Capital Punishment
Few moral issues provoke the kind of fiery emotion and fervent debate that capital punishment does. In some circles, the very mention of the words death penalty is enough to set off a cross fire of opinions on the subject- as well as an on slaught of zealotry and moral confusion. At the center of all the commotion is a clash of fundamental moral values, a conflict heightened by the realization that weighing in the balance is, ultimately and tragically, the life or death of a human being.
In this controversy, the abolitionists (those who wish to abolish capital punishment) most often appeal to basic moral principles such as “Don not kill,” “Honor the sanctity of life,” or “Respect human dignity.” The retentionists (those who wish to retain the death penalty) are likely to appeal to other principles: “Punish the guilty,” “Give murderers the punishment thy deserve,” “A life for a life,” or “Dete the ultimate crime (murder) with the ultimate punishment.” On the most general and fundamental of these principles not-killing, respecting human dignity, and punishing the guilty-almost all parties to the dispute agree. But retentionists and abolitionists are usually at odds over how these principles should be interpreted.
Retentionists like to remind us of murderers whose crimes are so horrific that the death penalty may seem the only fitting punishment. Thus they bring up such moral monsters as Timothy McVeigh (used a bomb to kill 168 men, women, and children), Ted Bundy (murdered, by his own count, more than 100 women), John Wayne Gacy (raped and murdered 33 boys and men),and Adolf Eichmann (facilitated the murder of millions during the Holocaust). Abolitionsists, on the other hand, tell of the horrors that often accompany the death penalty: innocent people who are wrongly convicted and executed, executions that go wrong and cause excruciating pain to those executed, and the suspiciously hi8gh percentage of poor and minority people who are executed in the United States. Commonplace in the capital punishment debate, such facts may move us to anger, pity, disgust, or sadness, and they may inform our thinking in important ways. But we should not allow our emotional reaction to them interfere with the vital task that we begin in the chapter-the careful evaluation of arguments for and against capital punishment.
ISSUE FILE: BACKGROUND
In the legal sense, punishment is the deliberate and authorized causing of pain or harm to someone thought to have broken a law. It is a legal sanction imposed by society on offenders for violating society’s official norms. The justification for punishment-the reason why society uses it-generally takes one of two forms. As we will see later, many believe that the sole reason we should punish the wrongdoer in because he morally deserves punishment. His desert is the only justification required, and meting out punishment to those who deserve it is morally obligatory and a morally good thing. Others believe that the only proper justification is the good consequences for society that the punishment of offenders will bring-most notably, the prevention of future crimes and the maintenance of an orderly society.
Capital punishment t is punishment by execution of someone officially judged to have committed a serious, or capital, crime. For thousands of years, this extreme sanction has been used countless times in the Western world for variety of offenses-rape, murder, horse theft, kidnapping. treason, sodomy, spying blasphemy, witchcraft, and many others. A wide assortment of execution methods have also been employed, ranging from the ancient and medieval (crucifixion, drawing and quartering, burning alive, impalement, etc.) to the handful of standard techniques of the past two centuries (hanging, firing squad, lethal gas, electrocution, and lethal injection). In twenty-first century America, most death penalty states (thirty-eight in 2004) reserve capital punishment for the crime of murder, and lethal injection is the sole method of execution in about two dozen of those (with most of the rest offering a choice between lethal injection and either gas or electrocution).
In December 2003, there were 3,374 prisoners on death row in the United States, and eleven states and the federal government 65 of them. Of those 65,41 were white; 20 black; 3 Hispanic (all white); and 1 Native American. Only one of these executions was by electrocution; all others were by lethal injection. California held the largest number of death row inmates, 629; Texas held 453; and Pennsylvania, 230. Texas carried out 24 executions in 2003, more than any other state. Oklahoma executed 14 and North Carolina 7, with all other jurisdictions each executing 3 or fewer. However, no death penalty was in force in the District of Columbia and twelve states: Alaska,Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The trend in executions in the United States has varied over the past few decades. The number of executions carried out each year between the mid-1930s and the 1970s gradually declined, from a high of 200 down to 0 in 1976. But from 1977 to 1999, the annual toll ramped up again, from 1 in 1977 to 98 in 1999. Since this hi8gh point, another downward trend has set in, with the number of executions in 2004 dropping to 59. Over the past decade or so, the gradual decrease in executions has coincided with significant public support for the death penalty for convicted murderers. Gallup polls show that between 1994 and 2004, the percentage of American adults in favor of capital punishment for murder has fluctuated annually but always stayed within the 64 to 80 percent range. These numbers decreased significantly when people were asked to consider life in prison without parole as an option.
Most other countries have officially abolished the death penalty or simply stopped using it. One hundred twenty-one nations-including Canada, Mexico, and all Western European countries-are in this category. Seventy-five countries and territories, however, continue to employ capital punishment. In 2004, at least 90 percent of executions around the world were carried out by China, which is thought to have put to death at least 3,400 people. Though twenty-four other countries executed people that year, four of these nations accounted for most of the executions: Iran (159).Vietnam (64), United States (59), and Saudi Arabia (33).
The use of capital punishment I the United States has been shaped by several landmark Supreme Court decisions. In1972, in Furman v. Georgia, the Court ruled that capital punishment as it was then being applied in certain states was unconstitutional. The ruling put a halt to execution across the country. Yet the Court declared not that the death penalty itself was unconstitutional, only that its current method of administration was. The majority on the Court thought that the usual administration-which allowed juries to impose the death penalty arbitrarily without any legal guidance-constituted “cruel and unusual punishment,” a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
Many states then promptly rewrote their death penalty statutes to try to minimize administrative arbitrariness. A few states passed laws decreeing that the death penalty would be mandatory for particular capital crimes. But in Woodson v. North Carolina (1976), the Supreme Court declared mandatory death sentences unconstitutional. Some states instituted sentencing guidelines to provide standards for the judge or jury deliberating about whether to impose the death penalty. In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the Court ruled that such death penalty laws prescribing proper guidelines were constitutional, at least in cases of murder. This ruling in effect reinstated capital punishment in the country, and executions resumed in the following year. Since 1976,few state statutes have allowed the death penalty for anything but homicide cases.
More recently the Court has banned the use of the death penalty for particular kinds of offenders. In Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the Court held that the execution of mentally retarded persons is cruel and unusual punishment and is punishment and is therefore unconstitutional. In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the Court held that executing those who were under the age of eighteen when they committed their crimes is also a violation of Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Before Roper, seven states had no minimum age for execution, and fifteen states had set the minimum at between fourteen and seventeen years old.
An important tradition in law that bears on capital punishment is the distinction between first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and manslaughter. Statutes vary by jurisdiction, but generally fist-degree murder is killing (1) with pre-meditation; (2) while performing a major crime (felony) such as armed robbery, kidnapping, or rape; or (3) involving particular egregious circumstances such as the deaths of several people or of a child or police officer. Second-degree murder is killing without premeditation but with some degree of intent (“malice aforethought”). Manslaughter is killing. Without premeditation or intent, as when one person kills another in “the heat of passion” or by driving drunk. Usually, only first-degree murder makes a defendant eligible for the death penalty.
MORAL THEORIES