Should the United States ban the Death Penalty?
No this is not a description of a 17th-century torture method. It is a statement describing execution by electric chair, written by former U.S. supreme court justice, William Brennan. This is the real death penalty.
When someone is sentenced to the death penalty, it means that in the following years they will be executed or killed by the state. They can be executed using lethal injection, electrocution (as described and pictured above), or most recently in some states, by firing squad. The death penalty has been a bipartisan issue for many years. I for one, oppose the death penalty. In the 1960s and 70s, many people who also felt this way protested to ban the death penalty. The issue was brought to the supreme court’s attention in 1972, when they banned the death penalty on account of it being unconstitutional. However, this was only temporary, as four short years later, in 1976, the death penalty was reinstated when a poll showed that 66% of Americans still supported capital punishment. But what is the reasoning behind most Americans supporting the death penalty?
Why do people support the death penalty?
Well actually, the answer to this question is quite simple, most Americans believe that the death penalty is a crime deterrence. Therefore, even with how much it can cost to maintain the system, it’s worth it. The problem is that this is not true; in fact, in most cases not only is there not a spike in crime rates when the death penalty was banned, there was a decrease. We can see this in the United States, but also in other countries, like Canada, which have banned the death penalty.
From 1990–2010 the crime rate was always higher in states that had the death penalty, compared to those that didn’t. In 2004 in the USA, the average murder rate for states that used the death penalty was 5.71 per 100,000 of the population, compared to 4.02 per 100,000 in states that did not use it. This very clearly shows that the death penalty is not deterring any crimes and in fact may be enforcing violence. Meanwhile, in Canada, which has completely banned the death penalty, we can start to see a pattern in how the death penalty is not a deterrence. Canada dropped the Death penalty in 1976, and by 2003, their murder rates had fallen by 44%. This proves that in countries like Canada there has been no increase in homicide rates after dropping the death penalty, in fact, there has been a slight decrease. The Death penalty is not effective, instead it spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year and kills people without producing any results. But, on top of the death penalty not deterring crime, it also is continually influenced by the overwhelming bias in America and its legal system.
What influence do American beliefs have on the legal system, mainly the death penalty?
America is a heavily polarized country, and no matter what, bias is always there. American beliefs on mental health, systemic racism, and our reliance on money have all crept into the legal system. Intoxicating, a supposedly fair legal process with bigotry, racism, and inequality.
Mental health issues have always been associated with weakness or seen as an excuse. This shows the intolerance America has always had for people diagnosed with mental health issues. Not only do we have a subpar health system, but America refuses to acknowledge it has a subpar health system. This results in more bigotry towards those with mental illness because people are not educated on it or how it can affect those who suffer from it. This is the main reason why on death row, mental health is not taken seriously. In Death row cases where someone is found to be mentally incompetent or “Insane”; meaning they lack all understanding of the crime and its punishments, they are not executed. The issue is that people on Death row are very rarely excused for being mentally incompetent, instead, most people on death row with a mental illness that affects decision-making, are still held responsible.
David Reitman, a professor at NSU Graduate school, who teaches psychology and works with people diagnosed with mood disorders such as depression (a disorder where you have a persistent feeling of sadness), and bipolar disorder (A health condition where people have mood swings from emotional highs to Emotional lows).
Stated that,
“Schizophrenia (A mental disorder where people interpret reality abnormally), bipolar disorder, and extreme forms of substance abuse problems, all carry with them very significant disruption in logical thinking and should serve as a reason why you wouldn’t hold somebody accountable for capital crimes.”
The APA or American psychiatric association and the ABA or American bar association also agree with this statement. This shows that despite what many experts think, the United States still has not made it illegal to execute people suffering from serious mental health issues. Only eight states have introduced legislation saying that people with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD is caused by a traumatic event, involved or witnessed), and traumatic brain injury, will also not be put on death row. But it needs to be in all states. Until then the legal system will continue to be unequal to those with mental health issues and therefore should not be deciding people’s fate. This inequality is only further brought out by the unavoidable effects of racism on the death penalty.
Systemic racism is a term used to describe how race still affects us in our everyday lives. Such as the discrimination that Black people, Latin Americans, and Asians (basically everyone who’s not white) face daily. This racism carries over into all aspects of life and causes normal things to become deadly. Specifically in the legal system, which is heavily impacted by racial bias. Everything involving the death penalty has racial bias the jurors, the victim, and the defendant, which is the person or group charged with the crime. Juror Racial Bias is when the jury of the crime has an unconscious bias. Research shows that white male jurors are more likely to sentence black defendants to death than women and jurors of color. Meaning the more, white males in a jury, the worse off a black defendant would be. Victim Racial Bias is when the race of the victim impacts the outcome of the case. Research finds that black and Hispanic death row inmates convicted of killing white victims face a higher likelihood they will be given the death penalty than others on death row. Meaning our racial bias is immediately activated when the stereotype of black and Latin American people being dangerous is brought into reality, which results in an unfair trial. And then there’s Defendant Racial Bias, which is once again tapping into the stereotype that if the defendant is Black or Latin American, they are somehow more guilty than someone who committed the same crime, but has lighter skin. Why do humans, impacted by human emotions and bias, get to decide whether someone lives or dies? This is the issue with the amount of responsibility placed on a court in the case of death row. Systemic racism is probably not going away anytime soon, and our bias certainly isn’t. Until it does, we should not be deciding who lives or who dies, because no matter what we tell ourselves, skin color will be a factor.
Though stigmas about mental health and racism in the United States play a big role in who has the power in court, there is another large factor. Money. Money is power, especially when it comes to representation in court. Too often, poor people are the ones on death row, this is because poor people can’t afford to hire a good lawyer. They typically get stuck with one appointed by the government. These defense lawyers are usually overworked and underpaid, meaning they are not putting in the work required to save their clients. On top of that, after the first appeal (An appeal is when after the sentence the defendant calls for another chance to prove their innocence), the defendants who can’t afford a lawyer have no right to counsel. Meaning, they are alone. Many states do not fund or train defense lawyers enough and don’t want to sink any more money into the death penalty than they already do. For example, California already spends $137 million per year on the death penalty, but it is still not enough to have a fair justice system for those who do not have enough money.
Should the United States ban the death penalty?
Overall, the United States needs to ban the death penalty. Not only is it heavily flawed, but it is also ineffective and wastes millions of dollars every year. Killing people is not something that should be taken lightly no matter what that person is guilty of. Especially in a system where we never know if the person being executed is 100% guilty.
Yes, we all think that the United States would never execute someone unless they were completely sure they committed a crime. Unfortunately, data reveals that at least 2% of people executed on death row were innocent. Unfortunately, Brian Terrell, was a part of that 2%.
Brian Terrell was a victim of the death penalty system. There was no physical evidence at the crime scene that he had committed the murder. The fingerprints found at the crime were not Terrell’s, and neither were the footprints. The most convincing evidence against Terrell came from his cousin, who insisted he saw the murder, but later admitted to only saying this in order to shorten his own sentence. Yet still, on December 9th, 2015, Brian Terrell was executed by lethal injection.
Cases like this are the reason the death penalty cannot be legal. Killing an innocent person makes the government the same as the murderers on death row. The death penalty will always be influenced by the world around it, and clearly that world is unfair. Life should not be placed in the hands of one jury, because no matter what we are all human.