Reasons of Existing of Capital Punishment Nowadays: Analytical Essay

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The United States are one of the last countries on Earth where death, as a punishment, is still active. In 29 of its 50 states, if a crime is committed, a criminal could be legally executed. Capital Punishment is sometimes called Death penalty even though after the convict is sentenced to death once the trial over, he can sometimes not be executed, but imprisoned for life. Historians traced the origins of the legal execution to the ancient Greece, but nowadays the main argument in favour of death penalty is biblical:” Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Genesis 9:6). However, the sentence of death was often applied to crime not related with murder such as robbery, rape and blasphemy. Capital punishment was the norm throughout the world for a long time, in England, during the XIXth century, 270 crimes were punishable by death. In North America, a convict could be legally executed as early as the beginning of the XVIIth century. Nevertheless, nowadays most of the countries forbid death as a legal punishment. The tendency when it comes to execution tends toward its abolishment and yet, the most powerful country in the world in soft and hard power, still practices it in most of its states. Which raises the question of the persistence of the capital punishment in more than 30 jurisdictions in the United State.

In order to give an answer to that question, the history and origins of the death penalty will be discussed in a first part, then we’ll discuss the issues of inequality when it comes to executing a criminal. And finally, in a third part, the states in which capital punishment is still practiced will be studied in order to understand the reasons for its maintain.

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To begin with, death penalty in the United States was strongly inspired by the United Kingdom. When the United States were mainly colonies in the British Empire executions were public, almost like a show. There would be a big audience, very often a priest would give a speech and the criminal would be asked to ask for God’s forgiveness before being executed. Almost every crime would be punishable by death, it was a way for the King to assert his power upon the colonies the goal wasn’t deterrence but only to show the King’s power and so the people would be too scared to revolt. Once the Independence proclaimed, things stated to change, crimes punishable by death reduced massively, and executions started to happen in private. Important figures of history such as Benjamin Rush were opposed to the death penalty and yet, its use only began to be seriously questioned in the late XXth century by the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court is the institution in charge of assuring that the fundamental rules of the death penalty are respected. Even though some states might be more severe than others when it comes to capital punishment, they have to follow their lead. In the 1970’s the U.S. Supreme Court judged the death penalty unconstitutional due to their main issue: the risk of executing a wrongly judged person, an innocent. They also have to deal with the mental condition of the criminal, for example in 2002 the Supreme Court interfere in the case of Atkins v. Virginia because the criminal was mentally retarded. They found unconstitutional to execute a person who is mentally deficient.

The Abolitionist trend started in the 1850’s when the Death Penalty Repeal Act was signed in 1853 which made Wisconsin the first states in the United States to abolish death penalty for all crime. Ever since, the tendency toward the abolishment of the death penalty. From 2000 to 2020 15 states signed the end of the death penalty, states such as Washington, New-York and New-Hampshire in 2019.

One of the problems with the Capital Punishment is the inequalities which come with it.

The very first inequality of the death penalty is the colour of the skin of the condemned. A recent study by the Professor K. Beckett from the University of Washington lead in 2014 shows that “Jurors in Washington state are three times more likely to recommend a death sentence for a black defendant than for a white defendant in a similar case.” according to the DPIC’s factsheet on the Death Penalty. On this factsheet, it’s written that when it comes to an interracial murder, 294 black persons were executed for having killed a white person, but only 21 white persons were executed for killing a black person since 1976. This clearly shows that judges are sometimes not impartial, and that the judgment is biased. Another indicative figure showing that race matters more than the crime for certain judges, is that black people wrongly accused and judged for murder are more than white people wrongly accused. According to the DPIC, since 1973, 87 African American were wrongly accused and sentenced to death (but not executed) whereas only 62 white persons suffered the same injustice. For example, the case Keaton v. Florida in which an African American named David Keaton was sentenced to death for the murder of an off-duty deputy sheriff due to a mistake of identification by a witness and forced confessions. He was exonerated two years later.

Other injustices appear too, for example, for the same crime, women are less sentenced to death according an article published by the Law School of the University of New-Mexico and written in 1990, since the colonial times to 1990 (year in which the article was written), only 2 percent of the criminal executed were women. As a matter of fact, it can be explained very simply, for a long time women were considered as their husband’s property and so if they’ve done something illegal it must have been her husband’s fault or if we look even farther in time, they were also prohibited to leave the house and had to remain in the domestic sphere in which very little crime could be committed.

In a study lead by Scott Philipps (a professor in criminology in the University of Denver) and published in March 2010 in the Law and Society Review, he found that people killing rich, highly educated and married people had more chances to get a death penalty than those who murdered poor, single, uneducated, with a criminal record people. Origins mattered too in this study, you had more chances to end up on the death row if you killed a white person or Hispanic person than if the victim was an African American or Asian. The difference was up to 6 time more chances to be sanctioned by death if the victim belonged to the highest status. The study was led on 504 capital cases of Houston (Texas) which had happened between 1992 and 1999.

These injustices are important to discussed the reasons why the death penalty still exist nowadays in the United States because they show that it’s not applied as it should be, this is not the crime that is punished but the person behind it, you could be sentenced to death according to your sex, race and situation when others whom have committed the same crime would be left alive. In a way it proves that the Supreme Court was right to say that in many cases capital punishment is unconstitutional.

Even if these injustices are often pointed at, some states and citizens still defend the capital punishment and call it “useful”, we will now look at the citizens who claim so.

To begin with, there is a huge gap between the North of the United States and the South when it comes to the death penalty, 21 of the 25 states in which the death penalty is located is the south. If we look at the 2085 executions that happened in the United States since 1976, 1241 of them took place in the South. These figures aren’t surprising, the South of the United States have always been more strict and severe when it comes to justice and law enforcement when the North is commonly known to be more liberal, to prove my point, if we look at the three next executions planned, they are all planned in the South of the United States, all three of them are planned to happen in Texas ( March 26th , April 24th and April 30th). Nevertheless, Texas itself is a big one for capital punishment according to The Next To Die, since 1976, 569 executions took place and the second state in line for the death penalty is Virginia with 113 executions and they are both located in the South of the United States.

When we take into account the public opinion about death penalty it clearly shows that for the majority capital punishment isn’t the preferred option. In a 2010 poll by The Lake Research Partners the majority (61%) would choose another punishment than the death penalty for murder. Furthermore, in 2009 police officers were asked in a poll by the DPIC what kind of punishment should be applied to punish violent crimes and capital punishment came last.

In a survey lead by the former and present presidents of the country’s top academic criminological societies, the experts found that in 88% of the cases, it wasn’t efficient and doesn’t keep people from murdering. Plus, even though it’s most of the executions happens in the South, murders also happened more in the South than in the North (still according to the DPIC) which proves that capital punishment isn’t fit for deterrence.

The tendency of the executions is going down, of course it could be explained by the fact that less and less states allow the capital punishment. In 2000, 85 executions took place, in 2014 only 22 prisoners were executed (according to a factsheet from the DPIC). Which shows that people and institutions are less and less kin to execute convict.

To conclude, the reasons why nowadays in 2020 Capital Punishment still exist in the most powerful country in the world when almost every other modern country abolished it a long time ago are simple. First, the region where it’s still performed are those were crime and racism happen on a more regular basis, the South of the United-States is also more conservative than the North and so follow the principle of the Bible by which if you kill, you are to be killed. However, the tendency is toward abolitionism of the death penalty, in 20 years states after states are banishing this form of punishment for other more “human” such as life sentence without parole. With less and less executions and states practicing the death penalty, if things keep going in that direction the United States will more or less soon abolish capital punishment on all it’s territory.

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