Death Penalty

“To Kill Or Not To Kill, That Is The Question?”
The death penalty is questioned on whether or not it is deterrence to crime. Does the death penalty prevent crime from happening? Does the death penalty have other issues associated with it besides, to kill or not to kill? Is race or economic status a relevant term to be discussed within the context of the death penalty?
Once the death penalty was reinstated 1976, many individuals felt like it would be used for the worst of the worst, but it appeared that this was not the case. Race began to become an issue with how death penalty cases were decided. The majority of analysis performed stated that “the death penalty is three to four times more likely to be imposed in cases in which the victim is white rather than black” (Radelet and Borg 47). Amnesty International stated that capital punishment “is applied disproportionately on the basis of race, ethnicity, and social status” (qtd. in Radelet and Borg 48). A study performed in Georgia in the 1970s and 1980s stated that “the odds of a death sentence for those who kill whites in Georgia are 4.3 times higher than the odds of a death sentence for those who kill blacks” (qtd. in Radelet and Borg 48).
The older research performed on the topic of the death penalty attempted to argue that the death penalty was a deterrence of committing homicide. More recent research states that the policy of capital punishment does not deter people from crime anymore than putting an individual in prison for their entire life. There was a survey of 70 current and former presidents of professional organizations of criminology, and 85% of these individuals felt that the research on the death penalty as a deterrence to unlawful actions, “never has been, is not, and never could be superior to long prison sentences,” (qtd. in Radelet and Borg 45). A survey in 1995 of 400 police chiefs and county sheriffs was conducted, and approximately two-thirds of these individuals felt as if the death penalty did not lower murders, thus they felt as if it was not acting as deterrence to criminal actions. Soon after these kinds of research were known about by the general public, the public opinion on the death penalty began to drop slightly from favoring it to more of the direction of believing it is wrong.
The death penalty is a form of social control, but not for its intended use in crime, but to keep individuals of lower class or African American heritage from being able to reach their full potential. The death penalty is supposed to be used for the worst of the worst, those individuals who commit such heinous crimes that they are no longer deemed to be allowed to function in society or have their life any longer. However, it appears that there are many situations in which individuals who don’t fit into the category of the worst of the worst are put to death. When this situation is examined with blacks and individuals of a lower social class being put to death more often than whites and those of upper classes, it seems like things aren’t going the proper way that they should be. It seems like it has boiled down to the issue that certain individuals aren’t deemed productive enough by those in power, and those individuals who are stigmatized as less worthy are put to death.
There was a college journalism class in Illinois that decided to do projects involving the re-examining of courtroom information and documents from individuals who were on death row, and in this process in one semester the class had found out that three of these individuals were actually innocent of the crimes that they were on death row for committing (Chevigny and Johnson).
This class and its findings make it apparent that there are some issues within the death penalty cases that need to be re-evaluated to figure out why there are individuals falsely accused sitting on death row. The students simply just tracked down individuals who were supposed eye witnesses and found out that the people couldn’t have seen what they thought they saw. The students found small errors that occurred that ended up and saved innocent individuals lives (Chevigny and Johnson).
This brings about the issue that there needs to be re-evaluation down within the availability of resources for individuals who are accused of devastating crimes. If the suspected person can’t afford a lawyer, then one is assigned to them. However, these lawyers generally have many other cases that they have to be working on, so they don’t have the time to dedicate to trial which is needed. There needs to be lawyers that are assigned to these cases in which the lawyer can dedicate all their time and effort into finding out the details of the case. This is a situation in which some of the falsely charged individuals can be found innocent without having to serve time for crimes they do not commit.
This brings about situations in which individual’s liberties are being violated, there could be extreme situations where the individual is in prison for an extended period of time, such as twenty years, when they did not commit the crime that they were accused of. It is more tax payers’ money to give them a large settlement after being falsely accused and jailed for a long period of time than to devote more tax payers’ money into the funds for assigning lawyers to represent the individuals if they cannot afford to represent themselves.
One of the worst situations that could happen in this context would be to execute an individual who never committed the crimes they were put to death for. I don’t believe there are many individuals out there who would want to have an innocent individual suffer the penalty of death.
There are mixed belief by family members of victims on how to handle the situations of the death penalty, it is either vengeance or forgiveness. Some individuals would feel as if it was an insult to the victim’s family and the surrounding community if the offender is not put to death. However, the opposite side of the situation would be that there are family members of victims who don’t want the offenders to receive the death penalty, either because they personally dislike capital punishment or they knew that there deceased loved one wouldn’t want to seek vengeance upon the criminal. It seems more common that the media focuses on the family members who want to put the criminal to death. This shows favoritism towards the victim’s family instead of looking at the situation from all points of view (Chevigny and Johnson).
Something that most individuals don’t think about when they debate this topic is the situation with the individuals who pull or push the buttons to have the criminal executed. In the film, “Deadline” a warden mentions that he had difficulty assigning this job to individuals because if they were too eager to perform the task he thought they weren’t proper for the job. This warden comments that he believed that some of the individuals who had executed the most individuals were people that would be against the death penalty. These people would be against the death penalty because they see the realities of it from day to day in their job. They know the worst aspect of the situation, and many people couldn’t imagine being the one to pull the switch the ends the life of another person (Chevigny and Johnson).


Works Cited
1. “Deadline” Dir. Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson. Big Mouth Productions. 2004.
2. Radelet, Michael L. and Marian J Borg. “The Changing Nature of Death Penalty
Debates.” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 43-61.