Rethinking Capital Punishment

In the United States, and not as in the majority of the first world, the death penalty remains a federally legal form of punishment (Countries with Death Penalty, 2023). A great irony—that in “the land of the free,” a government reserves this most ultimate authority, questioning—and daring to answer—whether a life should be lived. Since 1976, the United States has made that decision 1,568 times.  

Conversely, in the United Kingdom, no one has been executed in well over fifty years (1964). The last German execution came in 1981. Not even France, the purveyor of the guillotine, has a recent execution to name, its last coming in 1977. This isn’t cherry-picking from a select few European countries: in all of the continent, only Belarus has executed a private citizen since 1997. The United States stands as the sole western country to practice capital punishment today.  

That’s no basis for an argument against the death penalty: no one else is doing it, so why should we? But considering where else capital punishment does legally exist—China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, most prolifically—we find the United States in unusual company, where we might consider if it’s a moral lapse in judgment to blame. Is the death penalty symptomatic of tyranny? 

Seldom are Americans made to reflect on the number of people their country puts to death yearly, certainly not as often as they’re asked to take a position on abortion or gun control. And yet is this as divisive an issue, with 4 in 10 Americans opposing the death penalty as a punishment in murder cases, and 6 in 10 conceding that it fails as a deterrent to criminal activity (Gramlich 2021). As this is an underdiscussed topic in the media, its support should falter still, given enough people are made aware of its shortcomings. 

The death penalty is costly. In Oklahoma, taxpayers pay an average of $700,000 more for cases resulting in capital punishment than ones in life imprisonment (“State Studies on Monetary Costs.” Death Penalty Information Center, 2017). Of course, this figure is only so great for the expenses of putting someone on death row, where continued investigation could mean tens of thousands of dollar more in funding. But this is a convict’s last chance to be absolved for his or her crimes, and many have been. Clarence Brandley spent over nine years awaiting death after being falsely convicted of a crime (Innocence, 2023). Like so many of these cases gone wrong, it snowballed from the instant that a single officer decided against due process, framing Brandley. If he had spent less time on death row, albeit shrinking legal costs, Brandley would have been unjustly murdered by the state. Retaining the penalty but limiting inmates’ time on death row is an obviously unproductive solution, as it would result in even more innocent people being killed. 

Furthermore, it is a statistical inevitability that the death penalty kills an innocent person. Rates of false conviction, however near-zero they approach, will never reach a full stop. This is a mortal reality seldom acknowledged openly in debate. But it doesn’t make a particularly inspiring case for those convinced that such a punishment exists in the spirit of what we call just and fair. 

No doubt, many would doubt that with modern advances in DNA evidence, it isn’t remotely plausible for a wrongful death to play out in today’s legal system. In brief, I refer to a popular 2000 case against an alleged killer, Brenton Butler. Outside of their hotel room, a husband and wife are mugged by an armed male, who, in the midst of the scuffle, shot and killed the wife. Soon after the murder, police detained someone whose description matched that provided by the victim’s husband, and on seeing the detained suspect, the husband confirmed that he was indeed the killer. It was only a matter of time until the suspect signed a confession and went to trial (WJXT, 2002). 

But is any seemingly cut-and-dry murder case ever so? Butler’s was no less difficult, as it was unveiled during his trial that deputies had beaten the confession out of him. While ultimately being found not guilty of the crime, it wouldn’t be without our legal system’s complex, long-form procedures that this fifteen-year-old boy would be proven innocent. If Butler were to have been convicted of his alleged crime, he would have died via lethal injection.. 

Referring again to Gramlich’s research, he found that “Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are much more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to favor the death penalty for convicted murderers (77% vs. 46%)” (2021). If it is so that, by and large, my opponents are of a conservative mindset, it begs the question: why would any purported advocate for small government want to give the United States such an immense power, that to legally end a human being’s life? I see this as fundamentally at odds with conservative values, and yet it’s those leaning to the right side of the political spectrum who most fiercely advocate for capital punishment. Donald Trump, for example, became “the country’s most prolific execution president in more than a century, overseeing the executions of 13 death row inmates since July of [2021]” (Honderich 2021). A similar case can be made on the topics of military and police spending, both of which are also conducive to big government, but that’s beside the point. 

At any rate, doesn’t life in prison seem like a more severe punishment? Waking with the same mundane routine day by day, knowing that the only reprieve could be decades away from dying of natural causes. Those who think the death penalty comes with the benefit of giving a victim’s families some sense of relief—which is very morbid, by the way, this eye-for-an-eye precept—can at least see that suffering in prison is worse than “getting it over with” and dying. And the notion that capital punishment deters crime from happening in the first place? According to Professor John Lamperti’s essay, “the inevitable conclusion is that executions have no discernible effect on homicide death rates which, as we have seen, are regarded as adequate indicators of capital murder rates”  (Lamperti, 2006). It must be apparent to murderers (who are the subject of Lamperti’s essay) too, then, that the death penalty is at least not any less desirable than life imprisonment. Or, more likely, these criminals aren’t considering the penalties of their crimes when they commit them, because no one in such a state of mind actually does that. 

I don’t mean to so swiftly dismiss the view that the death penalty can provide victims’ families with closure as to the loss of their own loved ones. But it is only right and proper that we strive to overcome that natural impulse; violence in the face of violence is just that, and it doesn’t make us any bit morally superior for legislating a murder instead of committing it on the street in broad daylight. 

Whether you agree that capital punishment ever has a righteous purpose, it ought to be abolished for being practically untenable; it is a costly process to leave someone sitting on death row, costlier than having someone serve life in prison, and this punishment carries the statistical inevitability of taking an innocent person’s life. Moreover, the ways in which it is ideologically opposed to American conservatism presents a contradiction as of yet to be answered. Perhaps this constitutes a proposal of today’s right-wing extremists looking to strengthen their grasp on authoritarianism. 

A final thought to consider: although technological advances have strengthened the case for incrimination via forensic evidence, when it is available, is it not feasible that today’s emerging technologies could be used to falsify exculpatory evidence? What I mean is, with the ability to “deepfake” videos and imitate voices with artificial intelligence—and the technology is constantly improving—how will our legal system look in ten years? In all likelihood, there will be multiple high-profile cases to come in which potentially falsified evidence is presented, and accepted, as accurate. However likely that seems to you, the law as it stands now should be prepared for the worst-case scenario. 

Works Cited 

“Butler Family Settles Lawsuit with City.” WJXT, WJXT News4JAX, 29 Apr. 2002, https://www.news4jax.com/news/2002/04/29/butler-family-settles-lawsuit-with-city/.  

“Countries with Death Penalty 2023.” Countries with Death Penalty 2023, Worldpopulationreview.com, 2023, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-death-penalty.  

Gramlich, John. “10 Facts about the Death Penalty in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 20 July 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/19/10-facts-about-the-death-penalty-in-the-u-s/.  

“Innocence.” Death Penalty Information Center, 20 Apr. 2023, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence.  

Honderich, Holly. “In Trump’s Final Days, a Rush of Federal Executions.” BBC News, BBC, 16 Jan. 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55236260.  

Lamperti, John. “Does Capital Punishment Deter Murder?201.” Https://Math.dartmouth.edu/~Lamperti/My%20DP%20paper,%20current%20edit.Htm, Darthmouth, 2010, https://math.dartmouth.edu/~lamperti/my%20DP%20paper,%20current%20edit.htm.  

“State Studies on Monetary Costs.” Death Penalty Information Center, 2017, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/costs/summary-of-states-death-penalty.