As the coming week marks the annual National Week of Student Action, which focuses on the death penalty this year, it is time we evaluate capital punishment and some of the arguments that help keep it in practice.
Many arguments for the death penalty attempt to justify the status quo by logical "facts:" the death penalty deters criminals, it costs less for the state, the state does justice by vindicating the victim's family with the execution.
While these arguments may on the surface seem sufficient to determine matters of life and death, they are in fact coping mechanisms which not only distort the truth surrounding the effects of the death penalty, but mask the fact that the death penalty is nothing less than state-administered killing.
Let me start by enumerating each of these "arguments"-- if misinformation can be deemed an "argument." The death-penalty-as-deterrent argument is dubious at best. Many studies have found that the death penalty has no statistically significant effect on crime rates, while various studies have shown that there is statistical evidence that the presence of a death penalty actually slightly increases murder rates in states such as Oklahoma and California. All in all, "research has failed to provide scientific proof that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment," according to Roger Hood, author of "The Death Penalty: A World-Wide Perspective." The message is clear: the deterrence argument is more arbitrary and meaningless than the application of capital punishment.
As for the cost of executions, the thrifty and well-informed taxpayer should be extremely wary of being pro-death penalty: the price of execution is usually two to three times that of life in prison. In extreme cases such as Florida, a typical execution costs $3.2 million, as opposed to $600,000 for life without parole. I guess some people are worth more dead than alive.
Finally, we have the argument that society owes the murder victims' families the "closure" of the execution of the perpetrator. While this may be true in some cases, there are many voices that are opposing this simplistic eye-for-an-eye solution. We now are seeing groups such as Murder Victim's Families for Reconciliation, composed of family members who have lost a loved one to murder yet actively work against the death penalty. From Timothy McVeigh's grotesque crime to relatively unknown murder trials, murder victim families' voices have been raised as to whether the death penalty is a viable option for a "civilized" society.
Any victim's family most likely feels (and is completely entitled to) rage against the murderer. However, by taking this rage a step further and implementing the death penalty, we have somehow allowed understandable, completely acceptable, but very emotional responses to put life and death in the hands of the state. Thus, I see the death penalty issue not necessarily divided between those who sympathize with victims and those who do not, but rather as those who take little issue with state-sponsored violence and those who find it repulsive, unethical and unrepresentative of the people. The majority of Americans prefer life without parole to the death penalty. Is it really appropriate to have such a law that not only distorts the will of the people, but represents a gross manipulation of state power?
The death penalty is expensive for the taxpayer, does little to deter crime and allows state-sponsored violence to exist in our country. Proponents of the death penalty rarely face the facts that the fairness of the death penalty varies geographically, by class and by race of the victim, among other things, and that innocent people are convicted of the death penalty and executed. As you contemplate your position, I ask you to consider which situation undermines American society more: life imprisonment for murderers with no chance of parole, or the dirty shame that must haunt our judicial system knowing that 350 innocent Americans have been given death sentences since 1900?
