Capital Punishment And Justice Essay
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Looking out for the state of the public’s satisfaction in the scheme of
capital sentencing does not constitute serving justice. Today’s system of
capital punishment is fraught with inequalities and injustices. The commonly
offered arguments for the death penalty are filled with holes. “It was a
deterrent. It removed killers. It was the ultimate punishment. It is biblical.
It satisfied the public’s need for retribution. It relieved the anguish of the
victim’s family.” (Grisham 120) Realistically, imposing the death penalty is
expensive and time consuming. Retroactively, it has yet to be proven as a
deterrent. Morally, it is a continuation of the cycle of violence and
“...degrades all who are involved in its enforcement, as well as its
victim.” (Stewart 1) Perhaps the most frequent argument for capital punishment
is that of deterrence. The prevailing thought is that imposition of the death
penalty will act to dissuade other criminals from committing violent acts.
Numerous studies have been created attempting to prove this belief; however,
“[a]ll the evidence taken together makes it hard to be confident that capital
punishment deters more than long prison terms do.” (Cavanagh 4) Going ever
farther, Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Montgomery based Equal
Justice Initiative, has stated that “…people are increasingly realizing that
the more we resort to killing as a legitimate response to our frustration and
anger with violence, the more violent our society becomes…We could execute all
three thousand people on death row, and most people would not feel any safer
tomorrow.” (Frame 51) In addition, with the growing humanitarianism of modern
society, the number of inmates actually put to death is substantially lower than
50 years ago. This decline creates a situation in which the death penalty ceases
to be a deterrent when the populace begins to think that one can get away with a
crime and go unpunished. Also, the less that the death sentence is used, the
more it becomes unusual, thus coming in conflict with the eighth amendment. This
is essentially a paradox, in which the less the death penalty is used, the less
society can legally use it. The end result is a punishment that ceases to deter
any crime at all. The key part of the death penalty is that it involves death --
something which is rather permanent for humans, due to the concept of mortality.
This creates a major problem when “…there continue to be many instances of
innocent people being sentenced to death.”(Tabak 38) In our legal system,
there exist numerous ways in which justice might be poorly served for a
recipient of the death sentence. Foremost is in the handling of his own defense
counsel. In the event that a defendant is without counsel, a lawyer will be
provided. “Attorney’s appointed to represent indigent capital defendants
frequently lack the qualities necessary to provide a competent defense and
sometimes have exhibited such poor character that they have subsequently been
disbarred.” (Tabak 37). With payment caps or court determined sums of, for
example, $5 an hour, there is not much incentive for a lawyer to spend a great
deal of time representing a capital defendant. When you compare this to the
prosecution, “…aided by the police, other law enforcement agencies, crime
labs, state mental hospitals, various other scientific resources, prosecutors
…experienced in successfully handling capital cases, compulsory process, and
grand juries…”(Tabak 37), the defense that the court appointed counsel can
offer is puny. If, in fact, a defendant has a valid case to offer, what chance
has he to offer it and have it properly recognized. Furthermore, why should he
be punished for a injustice that was created by the court itself when it
appointed the incapable lawyer. Even if a defendant has proper legal counsel,
there is still the matter of impartiality of judges. “The Supreme Court has
steadily reduced the availability of habeas corpus review of capital
convictions, placing its confidence in the notion that state judges, who take
the same oath of office as federal judges to uphold the Constitution, can be
trusted to enforce it.” (Bright 768) This makes for the biased trying of a
defendant’s appeals, “…given the overwhelming pressure on elected state
judges to heed, and perhaps even lead to, the popular cries for the death of
criminal defendants.” (Bright...
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