The death penalty was first used in the US in 1608, to execute a Spanish spy, by 1612 it was established into colonial laws. It was applied to crimes like hitting one’s parents, killing chickens, trading with Native Americans, and denying ‘the one true god’, originally the individual colonies had their own laws addressing what constituted capital punishment. Today, the federal list for capital punishment crimes includes: Murder, Espionage, Treason, Trafficking large quantities of drugs, and attempting/authorizing/or advising the killing of any officer, juror, or witness in a case(es) involving a criminal enterprise still in operation. Currently, 19 states have abolished the death penalty in the US, most of the 31 states who do use it, also includes some variation of ‘second offense’s of raping children under the age of 11-14 years (depending on the state)’; also, some include kidnapping.

The death penalty was suspended in 1972 by the supreme court, after it ruled that it was cruel and unusual punishment, in its current form where the jury had full control over it. They adjusted how one could be sentenced to death, now involving the judge at sentencing, and reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Since then, 1,486 people have been executed (as of December 2, 2018). New evidence, studies and research have freed 161 people from death row, and have shown 2% of those executed were innocent (possibly as many as 4%), since it was reinstated. That means at least 29 innocent people were killed, and experts think that number could be as high as 58 (if not higher), based on current data. In the 42 years since the death penalty was reinstated, it is possible to have wrongly executed at least one innocent person each year since.

There are 195 countries in the world, two-thirds of them have either abolished the death penalty or have not used it in several years. Only 55 countries in the world have the death penalty, and actively sentence and execute prisoners with it. We (the US) quite often rank in the top five countries to execute people sentenced to death, putting us in the company of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Pakistan. Much of the world regards the death penalty as archaic, as well as cruel and unusual.

Between 1890 and 2010, it is estimated that 3.15% of executions were administered incorrectly, causing the deaths to become unethical in an already ethically questionable situation. Lethal Injection had a 7.12% error rate (75 recorded errored executions), lethal gas had a 5.4% error rate (32 errored executions), hanging had a 3.12% error rate (84 errored executions), electrocution had a 1.92% error rate (83 errored executions), leaving the firing squads that accounted for 34 executions total, as the only method that had no reported errors in its use. All in all, 276 executions out of 8,776 were administered incorrectly. ‘Botched’ executions result in a prolonged and painful execution, deeming it unethical and to be a cruel and unusual punishment, by not only our own standards but that of the UN’s as well.

More studies are coming out showing the negative correlation between the ‘deterrence’ of the death penalty and murder rates. The south is responsible for over a thousand (over two-thirds) of the total executions since reinstatement, and also has the highest murder rates in the country. The Midwest is responsible for less than 200 of the executions and has the lowest murder rates in the country. Texas tops the state charts, with 548 of the total executions, while touting the same murder rate on its own as the entire Midwest’s average together. There is no published, reviewed research showing that the death penalty deters murder in any way.

It costs over two million dollars to sentence a person to death and execute them. Most of this cost is tied up in the courts, in order to sentence someone to death and subsequently execute them, the courts are required to exhaust all appeals in attempts to ensure guilt. This is 3-4 times (depending on the state). It costs around $200,000 for top security, life incarceration in prison, for the same persons’. Also, you can release someone from a life sentence if proven innocent, unlike our ability to raise the dead in an execution situation.

The boil down is, the death penalty is flawed and over priced, compared to the options we have. When used, we always have to wonder, is this person truly guilty? Will the execution method work correctly? Was it worth all the extra money and our world relations to get the ultimate retribution? If we don’t beat people to teach hitting is wrong, why do we kill to show murder is wrong? And what does it teach when it becomes state or federally regulated murder (when the executed was actually innocent)? While I agree there are people the world is better off without, we can not remove human error and bias from the process; we are therefore knowingly executing innocent people under the guise of justice.

Amnesty International, http://www.amnestyusa.org/files/death_penalty_2016_report_embargoed.pdf.

DPIC | Death Penalty Information Center, deathpenaltyinfo.org/.

Jocelyn Johnson