How to get away with murder? Well, it’s really not that difficult…
Capital punishment. The ultimate crime delivers the ultimate punishment. Currently, 58 countries around the world use the death penalty as a means of punishment. Human life is regarded as sacrosanct and many people believe this. So how is killing the killer morally acceptable? It can be argued that executing even one innocent person is an overarching reason to not have the death penalty. Capital punishment is morally abhorrent and should be abolished.
There are a number of arguments to support the abolition of capital punishment. One of the overriding issues with the death penalty is wrongful conviction. To state the obvious, the death penalty is irreversible. So once a person has been executed, and it is later discovered they are innocent, there is no reparation.
‘Since 1973, 151 people have been released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their wrongful convictions. In 2003 alone, 10 wrongfully convicted defendants were released from death row.’ Source: Amnesty International.
Some factors leading to wrongful convictions include:
- Mistaken eyewitness testimony
- Racial prejudice
- Police and prosecutorial misconduct
- Inadequate legal representation
- Suppression and/or misinterpretation of mitigating evidence
Source: Amnesty International.
For example: In 1992, Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of arson murder in Texas. He was believed to have lit a fire that killed his three children. In 2004, he was executed. It took almost five years for evidence thought to link Todd to the fire to actually be properly analysed. The analysis revealed that the evidence was misinterpreted; the fire was actually accidental, and Willingham was in fact not responsible. An innocent man had been murdered.
Other people are convicted on mere circumstantial evidence. This is evidence that is only useful in very specific scenarios. Just take a look at the case of Anthony Ray Hinton. Anthony Ray Hinton was a man from Alabama who, in 1985, allegedly killed two fast food managers in two separate incidents during robberies. He was convicted and sent to death row after he was picked out of a line up, even though his boss said he was at work at the time of the murders, and was held in solitary confinement for nearly three decades. During one of his appeals, evidence that was presented at trial stating that the bullets found at the crime scene came from his mother’s gun, was overturned by forensic evidence from the FBI, he was still not granted a new trial. After an appeal in the US Supreme Court, he was finally released in 2015. Of his ordeal, Anthony Ray Hinton said “They had every intention of executing me for something I didn’t do.” Source: The Guardian 2015.
Another argument is that capital punishment is not a deterrent to capital crime. Many US criminologists have been unable to find a proof that the prospect of capital punishment reduces murder rates. The figure below compares number of homicides in US states with and without the death penalty and the states with capital punishment have higher rates of homicide.
Source: The Washington Post 2014
And there is no conclusive evidence that capital punishment is more of a deterrent than life imprisonment. Life imprisonment without parole still achieves the same outcome – keeping society safe; and should evidence come to light that a miscarriage of justice has occurred then the prisoner can be released.
However, it is argued that, in fact, capital punishment of an innocent few is a risk worth taking by society in order to deter and prevent future murders. It has been said that the risk of wrongful conviction is almost impossible in current times because of advances in science and forensic testing and the length of the judicial appeals process to actually put someone to death.
Others argue that retribution is a valid reason for the death penalty, after all, the bible says an eye for an eye and people who commit murder deserve a punishment that matches the crime committed.
So, is the death penalty valid? Is taking life from anyone ever justifiable, despite their crimes? Capital punishment cannot be supported when innocent lives are taken. How can a system designed to protect take the life of innocent people? In a system where conviction is beyond reasonable doubt, how do people still fall between the cracks? The irreversible consequences of wrongful execution. The immoral use of circumstantial evidence. Mistaken eyewitness testimony. Racial prejudice. Police and prosecutorial misconduct. Inadequate legal representation. Suppression and/or misinterpretation of mitigating evidence. This is the abhorrent reality of capital punishment and it needs to be stopped.
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