sponsored violence to avenge the death of their loved one. Sadly, these victims have often been marginalized by politicians and prosecutors, who would rather publicize the opinions of pro-death penalty family members.

Changes in death sentencing have proved to be largely cosmetic. The defects in death-penalty laws, conceded by the Supreme Court in the early 1970s, have not been appreciably altered by the shift from unrestrained discretion to “guided discretion.” Such so-called “reforms” in death sentencing merely mask the impermissible randomness of a process that results in an execution.

A society that respects life does not deliberately kill human beings . An execution is a violent public spectacle of official homicide, and one that endorses killing to solve social problems – the worst possible example to set for the citizenry, and especially children. Governments worldwide have often attempted to justify their lethal fury by extolling the purported benefits that such killing would bring to the rest of society. The benefits of capital punishment are illusory, but the bloodshed and the resulting destruction of community decency are real.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS NOT A DETERRENT TO CAPITAL CRIMES

Deterrence is a function not only of a punishment’s severity, but also of its certainty and frequency. The argument most often cited in support of capital punishment is that the threat of execution influences criminal behavior more effectively than imprisonment does. As plausible as this claim may sound, in actuality the death penalty fails as a deterrent for several reasons.

A punishment can be an effective deterrent only if it is consistently and promptly employed. Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet these conditions .

The proportion of first-degree murderers who are sentenced to death is small, and of this group, an even smaller proportion of people are executed. Although death sentences in the mid-1990s increased to about 300 per year , this is still only about one percent of all homicides known to the police . Of all those convicted on a charge of criminal homicide, only 3 percent – about 1 in 33 – are eventually sentenced to death. Between 2001-2009, the average number of death sentences per year dropped to 137 , reducing the percentage even more. This tiny fraction of convicted murderers do not represent the “worst of the worst”.

Mandatory death sentencing is unconstitutional. The possibility of increasing the number of convicted murderers sentenced to death and executed by enacting mandatory death penalty laws was ruled unconstitutional in 1976 ( Woodson v. North Carolina , 428 U.S. 280).

A considerable time between the imposition of the death sentence and the actual execution is unavoidable, given the procedural safeguards required by the courts in capital cases. Starting with selecting the trial jury, murder trials take far longer when the ultimate penalty is involved. Furthermore, post-conviction appeals in death-penalty cases are far more frequent than in other cases. These factors increase the time and cost of administering criminal justice.

We can reduce delay and costs only by abandoning the procedural safeguards and constitutional rights of suspects, defendants, and convicts – with the attendant high risk of convicting the wrong person and executing the innocent. This is not a realistic prospect: our legal system will never reverse itself to deny defendants the right to counsel, or the right to an appeal.

Persons who commit murder and other crimes of personal violence often do not premeditate their crimes.

Most capital crimes are committed in the heat of the moment. Most capital crimes are committed during moments of great emotional stress or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, when logical thinking has been suspended. Many capital crimes are committed by the badly emotionally-damaged or mentally ill. In such cases, violence is inflicted by persons unable to appreciate the consequences to themselves as well as to others.

Even when crime is planned, the criminal ordinarily concentrates on escaping detection, arrest, and conviction. The threat of even the severest punishment will not discourage those who expect to escape detection and arrest. It is impossible to imagine how the threat of any punishment could prevent a crime that is not premeditated. Furthermore, the death penalty is a futile threat for political terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh, because they usually act in the name of an ideology that honors its martyrs.

Capital punishment doesn’t solve our society’s crime problem. Threatening capital punishment leaves the underlying causes of crime unaddressed, and ignores the many political and diplomatic sanctions (such as treaties against asylum for international terrorists) that could appreciably lower the incidence of terrorism.

Capital punishment has been a useless weapon in the so-called “war on drugs.” The attempt to reduce murders in the drug trade by threat of severe punishment ignores the fact that anyone trafficking in illegal drugs is already risking his life in violent competition with other dealers. It is irrational to think that the death penalty – a remote threat at best – will avert murders committed in drug turf wars or by street-level dealers.

If, however, severe punishment can deter crime, then permanent imprisonment is severe enough to deter any rational person from committing a violent crime.

The vast preponderance of the evidence shows that the death penalty is no more effective than imprisonment in deterring murder and that it may even be an incitement to criminal violence. Death-penalty states as a group do not have lower rates of criminal homicide than non-death-penalty states. Use of the death penalty in a given state may actually increase the subsequent rate of criminal homicide. Why? Perhaps because “a return to the exercise of the death penalty weakens socially based inhibitions against the use of lethal force to settle disputes…. “

In adjacent states – one with the death penalty and the other without it – the state that practices the death penalty does not always show a consistently lower rate of criminal homicide. For example, between l990 and l994, the homicide rates in Wisconsin and Iowa (non-death-penalty states) were half the rates of their neighbor, Illinois – which restored the death penalty in l973, and by 1994 had sentenced 223 persons to death and carried out two executions . Between 2000-2010, the murder rate in states with capital punishment was 25-46% higher than states without the death penalty.

On-duty police officers do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide in abolitionist states than they do in death-penalty states. Between 1976 and 1989, for example, lethal assaults against police were not significantly more or less frequent in abolitionist states than in death-penalty states. Capital punishment did not appear to provide officers added protection during that time frame. In fact, the three leading states in law enforcement homicide in 1996 were also very active death penalty states : California (highest death row population), Texas (most executions since 1976), and Florida (third highest in executions and death row population). The South, which accounts for more than 80% of the country’s executions, also has the highest murder rate of any region in the country. If anything, the death penalty incited violence rather than curbed it.

Prisoners and prison personnel do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide from life-term prisoners in abolition states than they do in death-penalty states. Between 1992 and 1995, 176 inmates were murdered by other prisoners. The vast majority of those inmates (84%) were killed in death penalty jurisdictions. During the same period, about 2% of all inmate assaults on prison staff were committed in abolition jurisdictions . Evidently, the threat of the death penalty “does not even exert an incremental deterrent effect over the threat of a lesser punishment in the abolitionist states.” Furthermore, multiple studies have shown that prisoners sentenced to life without parole have equivalent rates of prison violence as compared to other inmates.

Actual experience thus establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty does not deter murder. No comparable body of evidence contradicts that conclusion.

Furthermore, there are documented cases in which the death penalty actually incited the capital crimes it was supposed to deter. These include instances of the so-called suicide-by-execution syndrome – persons who wanted to die but feared taking their own lives, and committed murder so that the state would kill them. For example, in 1996, Daniel Colwell , who suffered from mental illness, claimed that he killed a randomly-selected couple in a Georgia parking lot so that the state would kill him – he was sentenced to death and ultimately took his own life while on death row.

Although inflicting the death penalty guarantees that the condemned person will commit no further crimes, it does not have a demonstrable deterrent effect on other individuals. Further, it is a high price to pay when studies show that few convicted murderers commit further crimes of violence. Researchers examined the prison and post-release records of 533 prisoners on death row in 1972 whose sentences were reduced to incarceration for life by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Furman. This research showed that seven had committed another murder. But the same study showed that in four other cases, an innocent man had been sentenced to death. (Marquart and Sorensen, in Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 1989)

Recidivism among murderers does occasionally happen, but it occurs less frequently than most people believe; the media rarely distinguish between a convicted offender who murders while on parole, and a paroled murderer who murders again. Government data show that about one in 12 death row prisoners had a prior homicide conviction . But as there is no way to predict reliably which convicted murderers will try to kill again, the only way to prevent all such recidivism is to execute every convicted murderer – a policy no one seriously advocates. Equally effective but far less inhumane is a policy of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS UNFAIR

Constitutional due process and elementary justice both require that the judicial functions of trial and sentencing be conducted with fundamental fairness, especially where the irreversible sanction of the death penalty is involved. In murder cases (since 1930, 88 percent of all executions have been for this crime), there has been substantial evidence to show that courts have sentenced some persons to prison while putting others to death in a manner that has been arbitrary, racially biased, and unfair.

Racial Bias in Death Sentencing

Racial discrimination was one of the grounds on which the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in Furman . Half a century ago, in his classic American Dilemma (1944), Gunnar Myrdal reported that “the South makes the widest application of the death penalty, and Negro criminals come in for much more than their share of the executions.” A study of the death penalty in Texas shows that the current capital punishment system is an outgrowth of the racist “legacy of slavery.” Between 1930 and the end of 1996, 4,220 prisoners were executed in the United States; more than half (53%) were black .

Our nation’s death rows have always held a disproportionately large population of African Americans, relative to their percentage of the total population. Comparing black and white offenders over the past century, the former were often executed for what were considered less-than-capital offenses for whites, such as rape and burglary. (Between 1930 and 1976, 455 men were executed for rape, of whom 405 – 90 percent – were black.) A higher percentage of the blacks who were executed were juveniles; and the rate of execution without having one’s conviction reviewed by any higher court was higher for blacks. (Bowers, Legal Homicide 1984; Streib, Death Penalty for Juveniles 1987)

In recent years, it has been argued that such flagrant racial discrimination is a thing of the past. However, since the revival of the death penalty in the mid-1970s, about half of those on death row at any given time have been black . More striking is the racial comparison of victims . Although approximately 49% of all homicide victims are white, 77% of capital homicide cases since 1976 have involved a white victim.

Between 1976 and 2005 , 86% of white victims were killed by whites (14% by other races) while 94% of black victims were killed by blacks (6% by other races). Blacks and whites are murder victims in almost equal numbers of crimes – which is a very high percentage given that the general US population is 13% black. African-Americans are six times as likely as white Americans to die at the hands of a murderer, and roughly seven times as likely to murder someone. Young black men are fifteen times as likely to be murdered as young white men.

So given this information, when those under death sentence are examined more closely, it turns out that race is a decisive factor after all.

Further, studies like that commissioned by the Governor of Maryland found that “black offenders who kill white victims are at greater risk of a death sentence than others, primarily because they are substantially more likely to be charged by the state’s attorney with a capital offense.”

The classic statistical study of racial discrimination in capital cases in Georgia presented in the McCleskey case showed that “the average odds of receiving a death sentence among all indicted cases were 4.3 times higher in cases with white victims.” (David C. Baldus et al., Equal Justice and the Death Penalty 1990) In 1987 these data were placed before the Supreme Court in McCleskey v. Kemp and while the Court did not dispute the statistical evidence, it held that evidence of an overall pattern of racial bias was not sufficient. Mr. McCleskey would have to prove racial bias in his own case – a virtually impossible task. The Court also held that the evidence failed to show that there was “a constitutionally significant risk of racial bias….” (481 U.S. 279) Although the Supreme Court declared that the remedy sought by the plaintiff was “best presented to the legislative bodies,” subsequent efforts to persuade Congress to remedy the problem by enacting the Racial Justice Act were not successful. (Don Edwards & John Conyers, Jr., The Racial Justice Act – A Simple Matter of Justice, in University of Dayton Law Review 1995)

In 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office reported to the Congress the results of its review of empirical studies on racism and the death penalty. The GAO concluded : “Our synthesis of the 28 studies shows a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty after the Furman decision” and that “race of victim influence was found at all stages of the criminal justice system process…”

Texas was prepared to execute Duane Buck on September 15, 2011. Mr. Buck was condemned to death by a jury that had been told by an expert psychologist that he was more likely to be dangerous because he was African American. The Supreme Court stayed the case, but Mr. Buck has not yet received the new sentencing hearing justice requires.

These results cannot be explained away by relevant non-racial factors, such as prior criminal record or type of crime, as these were factored for in the Baldus and GAO studies referred to above. They lead to a very unsavory conclusion: In the trial courts of this nation, even at the present time, the killing of a white person is treated much more severely than the killing of a black person . Of the 313 persons executed between January 1977 and the end of 1995, 36 had been convicted of killing a black person while 249 (80%) had killed a white person. Of the 178 white defendants executed, only three had been convicted of murdering people of color . Our criminal justice system essentially reserves the death penalty for murderers (regardless of their race) who kill white victims.

Another recent Louisiana study found that defendants with white victims were 97% more likely to receive death sentences than defendants with black victims. [1]

Both gender and socio-economic class also determine who receives a death sentence and who is executed. Women account for only two percent of all people sentenced to death , even though females commit about 11 percent of all criminal homicides. Many of the women under death sentence were guilty of killing men who had victimized them with years of violent abuse . Since 1900, only 51 women have been executed in the United States (15 of them black).

Discrimination against the poor (and in our society, racial minorities are disproportionately poor) is also well established. It is a prominent factor in the availability of counsel.

Fairness in capital cases requires, above all, competent counsel for the defendant. Yet “approximately 90 percent of those on death row could not afford to hire a lawyer when they were tried.”) Common characteristics of death-row defendants are poverty, the lack of firm social roots in the community, and inadequate legal representation at trial or on appeal. As Justice William O. Douglas noted in Furman , “One searches our chronicles in vain for the execution of any member of the affluent strata in this society”(408 US 238).

Failure of Safeguards

The demonstrated inequities in the actual administration of capital punishment should tip the balance against it in the judgment of fair-minded and impartial observers. “Whatever else might be said for the use of death as a punishment, one lesson is clear from experience: this is a power that we cannot exercise fairly and without discrimination.”(Gross and Mauro, Death and Discrimination 1989)

Justice John Marshall Harlan, writing for the Court in Furman , noted “… the history of capital punishment for homicides … reveals continual efforts, uniformly unsuccessful, to identify before the fact those homicides for which the slayer should die…. Those who have come to grips with the hard task of actually attempting to draft means of channeling capital sentencing discretion have confirmed the lesson taught by history…. To identify before the fact those characteristics of criminal homicides and their perpetrators which call for the death penalty, and to express these characteristics in language which can be fairly understood and applied by the sentencing authority, appear to be tasks which are beyond present human ability.” (402 U.S. 183 (1971))

Yet in the Gregg decision, the majority of the Supreme Court abandoned the wisdom of Justice Harlan and ruled as though the new guided-discretion statutes could accomplish the impossible. The truth is that death statutes approved by the Court “do not effectively restrict the discretion of juries by any real standards, and they never will. No society is going to kill everybody who meets certain preset verbal requirements, put on the statute books without awareness of coverage of the infinity of special factors the real world can produce.”

Evidence obtained by the Capital Jury Project has shown that jurors in capital trials generally do not understand the judge’s instructions about the laws that govern the choice between imposing the death penalty and a life sentence. Even when they do comprehend, jurors often refuse to be guided by the law. “Juror comprehension of the law… is mediocre. The effect [of this relative lack of comprehension of the law]… is to reduce the likelihood that capital defendants will benefit from the safeguards against arbitrariness built into the… law.”

Even if the jury’s sentencing decision were strictly governed by the relevant legal criteria, there remains a vast reservoir of unfettered discretion: the prosecutor’s decision to prosecute for a capital or lesser crime, the court’s willingness to accept or reject a guilty plea, the jury’s decision to convict for second-degree murder or manslaughter rather than capital murder, the determination of the defendant’s sanity, and the governor’s final clemency decision, among others.

Discretion in the criminal justice system is unavoidable. The history of capital punishment in America clearly demonstrates the social desire to mitigate the harshness of the death penalty by narrowing the scope of its application. Whether or not explicitly authorized by statutes, sentencing discretion has been the main vehicle to this end. But when sentencing discretion is used – as it too often has been – to doom the poor, the friendless, the uneducated, racial minorities, and the despised, it becomes injustice.

Mindful of such facts, the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association (including 20 out of 24 former presidents of the ABA) called for a moratorium on all executions by a vote of 280 to 119 in February 1997 . The House judged the current system to be “a haphazard maze of unfair practices.”

In its 1996 survey of the death penalty in the United States, the International Commission of Jurists reinforced this point. Despite the efforts made over the past two decades since Gregg to protect the administration of the death penalty from abuses, the actual “constitutional errors committed in state courts have gravely undermined the legitimacy of the death penalty as a punishment for crime.” (International Commission of Jurists, Administration of the Death Penalty in the United States 1996)

In 2009, the American Law Institute (ALI), the leading independent organization in the U.S. producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize and improve the law, removed capital punishment from its Model Penal Code. The ALI, which created the modern legal framework for the death penalty in 1962, indicated that the punishment is so arbitrary, fraught with racial and economic disparities, and unable to assure quality legal representation for indigent capital defendants, that it can never be administered fairly.

Thoughtful citizens, who might possibly support the abstract notion of capital punishment, are obliged to condemn it in actual practice.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS IRREVERSIBLE

Unlike any other criminal punishments, the death penalty is irrevocable. Speaking to the French Chamber of Deputies in 1830, years after having witnessed the excesses of the French Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette said, “I shall ask for the abolition of the punishment of death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me.” Although some proponents of capital punishment would argue that its merits are worth the occasional execution of innocent people, most would hasten to insist that there is little likelihood of the innocent being executed.

Since 1900, in this country, there have been on the average more than four cases each year in which an entirely innocent person was convicted of murder. Scores of these individuals were sentenced to death. In many cases, a reprieve or commutation arrived just hours, or even minutes, before the scheduled execution. These erroneous convictions have occurred in virtually every jurisdiction from one end of the nation to the other. Nor have they declined in recent years, despite the new death penalty statutes approved by the Supreme Court.

Disturbingly, and increasingly, a large body of evidence from the modern era shows that innocent people are often convicted of crimes – including capital crimes – and that some have been executed.

In 2012, a new report in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review chronicled the horrifying case of Carlos DeLuna, a man executed in Texas in 1989 for a murder that it was “common knowledge” had been committed by another man. [2] DeLuna’s story demonstrates so many of the factors that can go wrong in a capital case: faulty eyewitness identification, prosecutorial misconduct, police misconduct, a botched crime scene, destroyed DNA evidence, a poor person represented by ineffective by an ineffective inexperienced defense attorney overmatched by a professional prosecutor, and insufficient oversight from the bench. [3] In its case against DeLuna, the State presented no blood or DNA evidence, no crime scene fingerprints, and no proof of hair or fibers from the victim having been found on the defendant. He was convicted largely based on eyewitness testimony made from the back of a police car in a dimly lit lot near the crime scene. Meanwhile, a violent criminal named Carlos Hernandez—a man who not only shared DeLuna’s name, but also looked like him—repeatedly boasted about how he had committed the murder and gotten away with it. [4] These disturbing facts about DeLuna’s case, brought to light more than two decades after his execution, refute the claim, made by some proponents of capital punishment, that the United States has never executed an innocent person. [5]

Consider this additional handful of cases of innocent people sentenced to die – some executed and some spared:

• In 2011, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis, a Black man who was almost certainly innocent of the murder of a white off-duty police officer. The circumstances of his execution raised an international outcry, for good reason. Davis was convicted based on eyewitness testimony, since there was no murder weapon or physical evidence presented by the prosecution. Seven of the nine eyewitnesses recanted or contradicted their trial testimony, many of them saying they were pressured or threatened by police at the time. Troy Davis came close to execution three previous times, because of the difficulty of getting any court to listen to new evidence casting doubt on his conviction. After passage of a federal law in 1996, petitioners are very limited in their ability to appeal death sentences, and courts routinely refuse to hear new testimony, even evidence of innocence. When Troy Davis finally did get a hearing on his evidence, the judge required “proof of innocence” – an impossibly high standard which he ruled that Mr. Davis did not meet. Despite the overwhelming call for clemency, supposed to be the “fail-safe” of the death penalty system, the Georgia Board of Pardons refused to commute the sentence to life and Mr. Davis was executed. Only one day after Troy Davis was executed, two men were freed by the special Innocence Commission of North Carolina after a decade apiece in prison. The two men had actually pled guilty to a crime they did not commit, because they were threatened with the death penalty.
• In Texas in 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed for the arson-murder of his three children. Independent investigations by a newspaper, a nonprofit organization using top experts in the field of fire science, and an independent expert hired by the State of Texas all found that accident, not arson was the cause of the fire. There simply was no reliable evidence that the children were murdered. Yet even with these reports in hand, the state of Texas executed Mr. Willingham. Earlier this year, the Texas Forensic Science Commission was poised to issue a report officially confirming these conclusions until Texas Governor Rick Perry replaced the Commission’s chair and some of its members. Cameron Todd Willingham, who claimed innocence all along, was executed for a crime he almost certainly did not commit. As an example of the arbitrariness of the death penalty, another man, Ernest Willis, also convicted of arson-murder on the same sort of flimsy and unscientific testimony, was freed from Texas death row six months after Willingham was executed.
• In 1985, in Maryland, Kirk Bloodsworth was sentenced to death for rape and murder, despite the testimony of alibi witnesses. In 1986 his conviction was reversed on grounds of withheld evidence pointing to another suspect; he was retried, re-convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. In 1993, newly available DNA evidence proved he was not the rapist-killer, and he was released after the prosecution dismissed the case. A year later he was awarded $300,000 for wrongful punishment. Years later the DNA was matched to the real killer.
• In Mississippi, in 1990, Sabrina Butler was sentenced to death for killing her baby boy. She claimed the child died after attempts at resuscitation failed. On technical grounds her conviction was reversed in 1992. At retrial, she was acquitted when a neighbor corroborated Butler’s explanation of the child’s cause of death and the physician who performed the autopsy admitted his work had not been thorough.
• In 1990, Jesse Tafero was executed in Florida. He had been convicted in 1976 along with his wife, Sonia Jacobs, for murdering a state trooper. In 1981 Jacobs’ death sentence was reduced on appeal to life imprisonment, and 11 years later her conviction was vacated by a federal court. The evidence on which Tafero and Jacobs had been convicted and sentenced was identical; it consisted mainly of the perjured testimony of an ex-convict who turned state’s witness in order to avoid a death sentence. Had Tafero been alive in 1992, he no doubt would have been released along with Jacobs. Tafero’s execution went horribly wrong, and his head caught on fire during the electrocution.
• In Alabama, Walter McMillian was convicted of murdering a white woman in 1988. Despite the jury’s recommendation of a life sentence, the judge sentenced him to death. The sole evidence leading the police to arrest McMillian was testimony of an ex-convict seeking favor with the prosecution. A dozen alibi witnesses (all African Americans, like McMillian) testified on McMillian’s behalf that they were together at a neighborhood gathering, to no avail. On appeal, after tireless efforts by his attorney Bryan Stevenson, McMillian’s conviction was reversed by the Alabama Court of Appeals. Stevenson uncovered prosecutorial suppression of exculpatory evidence and perjury by prosecution witnesses, and the new district attorney joined the defense in seeking dismissal of the charges.
• In 1985, in Illinois, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez were convicted of abduction, rape, and murder of a young girl and were sentenced to death. Shortly after, another man serving a life term in prison for similar crimes confessed that he alone was guilty; but his confession was inadmissible because he refused to repeat it in court unless the state waived the death penalty against him. Awarded a new trial in 1988, Cruz was again convicted and sentenced to death; Hernandez was also re-convicted, and sentenced to 80 years in prison. In 1992 the assistant attorney general assigned to prosecute the case on appeal resigned after becoming convinced of the defendants’ innocence. The convictions were again overturned on appeal after DNA tests exonerated Cruz and implicated the prisoner who had earlier confessed. In 1995 the court ordered a directed verdict of acquittal, and sharply criticized the police for their unprofessional handling of the case. Hernandez was released on bail and the prosecution dropped all charges.
• In 1980 in Texas a black high school janitor, Clarence Brandley, and his white co-worker found the body of a missing 16-year-old white schoolgirl. Interrogated by the police, they were told, “One of you two is going to hang for this.” Looking at Brandley, the officer said, “Since you’re the nigger, you’re elected.” In a classic case of rush to judgment, Brandley was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The circumstantial evidence against him was thin, other leads were ignored by the police, and the courtroom atmosphere reeked of racism. In 1986, Centurion Ministries – a volunteer group devoted to freeing wrongly convicted prisoners – came to Brandley’s aid. Evidence had meanwhile emerged that another man had committed the murder for which Brandley was awaiting execution. Brandley was not released until 1990. (Davies, White Lies 1991)

This sample of freakish and arbitrary innocence determinations also speaks directly to the unceasing concern that there are many more innocent people on death rows across the country – as well as who have been executed. Several factors seen in the above sample of cases help explain why the judicial system cannot guarantee that justice will never miscarry: overzealous prosecution, mistaken or perjured testimony, race, faulty police work, coerced confessions, the defendant’s previous criminal record, inept and under-resourced defense counsel, seemingly conclusive circumstantial evidence, and community pressure for a conviction, among others. And when the system does go wrong, it is often volunteers from outside the criminal justice system – journalists, for example – who rectify the errors, not the police or prosecutors. To retain the death penalty in the face of the demonstrable failures of the system is unacceptable, especially since there are no strong overriding reasons to favor the death penalty.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS BARBARIC

Prisoners are executed in the United States by any one of five methods; in a few jurisdictions the prisoner is allowed to choose which one he or she prefers:

The traditional mode of execution, hanging , is an option still available in Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington. Death on the gallows is easily bungled: If the drop is too short, there will be a slow and agonizing death by strangulation. If the drop is too long, the head will be torn off.

Two states, Idaho and Utah, still authorize the firing squad . The prisoner is strapped into a chair and hooded. A target is pinned to the chest. Five marksmen, one with blanks, take aim and fire.

Throughout the twentieth century, electrocution has been the most widely used form of execution in this country, and is still utilized in eleven states, although lethal injection is the primary method of execution. The condemned prisoner is led – or dragged – into the death chamber, strapped into the chair, and electrodes are fastened to head and legs. When the switch is thrown the body strains, jolting as the voltage is raised and lowered. Often smoke rises from the head. There is the awful odor of burning flesh. No one knows how long electrocuted individuals retain consciousness. In 1983, the electrocution of John Evans in Alabama was described by an eyewitness as follows:

“At 8:30 p.m. the first jolt of 1900 volts of electricity passed through Mr. Evans’ body. It lasted thirty seconds. Sparks and flames erupted … from the electrode tied to Mr. Evans’ left leg. His body slammed against the straps holding him in the electric chair and his fist clenched permanently. The electrode apparently burst from the strap holding it in place. A large puff of grayish smoke and sparks poured out from under the hood that covered Mr. Evans’ face. An overpowering stench of burnt flesh and clothing began pervading the witness room. Two doctors examined Mr. Evans and declared that he was not dead.

“The electrode on the left leg was re-fastened. …Mr. Evans was administered a second thirty second jolt of electricity. The stench of burning flesh was nauseating. More smoke emanated from his leg and head. Again, the doctors examined Mr. Evans. [They] reported that his heart was still beating, and that he was still alive. At that time, I asked the prison commissioner, who was communicating on an open telephone line to Governor George Wallace, to grant clemency on the grounds that Mr. Evans was being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. The request …was denied.

“At 8:40 p.m., a third charge of electricity, thirty seconds in duration, was passed through Mr. Evans’ body. At 8:44, the doctors pronounced him dead. The execution of John Evans took fourteen minutes.” Afterwards, officials were embarrassed by what one observer called the “barbaric ritual.” The prison spokesman remarked, “This was supposed to be a very clean manner of administering death.”

The introduction of the gas chamber was an attempt to improve on electrocution. In this method of execution the prisoner is strapped into a chair with a container of sulfuric acid underneath. The chamber is sealed, and cyanide is dropped into the acid to form a lethal gas. Execution by suffocation in the lethal gas chamber has not been abolished but lethal injection serves as the primary method in states which still authorize it. In 1996 a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California (where the gas chamber has been used since 1933) ruled that this method is a “cruel and unusual punishment.” Here is an account of the 1992 execution in Arizona of Don Harding, as reported in the dissent by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens:

“When the fumes enveloped Don’s head he took a quick breath. A few seconds later he again looked in my direction. His face was red and contorted as if he were attempting to fight through tremendous pain. His mouth was pursed shut and his jaw was clenched tight. Don then took several more quick gulps of the fumes.

“At this point Don’s body started convulsing violently…. His face and body turned a deep red and the veins in his temple and neck began to bulge until I thought they might explode. After about a minute Don’s face leaned partially forward, but he was still conscious. Every few seconds he continued to gulp in. He was shuddering uncontrollably and his body was racked with spasms. His head continued to snap back. His hands were clenched.

“After several more minutes, the most violent of the convulsions subsided. At this time the muscles along Don’s left arm and back began twitching in a wavelike motion under his skin. Spittle drooled from his mouth.

“Don did not stop moving for approximately eight minutes, and after that he continued to twitch and jerk for another minute. Approximately two minutes later, we were told by a prison official that the execution was complete.

“Don Harding took ten minutes and thirty one seconds to die.” ( Gomez v. U.S. District Court , 112 S.Ct. 1652)

The latest mode of inflicting the death penalty, enacted into law by more than 30 states, is lethal injection , first used in 1982 in Texas. It is easy to overstate the humaneness and efficacy of this method; one cannot know whether lethal injection is really painless and there is evidence that it is not. As the U.S. Court of Appeals observed, there is “substantial and uncontroverted evidence… that execution by lethal injection poses a serious risk of cruel, protracted death…. Even a slight error in dosage or administration can leave a prisoner conscious but paralyzed while dying, a sentient witness of his or her own asphyxiation.” ( Chaney v. Heckler , 718 F.2d 1174, 1983).

Its veneer of decency and subtle analogy with life-saving medical practice no doubt makes killing by lethal injection more acceptable to the public. Journalist Susan Blaustein, reacting to having witnessed an execution in Texas, comments:

“The lethal injection method … has turned dying into a still life, thereby enabling the state to kill without anyone involved feeling anything…. Any remaining glimmers of doubt – about whether the man received due process, about his guilt, about our right to take life – cause us to rationalize these deaths with such catchwords as ‘heinous,’ ‘deserved,’ ‘deterrent,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘painless.’ We have perfected the art of institutional killing to the degree that it has deadened our natural, quintessentially human response to death.”

Botched Lethal Injections

Nor does execution by lethal injection always proceed smoothly as planned. In 1985 “the authorities repeatedly jabbed needles into … Stephen Morin, when they had trouble finding a usable vein because he had been a drug abuser.” In 1988, during the execution of Raymond Landry, “a tube attached to a needle inside the inmate’s right arm began leaking, sending the lethal mixture shooting across the death chamber toward witnesses.”

Although the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the current method of lethal injection used is constitutional, several people have suffered because of this form of execution. In Ohio, Rommel Broom was subjected to 18 attempts at finding a vein so that he could be killed by lethal injection. The process to try to execute him took over two hours. Finally, the governor had to stop the execution and grant the inmate a one week reprieve. Mr. Broom has not been executed because he is challenging the state’s right to hold a second execution attempt. Nor was he the only Ohio inmate so maltreated. During his 2006 execution Joseph Clark screamed, “it don’t work” and requested to take something by mouth so the torture would end when his executioners took thirty minutes to find a vein. Christopher Newton’s execution took over two hours – so long that he had to be given a bathroom break.

Lethal Injection Protocol Issues

Most lethal injections in the United States use a “cocktail” consisting of three drugs that sequentially render an inmate unconscious, cause paralysis and cease breathing, and stop an inmate’s heart. [6] But in 2011, the sole American manufacturer of sodium thiopental, a vital part of the three-drug cocktail, decided to discontinue production, forcing states to adapt their lethal injection methodology. [7] Some states have replaced the three-drug cocktail with a single substance, [8] while others have replaced thiopental in the three-drug sequence with another anesthetic. [9] Both three-drug and single-drug executions raise vital concerns: the three-drug cocktail’s paralyzing sedative may mask the inmate’s pain and suffering, while the single-drug method takes about 25 minutes to end a life (if there are no complications), compared with the ten-minute three-drug process. [10]

Although the Supreme Court held in 2008 that Kentucky’s three-drug lethal injection procedure did not violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, [11] it is unclear whether states’ adapted procedures pass muster. Indeed, in February 2012, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals admonished the Arizona Department of Corrections, stating that its approach to execution “cannot continue” and questioning the “regularity and reliability” of protocols that give complete discretion to the corrections director to determine which and how many drugs will be used for each execution. [12] In Georgia, the state Supreme Court stayed the execution of Warren Hill hours before he was scheduled to die in July 2012 in order to review the Department of Corrections’ new single-drug lethal injection procedure. [13] The Missouri Supreme Court imposed a temporary moratorium on executions in August 2012, declaring that it would be “premature” to set execution dates for death row inmates given a pending lawsuit about whether the state’s lethal injection procedures are humane. The state had amended its injection protocol to use a single drug, propofol, which advocates say causes severe pain upon injection. [14]

Although similar suits are pending in other states, [15] not all protocol-based challenges have succeeded; in Texas and Oklahoma, executions have continued despite questions about the potential cruelty of lethal injection and the type or number of chemicals used. [16]

Regardless of whether states use one or three drugs for an execution, all of the major lethal injection drugs are in short supply due to manufacturers’ efforts to prevent the use of their products for executions [17] and European Union restrictions on the exportation of drugs that may be used to kill. [18] As a result, some state executioners have pursued questionable means of obtaining the deadly chemicals from other states and foreign companies, including a pharmaceutical wholesaler operating out of the back of a London driving school. [19] These backroom deals—which, astoundingly, have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—are now the subject of federal litigation that could impact the legitimacy of the American death penalty system. In March 2012, six death row inmates argued that the FDA had shirked its duty to regulate lethal substances and raised concerns about the “very real risk that unapproved thiopental will not actually render a condemned prisoner unconscious.” [20] A federal district judge agreed and ordered the FDA to confiscate the imported thiopental, but the agency has appealed. [21]

Witnessing the Execution

Most people who have observed an execution are horrified and disgusted. “I was ashamed,” writes sociologist Richard Moran, who witnessed an execution in Texas in 1985. “I was an intruder, the only member of the public who had trespassed on [the condemned man’s] private moment of anguish. In my face he could see the horror of his own death.”

Revulsion at the duty to supervise and witness executions is one reason why so many prison wardens – however unsentimental they are about crime and criminals – are opponents of capital punishment. Don Cabana, who supervised several executions in Missouri and Mississippi reflects on his mood just prior to witnessing an execution in the gas chamber:

“If [the condemned prisoner] was some awful monster deemed worthy of extermination, why did I feel so bad about it, I wondered. It has been said that men on death row are inhuman, cold-blooded killers. But as I stood and watched a grieving mother leave her son for the last time, I questioned how the sordid business of executions was supposed to be the great equalizer…. The ‘last mile’ seemed an eternity, every step a painful reminder of what waited at the end of the walk. Where was the cold-blooded murderer, I wondered, as we approached the door to the last-night cell. I had looked for that man before… and I still had not found him – I saw, in my grasp, only a frightened child. [Minutes after the execution and before] heading for the conference room and a waiting press corps, I… shook my head. ‘No more. I don’t want to do this anymore.'” 1996)

Recently, Allen Ault, former executioner for the State of Georgia, wrote , “The men and women who assist in executions are not psychopaths or sadists. They do their best to perform the impossible and inhumane job with which the state has charged them. Those of us who have participated in executions often suffer something very much like posttraumatic stress. Many turn to alcohol and drugs. For me, those nights that weren’t sleepless were plagued by nightmares.”

For some individuals, however, executions seem to appeal to strange, aberrant impulses and provide an outlet for sadistic urges. Warden Lewis Lawes of Sing Sing Prison in New York wrote of the many requests he received to watch electrocutions, and told that when the job of executioner became vacant. “I received more than seven hundred applications for the position, many of them offering cut-rate prices.” (Life and Death in Sing Sing 1928)

Public executions were common in this country during the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the last ones occurred in 1936 in Kentucky, when 20,000 people gathered to watch the hanging of a young African American male. (Teeters, in Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society 1960)

Delight in brutality, pain, violence and death may always be with us. But surely we must conclude that it is best for the law not to encourage such impulses. When the government sanctions, commands, and ceremoniously carries out the execution of a prisoner, it lends support to this destructive side of human nature.

More than two centuries ago the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria, in his highly influential treatise On Crimes and Punishment (1764), asserted: “The death penalty cannot be useful, because of the example of barbarity it gives men.” Beccaria’s words still ring true – even if the death penalty were a “useful” deterrent, it would still be an “example of barbarity.” No society can safely entrust the enforcement of its laws to torture, brutality, or killing. Such methods are inherently cruel and will always mock the attempt to cloak them in justice. As Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg wrote, “The deliberate institutionalized taking of human life by the state is the greatest conceivable degradation to the dignity of the human personality.”(Boston Globe, August 16, 1976)

Death Row Syndrome

Capital appeals are not only costly; they are also time-consuming. The average death row inmate waits 12 years between sentencing and execution, and some sit in anticipation of their executions on death row for up to 30 years. [22] For these prisoners, most of whom are housed in solitary confinement, this wait period may cause “Death Row Phenomenon” or “Death Row Syndrome.” Although the terms are often used interchangeably, “Death Row Phenomenon” refers to the destructive consequences of long-term solitary confinement [23] and the inevitable anxiety that results from awaiting one’s own death, while “Death Row Syndrome” refers to the severe psychological illness that often results from Death Row Phenomenon. [24]

In solitary confinement, inmates are often isolated for 23 hours each day without access to training or educational programs, recreational activities, or regular visits. Such conditions have been demonstrated to provoke agitation, psychosis, delusions, paranoia, and self-destructive behavior. [25] To inflict this type of mental harm is inhumane, but it also may prove detrimental to public safety. When death row inmates successfully appeal their sentences, they are transferred into the general inmate population, and when death row inmates are exonerated, they are promptly released into the community. [26] Death Row Syndrome needlessly risks making these individuals dangerous to those around them.

Neither Death Row Syndrome nor Death Row Phenomenon has received formal recognition from the American Psychiatric Association or the American Psychological Association. [27] In 1995, however, Justices Stevens and Breyer, in a memorandum regarding the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari to death row inmate Clarence Lackey, highlighted the “importance and novelty” of the question “whether executing a prisoner who has already spent some 17 years on death row violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.” [28] Further, as some scholars and advocates have noted, the mental deterioration symptomatic of Death Row Syndrome may render an inmate incompetent to participate in their own post-conviction proceedings. [29]

Death Row Syndrome gained international recognition during the 1989 extradition proceedings of Jens Soering, a German citizen arrested in England and charged with committing murder on American soil. [30] Soering argued, and the European Court of Human Rights agreed, that extraditing him to the United States would violate Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. [31] The Court explained that, in the United States, “the condemned prisoner has to endure for many years the conditions on death row and the anguish and mounting tension of living in the ever-present shadow of death” such that extraditing Soering would violate protections against “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” [32] Similar conclusions have been reached by the United Kingdom’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and the Canadian Supreme Court. [33]

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS UNJUSTIFIED RETRIBUTION

Justice, it is often insisted, requires the death penalty as the only suitable retribution for heinous crimes. This claim does not bear scrutiny, however. By its nature, all punishment is retributive. Therefore, whatever legitimacy is to be found in punishment as just retribution can, in principle, be satisfied without recourse to executions.

Moreover, the death penalty could be defended on narrowly retributive grounds only for the crime of murder, and not for any of the many other crimes that have frequently been made subject to this mode of punishment (rape, kidnapping, espionage, treason, drug trafficking). Few defenders of the death penalty are willing to confine themselves consistently to the narrow scope afforded by retribution. In any case, execution is more than a punishment exacted in retribution for the taking of a life. As Nobel Laureate Albert Camus wrote, “For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.” (Reflections on the Guillotine, in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death 1960)

It is also often argued that death is what murderers deserve, and that those who oppose the death penalty violate the fundamental principle that criminals should be punished according to their just desserts – “making the punishment fit the crime.” If this rule means punishments are unjust unless they are like the crime itself, then the principle is unacceptable: It would require us to rape rapists, torture torturers, and inflict other horrible and degrading punishments on offenders. It would require us to betray traitors and kill multiple murderers again and again – punishments that are, of course, impossible to inflict. Since we cannot reasonably aim to punish all crimes according to this principle, it is arbitrary to invoke it as a requirement of justice in the punishment of murder.

If, however, the principle of just deserts means the severity of punishments must be proportional to the gravity of the crime – and since murder is the gravest crime, it deserves the severest punishment – then the principle is no doubt sound. Nevertheless, this premise does not compel support for the death penalty; what it does require is that other crimes be punished with terms of imprisonment or other deprivations less severe than those used in the punishment of murder.

Criminals no doubt deserve to be punished, and the severity of the punishment should be appropriate to their culpability and the harm they have caused the innocent. But severity of punishment has its limits – imposed by both justice and our common human dignity. Governments that respect these limits do not use premeditated, violent homicide as an instrument of social policy.

Murder Victims Families Oppose the Death Penalty

Some people who have lost a loved one to murder believe that they cannot rest until the murderer is executed. But this sentiment is by no means universal. Coretta Scott King has observed, “As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder and assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder.” (Speech to National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Washington, D.C., September 26, 1981)

Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, daughter of the slain Senator Robert Kennedy, has written:

“I was eight years old when my father was murdered. It is almost impossible to describe the pain of losing a parent to a senseless murder.…But even as a child one thing was clear to me: I didn’t want the killer, in turn, to be killed. I remember lying in bed and praying, ‘Please, God. Please don’t take his life too.’ I saw nothing that could be accomplished in the loss of one life being answered with the loss of another. And I knew, far too vividly, the anguish that would spread through another family – another set of parents, children, brothers, and sisters thrown into grief.”(Foreword to Gray and Stanley, A Punishment in Search of A Crime 1989)

Across the nation, many who have survived the murder of a loved one have joined Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation or Murder Victims Families for Human Rights, in the effort to replace anger and hate toward the criminal with a restorative approach to both the offender and the bereaved survivors.

Groups of murder victims family members have supported campaigns for abolition of the death penalty in Illinois, Connecticut, Montana and Maryland most recently.

Barbara Anderson Young, the sister of James Anderson, who was allegedly run over by a white teenager in Mississippi in 2011, who reportedly wanted to hurt him because he was Black, wrote a letter to the local prosecutor on behalf of their family indicating the family’s opposition to the death penalty, which is “deeply rooted in our religious faith, a faith that was central in James’ life as well.” The letter also eloquently asks that the defendant be spared execution because the death penalty “historically has been used in Mississippi and the South primarily against people of color for killing whites.” It continues, “[e]xecuting James’ killers will not help balance the scales. But sparing them may help to spark a dialogue that one day will lead to the elimination of capital punishment.”

Lawrence Brewer, convicted of the notorious dragging death of James Byrd in Texas, was executed in 2011. Members of Mr. Byrd’s family opposed the death penalty, despite the racist and vicious nature of the killing. Of Brewer’s remorseless – he said he had no regrets the day he was executed – Byrd’s sister, Betty Boatner, said, “If I could say something to him, I would let him know that I forgive him and then if he still has no remorse, I just feel sorry for him.” Byrd’s daughter shared that she didn’t want Brewer to die because “it’s easy . . .(a)ll he’s going to do it go to sleep” rather than live every day with what he did and perhaps one day recognize the humanity of his victim. James Byrd’s son, Ross, points out “You can’t fight murder with murder . . .(l)ife in prison would have been fine. I know he can’t hurt my daddy anymore. I wish the state would take in mind that this isn’t what we want.”

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT COSTS MORE THAN INCARCERATION

It is sometimes suggested that abolishing capital punishment is unfair to the taxpayer, on the assumption that life imprisonment is more expensive than execution. If one takes into account all the relevant costs, however, just the reverse is true. “The death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a more economical alternative to life imprisonment.”) A murder trial normally takes much longer when the death penalty is at issue than when it is not. Litigation costs – including the time of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and court reporters, and the high costs of briefs – are mostly borne by the taxpayer. The extra costs of separate death row housing and additional security in court and elsewhere also add to the cost. A 1982 study showed that were the death penalty to be reintroduced in New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more than double the cost of a life term in prison. (N.Y. State Defenders Assn., “Capital Losses” 1982)

The death penalty was eventually reintroduced in New York and then found unconstitutional and not reintroduced again, in part because of cost.

In Maryland, a comparison of capital trial costs with and without the death penalty for the years concluded that a death penalty case costs “approximately 42 percent more than a case resulting in a non-death sentence.” In 1988 and 1989 the Kansas legislature voted against reinstating the death penalty after it was informed that reintroduction would involve a first-year cost of more than $11 million. 59 Florida, with one of the nation’s most populous death rows, has estimated that the true cost of each execution is approximately $3.2 million, or approximately six times the cost of a life-imprisonment sentence.” (David von Drehle, “Capital Punishment in Paralysis,” Miami Herald, July 10, 1988)

A 1993 study of the costs of North Carolina’s capital punishment system revealed that litigating a murder case from start to finish adds an extra $163,000 to what it would cost the state to keep the convicted offender in prison for 20 years. The extra cost goes up to $216,000 per case when all first-degree murder trials and their appeals are considered, many of which do not end with a death sentence and an execution.

In 2011 in California, a broad coalition of organizations called Taxpayers for Justice put repeal of the death penalty on the ballot for 2012 in part because of the high cost documented by a recent study that found the state has already spent $4 billion on capital punishment resulting in 13 executions. The group includes over 100 law enforcement leaders, in addition to crime-victim advocates and exonerated individuals. Among them is former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, whose office pursued dozens of capital cases during his 32 years as a prosecutor. He said, “My frustration is more about the fact that the death penalty does not serve any useful purpose and it’s very expensive.” Don Heller, a Republican and former prosecutor, wrote “I am convinced that at least one innocent person may have been executed under the current death penalty law. It was not my intent nor do I believe that of the voters who overwhelmingly enacted the death penalty law in 1978. We did not consider that horrific possibility.” Heller emphasized that he is not “soft on crime,” but that “life without parole protects public safety better than a death sentence.” Additionally, he said the money spent on the death penalty could be better used elsewhere, as California cuts funding for police officers and prosecutors. “Paradoxically, the cost of capital punishment takes away funds that could be used to enhance public safety.” [34]

From one end of the country to the other public officials decry the additional cost of capital cases even when they support the death penalty system. “Wherever the death penalty is in place, it siphons off resources which could be going to the front line in the war against crime…. Politicians could address this crisis, but, for the most part they either endorse executions or remain silent.” The only way to make the death penalty more “cost effective” than imprisonment is to weaken due process and curtail appellate review, which are the defendant’s (and society’s) only protection against the most aberrant miscarriages of justice. Any savings in dollars would, of course, be at the cost of justice : In nearly half of the death-penalty cases given review under federal habeas corpus provisions, the murder conviction or death sentence was overturned .

In 1996, in response to public clamor for accelerating executions, Congress imposed severe restrictions on access to federal habeas corpus and also ended all funding of the regional death penalty “resource centers” charged with providing counsel on appeal in the federal courts. (Carol Castenada, “Death Penalty Centers Losing Support Funds,” USA Today, Oct. 24, 1995) These restrictions virtually guarantee that the number and variety of wrongful murder convictions and death sentences will increase. The savings in time and money will prove to be illusory.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS LESS POPULAR THAN THE ALTERNATIVES

It is commonly reported that the American public overwhelmingly approves of the death penalty. More careful analysis of public attitudes, however, reveals that most Americans prefer an alternative; they would oppose the death penalty if convicted murderers were sentenced to life without parole and were required to make some form of financial restitution. In 2010, when California voters were asked which sentence they preferred for a first-degree murderer, 42% of registered voters said they preferred life without parole and 41% said they preferred the death penalty. In 2000, when voters were asked the same question, 37% chose life without parole while 44% chose the death penalty . A 1993 nationwide survey revealed that although 77% of the public approves of the death penalty, support drops to 56% if the alternative is punishment with no parole eligibility until 25 years in prison. Support drops even further, to 49%, if the alternative is no parole under any conditions. And if the alternative is no parole plus restitution, it drops still further, to 41% . Only a minority of the American public would favor the death penalty if offered such alternatives.

INTERNATIONALLY, CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS WIDELY VIEWED AS INHUMANE AND ANACHRONISTIC

An international perspective on the death penalty helps us understand the peculiarity of its use in the United States. As long ago as 1962, it was reported to the Council of Europe that “the facts clearly show that the death penalty is regarded in Europe as something of an anachronism….” 1962)

Today, either by law or in practice, all of Western Europe has abolished the death penalty. In Great Britain, it was abolished (except for cases of treason) in 1971; France abolished it in 1981. Canada abolished it in 1976. The United Nations General Assembly affirmed in a formal resolution that throughout the world, it is desirable to “progressively restrict the number of offenses for which the death penalty might be imposed, with a view to the desirability of abolishing this punishment.” By mid-1995, eighteen countries had ratified the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, outlawing the death penalty in peacetime.

Underscoring worldwide support for abolition was the action of the South African constitutional court in 1995, barring the death penalty as an “inhumane” punishment. Between 1989 and 1995, two dozen other countries abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Since 1995, 43 more abolished it. All told, 71% of the world’s nation’s have abolished the death penalty in law or practice; only 58 of 197 retain it .

International Law

A look at international trends and agreements sheds light on the peculiarity of the United States’ continued imposition of capital punishment. Today, over 140 nations have abolished the death penalty either by law or in practice and, of the 58 countries that have retained the death penalty, only 21 carried out known executions in 2011. [35] Furthermore, capital punishment has compelled the United States to abstain from signing or ratifying several major international treaties and perhaps to violate international agreements to which it is a party:

In 1989, the General Assembly adopted the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), one of the UN’s primary human rights treaties. [36] Parties to the Protocol must take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty and protect their citizens’ right not to be executed, although signatories may reserve the right to apply the death penalty for serious military criminals during wartime. [37] The United States has yet to join the 35 signatories or 75 parties to the Protocol, trailing behind the world’s leading democracies in the protection of human rights.

Although the Second Protocol to the ICCPR is the only worldwide instrument calling for death penalty abolition, there are three such instruments with regional emphases. Adopted by the Council of Europe in 1982 and ratified by eighteen nations by mid-1995, the Sixth Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) provides for the abolition of capital punishment during peacetime. In 2002, the Council adopted the Thirteenth Protocol to the ECHR, which provides for the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances, including times of war or imminent threat of war. In 1990, the Organization of American States adopted the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty, which provides for total abolition but allows states to reserve the right to apply the death penalty during wartime. [38]

The United States has ratified the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR), an international treaty setting forth a framework for consular relations among independent countries. Under Article 36 of the VCCR, local authorities are obligated to inform all detained foreigners “without delay” of their right to request consular notification of their detention and their right to demand and access opportunities to communicate with their consular representatives. [39] Local authorities have repeatedly disregarded this obligation, resulting in the International Court of Justice holding in 2004 that states had violated the VCCR by failing to inform 51 named Mexican nationals of their rights. All 51 were sentenced to death. When the State of Texas refused to honor this judgment and provide relief for the 15 death-row inmates whose VCCR rights it had violated, President George W. Bush sought to intervene on the prisoners’ behalf, taking the case to the United States Supreme Court. The Court denied the President’s appeal, and Texas has gone on to execute inmates whose VCCR rights it had failed to honor.

In 1994, the United States signed the United Nations (UN) Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). [40] The treaty, which has now been ratified or signed by 176 nations, outlaws the imposition of physical or psychological abuse on people in detention. While it does not explicitly prohibit capital punishment, the treaty does forbid the intentional infliction of pain. Since 1976, however, more than 20 executions in the United States have involved prolonged, painful, or shocking errors, such as an inmate’s head catching fire or a lengthy and torturous search for a vein suitable for lethal injection. Additionally, accidents aside, our methods of execution—lethal injection, electrocution, firing squad, gas chamber, and hanging—may be inherently painful. The CAT also forbids the infliction of pain and suffering “based on discrimination of any kind,” [41] yet racial inequality is endemic to our death rows .

Also in 1994, the United States ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), a treaty intended to protect against racial discrimination, whether intentional or resulting from seemingly neutral state policies. To meet its obligations as a party to ICERD, the United States must take steps to review and amend policies and procedures that create or perpetuate racial discrimination, including capital punishment. [42]

Once in use everywhere and for a wide variety of crimes, the death penalty today is generally forbidden by law and widely abandoned in practice, in most countries outside the United States. Indeed, the unmistakable worldwide trend is toward the complete abolition of capital punishment. In the United States, opposition to the death penalty is widespread and diverse. Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant religious groups are among the more than 50 national organizations that constitute the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The Case Against the Death Penalty was first published by the ACLU as a pamphlet in 1973. The original text was written by Hugo Adam Bedau, Ph.D., who also contributed to several subsequent editions of the pamphlet. This version was most recently revised by the ACLU in 2012.

[1] Glenn L. Pierce & Michael L. Radelet, Death Sentencing in East Baton Rouge Parish, 1990-2008 , 71 La. L. Rev. 647, 671 (2011), available at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/PierceRadeletStudy.pdf .

[2] Liebman et. al, Los Tocayos Carlos , 43 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 711, 1104 (2012).

[3] See Andrew Cohen, Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man , Atlantic, May 14, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/yes-america-we-have-executed-an-innocent-man/257106/ .

[4] See id.

[5] See id. ; Carlos DeLuna Case: The Fight to Prove an Innocent Man Was Executed , PBS Newshour, May 24, 2012, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june12/deathpenalty_05-24.html .

[6] A Three-Drug Cocktail , WashingtonPost.com, Sep. 26, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2007/09/26/GR2007092600116.html ; see also Victoria Gill, The Search for a Humane Way to Kill , BBC News, Aug. 7, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19060961 .

[7] See Carol J. Williams, Maker of Anesthetic Used in Executions is Discontinuing Drug, L.A. Times, Jan. 22, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/22/local/la-me-execution-drug-20110122 ; John Schwartz, Death Penalty Drug Raises Legal Questions , N.Y. Times, Apr. 13, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/us/14lethal.html?pagewanted=all .

[8] See Brandi Grissom, Texas Will Change its Lethal Injection Protocol , Tex. Tribune, July 10, 2012, www.texastribune.org/texas-dept-criminal-justice/death-penalty/texas-changing-its-lethal-injection-protocol/ ; Rob Stein, Ohio Executes Inmate Using New, Single-Drug Method for Death Penalty , Wash. Post, Mar. 11, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/10/AR2011031006250.html ; David Beasley, Georgia Delays Execution Amid Drug Protocol Change , Reuters, July, 17, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/17/us-usa-execution-georgia-idUSBRE86G14L20120717 ; Rhonda Cook & Bill Rankin, State Changes Lethal Injection Protocol, Reschedules Execution , Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 17, 2012, http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/state-changes-lethal-injection-1479424.html ; Steve Eder, A Texas First: Single-Drug Used to Execute Inmate , WSJ Law Blog, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/07/19/a-texas-first-single-drug-used-to-execute-inmate/ ; Idaho Switches Execution Protocol to Single-Drug Lethal Injection , Spokesman.com, May 18, 2012, http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise/2012/may/18/idaho-switches-execution-protocol-single-drug-lethal-injection/ .

[9] See Carol J. Williams, California’s New Lethal Injection Protocol Tossed By Judge, L.A. Times, Dec. 17, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/17/local/la-me-executions-20111217 ; Kathy Lohr, New Lethal Injection Drug Raises Concerns , NPR, Jan. 29, 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/01/29/133302950/new-lethal-injection-drug-raises-concerns ; Steve Eder, Virginia Adds New Drug for Lethal Injections , WSJ Law Blog, July 27, 2012, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/07/27/virginia-adds-new-drug-for-lethal-injections/ .

[10] Laura Vozzella, Virginia opts for One-Drug Lethal Injection Protocol , Wash. Post, July 27, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/virginia-opts-for-one-drug-lethal-injection-protocol/2012/07/27/gJQA8jxiEX_story.html .

[11] See Linda Greenhouse, Supreme Court Allows Lethal Injection for Execution , N.Y. Times, Apr. 17, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/us/16cnd-scotus.html?pagewanted=all .

[12] See Michael Kiefer, State is Sued Again Over Its Lethal-Injection Procedure , USA Today, Feb. 7, 2012, http://www.usatoday.com/USCP/PNI/Valley%20&%20State/2012-02-07-PNI0207met–executionsART_ST_U.htm ; Court Gives Arizona Warning About Execution Protocol , Associated Press, Feb. 28, 2012, available at http://www.azcentral.com/community/pinal/articles/2012/02/28/20120228arizona-moorman-execution-death-row-inmate-lawyers-seek-stays.html . Notably, however, the panel did not halt Arizona’s scheduled executions. Id.

[13] David Beasley, Georgia Inmate Gets Stay Hours Before Scheduled Execution , Reuters, July 23, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/23/us-usa-execution-georgia-idUSBRE86M1F720120723 .

[14] Steve Eder, Missouri Executions on Hold Amid Concerns About New Drug , Aug. 15, 2012, WSJ Law Blog, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/15/missouri-executions-on-hold-amid-concerns-about-new-drug/ .

[15] Melissa Anderson, ACLU Challenges Montana’s Lethal Injection Protocol , KXLH.com, Aug. 1, 2012, http://www.kxlh.com/news/aclu-challenges-montana-s-lethal-injection-protocol/ .

[16] See Eder, supra note 3; Steve Olfason, Oklahoma to Execute Man Who Killed Ex-Girlfriend and Her Two Kids , Chicago Tribune, Aug. 14, 2012, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-14/news/sns-rt-us-usa-execution-oklahomabre87d0s8-20120814_1_jerry-massie-method-of-lethal-injection-three-drug-protocol ; Steve Eder, Oklahoma Execution Set After Lethal Injection Challenge Fails , Aug. 13, 2012, WSJ Law Blog, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/13/oklahoman-set-for-executution-after-lethal-injection-challenge-fails/ .

[17] See Grissom, supra note 3; Ed Pilkington, Texas Executions Threatened As Stocks of Death Penalty Drug Run Low , Guardian, Feb. 14, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/14/texas-executions-threatened-stocks-run-low ; John Schwartz, Seeking Execution Drug, States Cut Legal Corners , N.Y. Times, Apr. 13, 2011,

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/us/14lethal.html?pagewanted=all ; Kiefer, supra note 7.

[18] EU Imposes Strict Controls on ‘Execution Drug’ Exports, BBC News, Dec. 20, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16281016 ; Matt McGrath, FDA Goes to Court to Secure Drugs for Lethal Injections , BBC World, June 1, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18253578 .

[19] See Jeremy Pelofsky, U.S. Wants Lawsuit Over Execution Drug Dismissed , Reuters, Apr. 20, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/us-usa-execution-lawsuit-idUSTRE73J7MH20110420 ; Michael Kiefer, Execution Drugs: Arizona Inmate Lawsuit Seeks FDA Policing , Ariz. Republic, Feb. 3, 2011, http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/02/02/20110202arizona-execution-drug-fda-lawsuit-brk02-ON.htm l; Kevin Johnson, Lawsuit Seeks to Block Imports of Key Execution Drug , USA Today, Feb. 2, 2011, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/02/lawsuit-seeks-to-block-imports-of-key-execution-drug/1#.UA2pmKBCzGc ; Ryan Gabrielson, Lethal Injection Drug Tied to London Wholesaler , California Watch, Jan. 7, 2011, http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/lethal-injection-drug-tied-london-wholesaler-7888 ; Ryan Gabrielson, California Lethal Injection: Prison Officials Refuse to Hand Over Lethal Injection Drug , California Watch, May 30, 2012, available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/30/california-lethal-injection_n_1556155.html .

[20] Pelofsky, supra note 14.

[21] See Raymond Bonner, FDA’s Immoral Stance on Lethal Injection Drugs , Bloomberg, July 29, 2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-29/fda-s-immoral-stance-on-lethal-injection-drugs.html .

[22] See Elizabeth Rapaport , A Modest Proposal: The Aged of Death Row Should be Deemed Too Old to Execute, 77 Brook. L. Rev. 1089 (Spring 2012); Michael J. Carter, Wanting to Die: The Cruel Phenomenon of “Death Row Syndrome”, Alternet, Nov. 7, 2008, http://www.alternet.org/rights/106300/waiting_to_die%3A_the_cruel_phenomenon_of_%22death_row_syndrome%22/ ; Dr. Karen Harrison and Anouska Tamony, Death Row Phenomenon, Death Row Syndrome, and Their Affect [sic.] on Capital Cases in the U.S. , Internet Journal of Criminology 2010, available at http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Harrison_Tamony_%20Death_Row_Syndrome%20_IJC_Nov_2010.pdf .

[23] See Stop Solitary – The Dangerous Overuse of Solitary Confinement in the United States, ACLU.org, https://www.aclu.org/stop-solitary-dangerous-overuse-solitary-confinement-united-states-0 .

[24] See Harrison and Tamony, supra note 25.

[25] See Carter, supra note 25; Death Penalty Information Center, Time on Death Row (2006), at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/time-death-row .

[26] See id.

[27] Amy Smith, Not “Waiving” But Drowning: The Anatomy of Death Row Syndrome and Volunteering for Execution , 17 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 237, 243, available at http://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/pilj/vol17no2/documents/17-2SmithArticle.pdf .

[28] Lackey v. Texas, 115 S. Ct. 1421, 1421 (1995) (Stevens, J., concurring in the denial of certiorari).

[29] Stephen Blank, Killing Time: The Process of Waiving Appeal – The Michael Ross Death Penalty Cases , 14 J.L. & Pol’y 735, 738-39 (2006).

[30] Soering v. UK , App. No. 14038/88, 11 Eur. H.R. Rep. 439 (1989), available at http://eji.org/eji/files/Soering%20v.%20United%20Kingdom.pdf .

[31] See David Wallace-Wells, What is Death Row Syndrome? , Slate, Feb. 1, 2005, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2005/02/what_is_death_row_syndrome.html ; Smith supra note 30.

[32] Smith supra note 30. (quoting Soering , 11 Eur. H. R. Rep. at 475-76).

[33] Id. at 239.

[34] Carol J. Williams, Death Penalty: Exhaustive Study Finds Death Penalty Costs California $184 Million a Year , L.A. Times, June 20, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/20/local/la-me-adv-death-penalty-costs-20110620 .

[35] Figures on the Death Penalty , Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty/numbers .

[36] UN General Assembly, Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty , Dec. 15, 1989, A/RES/44/128, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b3a70.html [accessed 15 August 2012] [ hereinafter Second Optional Protocol].

[37] See Pierre Desert, Second Optional Protocol: Frequently Asked Questions , World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, June 27, 2008, http://www.worldcoalition.org/Second-Optional-Protocol-Frequently-Asked-Questions.html ; Pierre Desert, Second Optional Protocol: The Only Global Treaty Aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty , World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, June 24, 2008, www.worldcoalition.org/UN-Protocol-the-only-global-treaty-aiming-at-the-abolition-of-the-death-penalty.html ; Second Optional Protocol, supra note 21.

[38] Desert, Second Optional Protocol: Frequently Asked Questions , supra note 22.

[39] Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, Mar. 19, 1967, 596 U.N.T.S. 261, available at http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_2_1963.pdf .

[40] United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Dec. 10, 1984, 1465 U.N.T.S. 85, available at http://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/UNTS/Volume%201465/v1465.pdf .

[41] Richard C. Dieter, Introduction: Ford Foundation Symposium, Nov. 12, 1998, available at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/us-death-penalty-and-international-law-us-compliance-torture-and-race-conventions .

[42] International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Mar. 7, 1966, 660 U.N.T.S. 195, available at http://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/UNTS/Volume%20660/v660.pdf .

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Human Rights Archive - Teaching with Primary Sources

• The Death Penalty
• Migration I : Exploring Migration Through Photojournalism
• Migration II : Exploring Migration Through Oral Histories
• Labor Rights/Human Rights: Organizing Food Workers

Analysis and Evaluation

• Human Rights Document Analysis Worksheet

Subject Guide

The Rubenstein Library's Human Rights Archive contains extensive primary sources on the death penalty, also known as capital punishment, and its impact on individuals, families, and communities. Collections include post conviction case files as well as the historical files of anti-death penalty advocacy groups. This session introduces students to the issues surrounding the death penalty by exploring and critically analyzing a set of these sources.

This module was developed by Hannah Ontiveros, The Marshall T. Meyer Human Rights Intern 2020-2021, PhD candidate Duke University Dept. of History.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze documents related to death penalty litigation.
• Interpret accounts of people involved in death penalty litigation, and legal arguments regarding the death penalty. 
• Identify key components of death penalty litigation.

Guiding Questions

• What events are mentioned in each document?
• How do authors of documents talk about the defendant? The case?
• How do people talk about the process of death penalty litigation?
• How do people articulate their arguments relative to Human Rights?
• 1972: Furman v. Georgia suspends capital punishment in U.S.  
• 1976: Gregg v. Georgia reinstates capital punishment in U.S.
• July 2003: Jimmy McNeill was convicted of murder, sentenced to death penalty
• August 18, 2006: Samuel Flippen executed. This is the most recent execution in North Carolina, though defendants still continue to be sentenced the death penalty.
• March 2009: McNeill’s MAR granted, death penalty vacated, receives life without parole.

Contextual Readings

“ Death Penalty Information Center, North Carolina .” n.d. Death Penalty Information Center. 

“ The Center for Death Penalty Litigation .” n.d. The Center for Death Penalty Litigation.

“ The Case Against the Death Penalty .” n.d. American Civil Liberties Union.

"The Next to Die" , The Marshall Project

Additional Resources for Instructors

“ High School Curriculum on the Death Penalty .”

“ Capital Punishment in Context .”

Assignment Plan

Before class : familiarize yourself with the Center for Death Penalty Litigation archives , and the capital trial and capital appeals  processes.  Read the short description of the Jimmy McNeill case from which these documents are drawn.

Day of assignment : Either individually or in groups, complete the Human Rights Document Analysis Worksheet [downloadable from the box to the left of the screen] for each of the following documents. Alternatively, If you are working as a class, divide into groups and each group can analyze one document. (~30 minutes).

After filling out the document analysis sheet, share the results of your analysis and discuss these questions (~30 minutes):

• What is the process of sentencing someone to the death penalty?
• What objections do people raise to the death penalty?
• How do Human Rights considerations contribute to people’s perspective on the death penalty?
• What considerations do the courts take into account during death penalty appeals?
• What does Jimmy McNeill’s case tell us about the criminal justice system?
• What does it tell us about capital cases?
• What does it tell us about the individual people involved in this particular case?

Documents from the Jimmy McNeill case

The three documents are drawn from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL) case files for State of NC vs. Jimmy McNeill.  In July 2003 Jimmy McNeill was convicted of the April 2000 murder of his wife, Shirley McNeill, and of discharging a weapon into occupied property. McNeill was sentenced to death, and to 34 to 50 months for the weapon conviction. In March 2009, the NC Superior Court granted McNeill a Motion for Appropriate Relief (MAR) on the grounds that a juror had inappropriately sought advice regarding punishment from a third party during the sentencing phase. On March 12, 2009 Superior Court Judge Richard Doughton vacated the death sentence and ordered a resentencing hearing; McNeill was sentenced to life without parole.

Document #1

"McNeill gets Death", Laurinburg Exchange,   Box 155, Newspaper Clippings, The Center for Death Penalty Litigation Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, NC.

Document #2

Lawyers statement. , Box 155, Newspaper Clippings, The Center for Death Penalty Litigation Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, NC

Document #3

Order Granting Defendant's MAR , Box 155, Newspaper Clippings, The Center for Death Penalty Litigation Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, NC

• CDPL McNeill Case Box 155
• Last Updated: Mar 9, 2023 11:03 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.duke.edu/c.php?g=1088994

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Berkeley Law’s Social Justice and Pro Bono Stars Honored for Their Commitment and Impact

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By Andrew Cohen and Sarah Weld 

While it can be hard to fully quantify just how committed Berkeley Law students are to public service, some telling metrics do exist. The new graduating class logged 35,900 hours of pro bono work, and this academic year alone J.D. and LL.M. students recorded 27,855 hours — providing much-needed legal help to people in need locally, throughout the state, and across the country. 

The annual public interest and pro bono graduation ceremony honors extraordinary students and project supervisors who personify Berkeley Law’s public mission. This year’s award recipients, listed below, are exceptional examples: 

• Pro Bono Champions: Ami Shirriff ’24 and Ariane Walter ’24 
• Eleanor Swift Award for Public Service: Adriana Hardwicke ’24 and Ariane Walter ’24
• Brian M. Sax ’69 Prize for Excellence in Clinical Advocacy: Gabby Areas ’24
• Sax Prize Honorable Mention: Cassidy A. Veidelis ’24
• Clinical Legal Education Association Outstanding Clinical Student Award: Grace Erger ’24 
• Clinical Legal Education Association Outstanding Externship Student Award: Kat Reilley Harlow ’24
• Francine Marie Diaz Memorial Award: Athena Arana ’24 and Jocelyn Gomez ’24 
• Kathi Pugh Award for Exceptional Mentorship: SPZ Legal

Pro Bono Champions

(given to the graduating students who best exemplify a commitment to and the values of pro bono work) 

Shirriff not only participated in several pro bono initiatives, she co-created a new Student-Initiated Legal Services Project (the Drug Policy, Education, and Decriminalization Project , aka DECrim, which works with the Drug Policy Alliance to conduct research on drug policy issues) as well as a new Berkeley Law Alternative Service Trip (BLAST-Alaska). She also took on leadership roles in the school’s Food Justice Project and with environmental justice efforts, and helped drive support for grants supporting student summer public interest work by helping the Public Interest Faculty Committee’s video campaign toward that end. One of her supervisors says, “She embodies the ethos of advocacy and breathes the same spirit and drive for ethical lawyering into each and every one of her peers.”

Shirriff says: “I came to Berkeley Law because of the Pro Bono Program and I’m immensely grateful to have connected with and served so many communities I care for deeply, as the opportunity to provide resources to and support both our partners and my fellow students growing in these spaces has been the highlight of my law school experience.”

Walter participated in many established public service opportunities, created new ones, drove efforts to make public interest careers more affordable and accessible, expanded support to low-income families in contact with the child welfare system, and sought to expand support available for incarcerated youth and adults. She co-founded the Family Defense Project (fighting racism and classism in the child welfare system), co-ran Berkeley Law’s Youth Advocacy Project (supporting youth at Contra Costa County’s juvenile hall) and its BLAST Atlanta trip (supporting unaccompanied minors seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile Status), supported a youth in foster care as a court-appointed special advocate (CASA), and served on Berkeley Law’s Public Interest Placement Committee. She participated in myriad public service externships and clinics during law school, including EBCLC’s Youth Defender Clinic, San Francisco Unified Family Court, The Legal Aid Society’s Special Litigation Unit, and Legal Services for Prisoners with Children. A supervisor says, “We’ve hardly ever seen someone so motivated by a desire to do good in the world, combined with the utmost competency and creativity. Ariane is a force to be reckoned with.” 

Walter says: “As public interest students, we are part of a community encouraging us to think about all the injustices incorporated in our legal system, to analogize, and to come to our conclusions that something is wrong, and something must be done; it always means something to speak up, try to move the needle, and keep fighting — because if we don’t, we are working against ourselves.”

Eleanor Swift Award for Public Service

(given to an exceptional member of the Berkeley Law community — student, staff, or faculty — who has performed outstanding work to strengthen Berkeley Law’s commitment to public service)

Hardwicke spanned many public interest jobs, committees, and campaigns, and pushed diligently to make public service career paths accessible to all Berkeley Law students. She generated over $120,000 in additional funding and led a campaign to raise $15 million in annual funding for public interest students at UC law schools. Hardwicke worked for the Education Justice Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC), the Foster Education Project , Public Advocates, and the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. She also co-led the East Bay Dreamers Project , a student initiative assisting DACA recipients, and served on Berkeley Law’s Public Interest/Public Service Career Support Committee. Supervisors hail her “leadership, integrity, and fearlessness,” “sheer power of will,” and “exceptional commitment.” 

Hardwicke says: “I chose to come to Berkeley Law because of the school’s public mission and the community’s commitment to public service, and I’m so grateful for all the opportunities I had here to grow as a future public interest attorney and for those who have constantly pushed our school to be a better place for public interest and social justice work.”

See above for Walter’s impact and comment.

Brian M. Sax ’69 Prize for Excellence in Clinical Advocacy

(given to a clinic student who displayed excellence in advocacy, professional judgment, collaboration, and reflection)

Areas worked with EBCLC’s Housing Clinic throughout law school, first in the Tenants’ Rights Workshop , then as a clinic student, and finally as an EBCLC student board member. She represented tenants in more than 30 eviction lawsuits and secured over $600,000 for those clients in relocation payments and rent waivers. Areas handled negotiations with opposing counsel, successfully drafted and argued motions in court, and engaged in complex discovery and fact investigations. Her supervisor says she “stood out not only because of her brilliant legal advocacy, but also because of her genuine commitment to social justice, her humility, and her unwavering dedication to our clients.”

Areas says: “Housing is a human right, and as lawyers we are uniquely positioned to combat systems of oppression; there is no better time to start than as a law student in a clinic.” 

Sax Prize Honorable Mention

Veidelis worked three semesters in the International Human Rights Law Clinic , striving to bring a new case in the African regional human rights system to hold social media companies accountable for violating children’s rights in their business models. She interviewed stakeholders mobilizing around this issue in Africa and deepened the clinic’s understanding of how little these companies invest in protecting African children from online harms. Her supervisor says, “She is exceptionally intelligent, diligent and kind; a rare combination of skills and one that lends itself to particular success in the human rights world where the fights are long, protracted, and require coalitions and collaboration.”

Veidelis says: “The International Human Rights Law Clinic was, without a doubt, the best thing I did in law school and I am leaving a more confident advocate and even more on fire about using the law to advance human rights than I was before.” 

Clinical Legal Education Association Outstanding Clinical Student Award

(given to one student or team that demonstrated excellence in a clinic)

Erger shined in the Death Penalty Clinic , spending the year working on a case for a client at risk of execution. She developed a full-scale operation to identify, speak to, and get support from witnesses, resulting in 30 critical new witnesses advocating for the client. She demonstrated excellence across many projects, including organizing major investigation trips and helping write a U.S. Supreme Court cert petition in just a few days for a client facing an imminent execution date. Her supervisors say she has the “maturity, thoughtfulness, effectiveness, legal skill, and nuanced judgment of a seasoned lawyer — and she tops it off with endless passion and commitment to her work.”

Erger says: “I learned what it means to provide zealous, caring, and creative representation, and that being in community with a group of generous, supportive, kind, and very funny people can make even the heaviest tasks a bit lighter.” 

Clinical Legal Education Association Outstanding Externship Student Award

(given to a student who demonstrated excellence in assisting or representing individual or organizational clients or in undertaking advocacy or policy reform projects)

Harlow did three field placements with the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, TGI Justice Project, and Transgender Law Center. She also did summer internships at EBCLC and Lambda Legal, and co-led the student-led Queer Justice Project . Harlow helped transgender youth and adults appeal disability benefits denials and legally change their name and gender, and worked on impact litigation issues affecting the LGBTQ+ community, including challenges to Florida’s Don’t Say Gay censorship law and laws targeting transgender youth. Her supervisors praise her professionalism, commitment, and curiosity, and her “smart advocacy on behalf of transgender and gender-variant communities.”

Harlow says: “Pro bono work has provided me the opportunity to give back to my community while collaborating with clients, fellow students, and supervisors that have lent me so much inspiration and support, and kept me grounded in the values that brought me to law school in the first place.”

Francine Marie Diaz Memorial Award

(conferred each year to graduating students whose studies and career plans best reflect Diaz’s commitment to social justice for women of color)

Arana has worked extensively to fight for justice at the intersection of workers’ rights and immigrants’ rights. Prior to law school, she advocated for low-wage, immigrant women who had experienced sexual harassment, assault and/or labor trafficking in their workplaces. In law school, Arana represented clients in immigration proceedings and represented indigent workers in unemployment insurance appeal and labor commission hearings. She also helped the Berkeley Immigration Group assist Centro Legal de la Raza in its efforts to prevent indigent immigrant women from being transferred to immigration detention after their incarceration instead of being reunited with their families, and aided asylum seekers along the Arizona-Mexico border in their requests for humanitarian parole.

Arana says: “I took advantage of every opportunity to increase my understanding of immigrants’ and low-wage workers’ rights in both professional and voluntary work … knowing this knowledge was a privilege I had a duty to bring back to the community.”

Gomez saw from a young age how “unnecessarily complex and dehumanizing” it often was for women of color to navigate America’s legal institutions. In law school, she co-led the Berkeley Immigration Group, advocating for the release of two incarcerated women still detained after serving their sentence and successfully helped one reunite with family they hadn’t seen in over 10 years. Gomez also worked with EBCLC’s Health and Welfare Clinic , helping many women of color navigate the public benefits system, and spent last semester with Legal Aid at Work researching employment and anti-discrimination statutes and policies to advocate for low-income immigrant and marginalized workers of color. In addition, she co-led the U.S.-Mexico border BLAST pro bono trip, and served as an EBCLC student board member. 

Gomez says: “My commitment to public service is largely driven by witnessing the sacrifices of my own parents, hard-working immigrants who amidst economic hardship still gave everything they could for me to get a legal education; I often see my parents reflected in the faces of those I serve and I hope to honor their sacrifices and hard work by using my legal degree to support low-income immigrants gain access to an often inaccessible legal system.”

Kathi Pugh Award for Exceptional Mentorship

(given to one or two supervising attorney(s) of our Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects for their outstanding efforts to encourage, mentor, and supervise Berkeley Law students engaged in pro bono work)

SPZ Lega l partners with the school’s Startup Law Initiative (SLI), providing instrumental support and supervision of student fellows. The firm’s deep involvement enabled the group to double its student membership from 12 to 24 in just two years and expand its work to serve hundreds of local entrepreneurs and small business owners. This year, students worked with a client over two semesters for the first time, helped with myriad startup documents, and provided more vital early-stage legal guidance to underrepresented business founders. SLI’s nomination says SPZ Legal “exemplifies compassionate lawyering at the intersection of private and public interest law,” and “wholly deserves to be recognized for their mentoring, service, and commitment to the spirit of pro bono.” 

SPZ Legal attorneys Gea Kang and Sam Taylor say: “All of us at SPZ strive to be intentional and thoughtful about doing our part to make the startup and innovation world more accessible — it’s very meaningful for us to work toward this goal with the SLI community, and we look forward to continuing to do so together.”

05/28/2024 Topics: Alumni News , Business and Startups , Criminal Justice , Environment and Energy , Experiential , Healthcare , International and Comparative , Public Mission , Social Justice and Public Interest , Student Awards

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Congratulations to geography seniors and award winners.

Geography senior award winners.

Congratulations to all Geography graduating seniors, and a special congratulations to the following award winners:

GEORGE PERKINS MARSH AWARD

George Perkins Marsh was a member of the U.S. Congress, an author and farmer, and was the U.S. Minister to Turkey and Italy.  He graduated from Dartmouth in 1820 and is the author of the book  The Earth as Modified by Human Activity , possibly the earliest Anglophone treatise on human-environment geography.  This work eventually helped found the environmental movement in the United States.

This year's George Perkins Marsh award goes to Lily Gray  for her senior honors thesis on the use of thermal remote sensing to study Boston's urban heat island. Her work on that thesis nicely responds to Marsh's 19th-century vision of the interaction between humans, environment, and climate.

DOREEN MASSEY AWARD

Doreen Massey was a geographer of incredible breadth, with pioneering works in economic, feminist, Marxist and cultural geography. And she was centrally concerned with power relationships in all their complexity and how to challenge them when necessary. She was also fiercely committed to creating societies where there is democracy, equality and freedom, and to the creative and radical movements that might bring about such change. Accordingly, this Award goes to the student who exemplifies Massey's brilliant interdisciplinarity and socially relevant scholarship.

This year's Doreen Massey award goes to Avery Borgmann and Colin Donnelly.

One of two Doreen Massey awards goes to Avery Borgmann. Avery is passionate about things she decides to do. One of those things happens to be applying the most advanced geographic methodologies to addressing social justice issues. A prominent outcome of this passion at Dartmouth is her outstanding high honor thesis, which examines the inequality in the maternity care services in DC.

The geography department is pleased to award Colin Donnelly one of the two Doreen Massey Prizes in recognition of his excellent interdisciplinary scholarship that creatively bridges critical geography and art practice. Colin brings enthusiasm, commitment, and care to his research and scholarship. We in geography are particularly proud that we were able to draw him into the major at the last minute and we congratulate him on his excellent thesis on Queer Placemaking through art in NYC.

THELMA GLASS AWARD

Thelma Glass was a professor of geography at Alabama State University where she taught for over 40 years. She was also deeply committed to social change, having been a member of the Women's Political Council, which helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56. In addition to her academic interests in economic, cultural and physical geography, she was known around the Alabama State campus as a teacher-activist willing to put her ideals into concrete actions. Accordingly, we grant this prize to a graduating senior who best reflects Professor Glass' spirit as a scholar-activist.

This year's Thelma Glass award goes to Janine D'Souza . Since arriving at Dartmouth, Janine immediately engaged with Center for Social Impact, first as a Foundations in Social Impact Fellow, then through Strengthening Educational Access with Dartmouth (SEAD) as an educational access advisor. On her off terms, she interned at Save the Children, South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and the International Rescue Committee; for her commitment to making change in the world, she has received the LGBTQIA+ Community Advocate Award and the Jan-Roberta Tarjan Award for Local Community Service.

Janine's thesis, Getting Here and Being Here: The Failed Dream of Refugee Resettlement in the U.S., was a true culminating experience, drawing together her course work, internships and extracurricular activities, and research while also conveying her immense commitment to understanding and improving the lives of some of the most marginalized people.

After a few weeks travel with friends and family, Janine will begin her new job at Perry Law Firm in New York City as a legal analyst.

RACHEL CARSON AWARD

Rachel Carson's book  Silent Spring , published in 1962, ushered in the modern environmental movement and influenced a generation of conservationists, scientists, and grassroots activists. She was a vocal and articulate advocate for the environment who argued that unchecked industrial activities were engendering catastrophic change to the natural world.  This Award is given to the student who best represents Rachel Carson's passion for the environment, intelligence, and her commitment to political change.

This year's Rachel Carson award goes to Zanna Gulick-Stutz . Zanna's academic work, as well as her professional and personal experiences on and around rivers, make her an ideal recipient for the Rachel Carson award.

Her thesis, which focuses on how climate change intersects with the environmental politics and knowledge controversies surrounding the possible breaching of the Lower Snake River dams, raises questions about society's relationship with, and obligation to, the natural environment – questions that were central to the work of Rachel Carson. Zanna's research builds on that work and advances our understanding of the environmental challenges confronting our world in the 21st century

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT AWARD

Humboldt was a broad-ranging thinker of the late 18th and early 19th century who sought to understand nature and society as a complex, holistic entity.  His landmark work  Kosmos  established him as a pioneer of biogeography and landscape analysis, and was an early statement on carving out geography as a distinct discipline that combined the human and physical sciences.

This year's Alexander von Humboldt award goes to Richard Lytle . Richard, following in that tradition but perhaps slightly less prolific than Humboldt, travelled to one distant continent and wrote one senior honor's thesis but it was an outstanding piece of scholarship that has earned him the Alexander von Humboldt Prize.

richard.jpg

LEAH HOROWITZ AWARD FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

This award goes to the student whose time at Dartmouth epitomizes President Dickey's charge that "the world's problems are your problems.'"  It honors Leah Horowitz, a Geography major who in 2009 died tragically in Ghana, where she worked for a development agency. As a student Leah taught and humbled us; she combined great intellect with wanting to know how what she learned  here  was going make a difference in the larger world.  She lost no time in doing that, first as an AmeriCorps volunteer and then working for the International Food Policy Research Institute where, notably, she asked to be transferred from DC to the field office in Ghana. It is to honor Leah's memory—and her deep commitment to social justice—that we give this award. 

This year's Leah Horowitz Award for Social Justice goes to Solange Acosta Rodriguez . Solange is a tireless activist working across a wide range of issues and places, including Indigenous rights and energy justice in both Chile and Norway. As everyone is probably aware, she is also a prominent campus voice for the rights of peoples around the world experiencing oppression and injustice. We are extremely proud to have her as a Major, and believe she embodies Leah's commitments to emancipation and social justice.

solange.jpg

BOB HUKE AWARD

Bob Huke graduated from Dartmouth in 1948, went on to earn his PhD at Syracuse, and returned to Dartmouth to teach and research in 1953. He was a fabulous teacher and mentor to many students. His research focused on food and population in his teaching and research and spent many winter terms at IRRI—the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, Philippines—mapping and deepening his understanding of the cultures of rice farming. Above all else, Bob is remembered in our department for his enthusiasm for Geography. Accordingly, this award recognizes the student best embodying Bob Huke's spirit and passion for Geography.

This year's Bob Huke award goes to Avery Fogg, Wenhan Sun, and Lily Ding .

CLASS OF '76 AWARD

The Geography Stretch '76 Fund is an endowment established by alumni who attended the 1976 "geography stretch" (a field course that taught geographic skills while traveling in the US) to help support the study of Geography at Dartmouth College. This award is given to the student who best exemplifies the spirit of the stretch by never being afraid to face important challenges and adventures.

This year's Stretch award goes to Keelia Stevens  and  Joseph Earles.

THE GUIDO R. RAHR '51 AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN GEOGRAPHY

Guido R. Rahr '51 came from a family of conservationist-philanthropists. In the 1980's, the Rahr Foundation—in honor of Guido's love of geography—donated a tract of land in Oregon to the College with the intent of supporting the Department. The land was eventually sold and the endowment has grown to the point where it now supports a range of activities in the department, including most obviously the Rahr GIS lab. This Award goes to the student who best represents Guido's passion for cartography and spatial science.

This year's Rahr award goes to Ishika Jha.

GEOGRAPHY AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Geography Award of Excellence is an Excellence in Scholarship Award to an outstanding senior geography major with the highest departmental GPA.

This year's award goes to Avery Borgmann for her outstanding 4.0 GPA standing.