Death Penalty; The Final Product...

         Killing we cannot do for fun, we cannot kill for attention, we cannot kill for revenge, we simply cannot kill. It baffles me why someone wants to kill, or does kill, but unfortunately it happens all the time. Do we put them in time out and just give them a slap on the wrist? NO! So what is the most effective form of punishment? Do we rape the rapist, set fire to the arsonists possessions, and kill the murderer?(Bedau, Hugo Adam)What can constitute as a equal justice for all? Although it is not a simple task to do, studies have proven that the death penalty is an effective way to deal with convicted criminals.

         There are many different methods of the death penalty. There is lethal injection, hanging by the neck, firing squad, gassing, and sometimes the use of the guillotine. ( Duhaime, Lloyd) Lethal injection is a deadly drug that the government can inject into the convicted that will kill them once it hits their system. Using lethal injection seems to be the most humane way, but some people want others' to fire guns at them, or hang them by the neck. 

         DNA has proven that more than one hundred Americans have been sentenced to death row, although they were innocent. Some believe this may be due to false confessions that police officers have manipulated them into making. Also, along with false confessions, eye witnesses don't always see accurately; after all, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone; no one is without fault. All crimes are irreversible because we cannot turn back time, should punishments be irreversible too? The death penalty is the ultimate punishment. Our government must be fair and give justified punishments, but shouldn't use more violence and hate than necessary. (Bedau, Hugo Adam)
        Will there always be the risk of executing an innocent person? Yes, unfortunately there will be. Thanks to DNA testing though, there is a less likely chance. People toss around this aspect quite often. Some people believe that everyone in America should be willing to risk one life for the safety of a lot others. A few people think the death penalty is justice killing a person, but since when has justice become a murder? It almost seems like it would be counterproductive to murder somebody for murder; simply making our justice system a giant hypocrite.(YouTube- Death Penalty.) There have been studies proving that the death penalty is effective; including one that showed that for every executed convicted killer, between three and eighteen lives could be spared. Also, for every convicted killer executed, it would result in five less homicides, but for every put-off execution it results in five more homicides. If the execution process were to be sped up, and each convicted criminal spent 2.75 less years on death row, it'd save at least one life.  (Tanner, Robert.)
      Often times you can find people making a mockery out of this controversial topic. You will find mentally ill criminals on death row who are simply wanting to die. That was their goal the entire time, to be executed. (Rodgers, Walter.) In some other cases, you'll find the bystanders expressing their thoughts through pictures or comics. Many of which are merely mocking our justice system. (Fairrington, Brian.)
        We find ourselves living in a vengeful society; a place where murder can be confused with justice. Today, we can find ourselves debating pros and con's of almost every topic and wined up nowhere ahead of the game, but only in the same place. Our society seems to be standing still in time, not progressing forward in any controversial areas. As our technology grows, we should be growing. But we aren't; we have stopped addressing the important stuff. Instead, we find ourselves acting as a little kid not wanting to clean his room. We are sliding things under the rug and ignoring that they are still there, creating a mess, and not being handled appropriately.  We are running full speed ahead, trying to figure out what to do about this, and that...but we are running on a treadmill. We are on a treadmill in our living room. The very same place we were before we started running. We are tired, hot, sweaty, but in reality, we have not gained an inch. Nothing has been solved. (Rodgers, Walter.)
       The death penalty has raised a lot of questions, and eyes to what is and isn't acceptable in our country. This topic often plainly stops at what is and isn't morally correct, so it never gets to the point of if the death penalty is even effective. I believe that is the first question people should ask, and the answer is yes. But is it too effective when you have an innocent persons' life on the line? That you must decide on your own.

Sydney's Thesis Statement

Although it is not a simple task to do, studies have proven that the death penalty is an effective way to deal with convicted criminals. 

Bedau, Hugo Adam, and others. "Reasonable Doubts: The Growing Movement Against the Death Penalty." American Prospect Vol. 15 No. 7. July 2004: A1-A23. SIRS Researcher. Web. 10 May 2011.

Why a whole special report on the death penalty? For one thing, the growing movement to reform and eventually abolish capital punishment in America suggests that heterodox currents are alive and thriving in these seemingly conservative times. For another, the movement against the death penalty offers a wider window on reform of the criminal-justice system generally.

     Thanks in part to DNA evidence exonerating more than a hundred Americans wrongfully sent to death row, the broad public is questioning the logic of the death penalty itself. Families of murder victims are among those leading the challenge. And it was a conservative Republican governor, George Ryan of Illinois, who was so appalled by the findings of his own death-penalty commission that he commuted the sentences of everyone on that state's death row, pending broad reforms.

     The first of those reforms, now implemented, requires videotaping of confessions and sequential lineups of suspects. Why? Because police have been known to manipulate prisoners into making false confessions. Because it is too easy for prosecutors to put a favorite suspect into a lineup with dissimilar ringers. And because eyewitnesses make mistakes. Yet the flaws and injustices of the death penalty are so intrinsic that it is hard to investigate seriously without concluding that the only real cure is abolition.

     Beyond procedural reforms, the American public and the courts are entertaining serious doubts about whether the state should ever take a life, even if it is sure that it has the right person. And although the courts are increasingly stacked with hard-liners, the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2002 voted that mentally retarded people should be spared execution, and it may well hold similarly regarding juveniles. Likewise the citizenry: Two Oklahoma juries could not conclude that the state should execute convicted bomber Terry Nichols.

     Punishments short of execution are, of course, reversible. But many of the same reforms--improved representation of defendants, videotaped confessions, sequential lineups---are needed to prevent other miscarriages of justice.

     The death penalty is not only the ultimate punishment; it is also one of the most arbitrary. This special report, produced in partnership with the JEHT Foundation, examines the death penalty in its multiple facets: the movement for reform as well as the resistance to change; the dynamics of who ends up on death row; the status of America as an international outlier. It was edited by Dorian Friedman and Robert Kuttner. For more information on capital punishment, visit our special Web site at www.movingideas.org/issuesindepth/.

     Dostoyevsky wrote, "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." By that test, Abu Ghraib indicts not just our military guards and our generals but our domestic prison system and our society. Yet in entering the very bleakest corner of American prisons--death row--we see not only barbarism but hope.

Death's Dwindling Dominion

By Hugo Adam Bedau

• Public opinion is shifting against the death penalty. What will it take to abolish it?

     As we enter the 21st century, Americans have never been more divided over the proper role of the death penalty. Some of us (still a minority) would like to see it entirely abolished--and we have achieved this goal in a dozen states, beginning with Michigan in 1847 and most recently in Vermont in 1987.

     At the other extreme, a smaller minority wants an expanded death penalty--a goal unlikely to be achieved given recent DNA findings, court rulings, and shifts in public opinion. A plurality of the public at present believes there is a proper, albeit rather narrow, role for capital punishment, confined to the most egregious crimes, notably first-degree murder with multiple victims, serial killings, terrorism, or murder committed by a recidivist. Such support weakens still further when respondents are offered the alternative sentence of life without parole. In the face of these facts, America's seeming infatuation with the death penalty looks about an inch deep and a good deal less than a mile wide.

     Defenders of execution typically rest their case largely on three grounds: deterrence, incapacitation, and retribution. When the death penalty was a lawful punishment for many different crimes (as recently as the 1960s), deterrence and incapacitation were the primary rationales. But today, empirical support for any special deterrent effect receives little or no endorsement from the nation's professional criminologists. And even if there were some such effect, society is not entitled to that benefit as long as criminal-justice systems operate with gross unfairness in deciding who should receive a death sentence. As for incapacitation, the experience in a dozen abolition states and internationally shows that convicted murderers can be safely incarcerated and need not be executed in order to prevent them from being a threat to the public (or to guards, visitors, or other prisoners).

     Retribution is another matter. Because it is not an empirical principle, retribution cannot be defended or criticized on empirical grounds. Instead, the case for retribution rests on moral considerations, chiefly the proposition that murderers deserve to die. The rebuttal from abolitionists often takes the form of a challenge: Do rapists deserve to be raped? Do kidnappers deserve to lose their children? Should arsonists have their dwellings burnt? If they should, why don't our laws reflect this fact? If they shouldn't, why do we make an exception in the case of murder? All parties to the death-penalty controversy must agree that in the vast number of cases where crimes are punished under law, there is simply no way to tell, a priori, exactly what an offender "deserves." What punishment does an embezzler deserve? How about an unlicensed deer hunter? Answering questions about desert in the abstract is virtually impossible. No wonder our criminal-justice system confines the role of desert to answering the question, who deserves to be punished? (Answer: the guilty.) That leaves the other question--what punishment does the offender deserve?--to criteria set by legislatures and courts.

     Many who might naturally be the most vocal in demanding retribution in fact turn out to oppose the death penalty. Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, for example, has become a leading opposition voice in the debate over capital punishment.

     Opponents of the death penalty typically rely on three main moral principles. First, there is the right to life. Even if this right is not absolute, it places a heavy burden on the practice of execution by the state. Second is the principle that the administration of any criminal-justice system must be fair. Yet fairness in the selection process--who shall live and who shall die--is routinely undermined by such widespread practices as the provision of incompetent defense counsel and racial bias, which increase the risk that innocent defendants will be executed. Third, there is the principle that governments ought to use no more violence in pursuit of a just end than is necessary to achieve that end (and there is accumulating evidence that the death penalty serves no necessary criminal-justice purpose).

     Canada, Mexico, and all European nations (as well as many other countries) no longer use capital punishment. Our professed global advocacy of human rights becomes suspect when one considers the extent to which our government tolerates a death-penalty system that looks to many other nations like flagrant indifference to the international law of human rights.

     Public policy on the death penalty is not determined only by public opinion, empirical evidence, or moral principles. Our appellate courts, notably the state supreme courts and the U.S. Supreme Court, have modified many aspects of capital jurisprudence by constitutional interpretation. The most recent such narrowing occurred in 2002, when the Court ruled that a person suffering from mental retardation could not be subject to a death sentence. The next most likely such limitation will come in the form of barring the execution of juveniles (persons under 18 at the time of the crime)--a prohibition endorsed years ago by most nations and guaranteed in the laws of more than two dozen American death-penalty jurisdictions. Both of these issues represent important practical constraints, even if they fall short of a constitutional prohibition of capital punishment.

     In recent years, public opposition to the death penalty has been chiefly focused on the risk of executing the innocent and on the narrow escapes of death-row convicts who had the good fortune to have their innocence vindicated before a death sentence could be carried out. During 2002 and 2003, national attention was concentrated on Illinois, where Governor George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions and created a special commission to recommend improvements in the administration of the death penalty. As he left office, Governor Ryan stunned the nation by canceling all of Illinois' death sentences on the ground that the system that produced them was too flawed, too unreliable to accept its product.

     During the past decade or so, arguments over the innocence of death-row convicts (as well as of many other prisoners) have taken on a new form thanks to the development of DNA testing. Both sides of the death-penalty controversy have effectively agreed to abide by the results of such tests, thereby removing the controversy over innocence in particular cases to a level of scientific objectivity hitherto unavailable. Unfortunately, however, DNA testing is often of no use in the kind of case that gives rise to most of the worst errors in capital cases: a conviction based on perjured testimony, incompetence of the trial attorney, unavailability of expert witnesses, or racial bias in the police station, prosecutor's office, or jury room.

     Opponents of the death penalty confidently insist that it is just a matter of time before a well-documented case occurs in which an innocent defendant is executed. Friends of the death penalty take comfort in their belief that, so far, there is no case on record (in recent times) in which the innocence of the executed prisoner is beyond doubt. Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether the moratorium created in Illinois will prove to be the vanguard of a national movement or only a singular exception (as it has been so far) owing to the large number of documented cases of innocents on Illinois' death row.

     What are the prospects for the future of the death penalty in the United States? Although states like Texas seem as wedded to capital punishment as ever, the realization that hundreds of innocent prisoners have been on death row has caused an overdue shift in public opinion and public policy.

     In addition to court rulings and state laws limiting capital punishment, 13 states have recently set up death-penalty commissions. The North Carolina Senate passed a bill in 2003 imposing a moratorium on executions until troubling issues of fairness, due process, and racial bias are addressed. Last year, there were fewer executions (65) than in the modern peak year of 1999, and outside the Deep South only three states carried out any executions. Even in Texas, the state most vigorously committed to capital punishment, the Senate passed a bill to create an innocence commission. Texas Governor Rick Perry signed legislation providing $20 million for legal defense of indigent defendants in capital cases. At the federal level, the House--by a margin of 357 to 67--passed the bipartisan Innocence Protection Act, including funding for DNA testing and grants to states to improve the quality of legal defense for those who could face the death penalty. The Senate is expected to take up the bill.

     So, rather than a complete end to the death penalty in the near future, we may see a gradual narrowing and a de facto semi-abolition. This would represent progress. A century ago lynching flourished in the Deep South, and the rest of the nation struggled to bring it to an end. Perhaps before too long we may come to regard the death penalty with the same horror with which we have learned to view lynching. The only way in which the nation as a whole could rid itself of the death penalty is by federal constitutional interpretation, relying on such principles as equal protection of the law, due process of law, and the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. However, given the conservative mood of the Supreme Court, these piecemeal reforms and narrowings, though heartening, are not likely to lead to complete repeal anytime soon. The late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was right: The more one learns about the death penalty, the less inclined one is to support it. The slender majority of the public that still supports executions is unlikely to see its numbers grow.

Fairringtion, Brian. "Death Penalty Errors." Cartoon. Print.

YouTube - Death Penalty. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. 28 Nov. 2007. Web. 08 May 2011. .

I thought this video, along with the many comments it recieved was interesting. This video brought many people to speak their opinions strongly. One said, "So what happen if there's innocents on death row? Pro death penalty supporters never addressed this issue. We still have the higest murder rate in this country even those having a death penalty. We should put this rapist to work and pay the victim's money in return. and what about cameron todd willingham? Go look him up on YT and see. i think death is too easy on rapistsand life w/o parole would be more painful. Not saying i support crinimals or anything because our justice sytem is flawed." Another questioned, "death penalty is "Justice" killing somebody, since when is justice a murderer?" 
Finally one other bold statement that got my attention is as follows: "Let's say that for 10 suspects, 1 is innocent. SO WHAT? You would fret over ONE innocent life in exchange for the safety of thousands of people? Previous leaders DIDN'T become leaders by making such irrational decisions. It's not that I disregard that one life, but because I'm wiling to take the risk for countless others."

Tanner, Robert. "Studies Say Death Penalty Deters Crime." Lincoln Courier (Lincoln, IL). 11 Jun 2007: n.p. SIRS Researcher. Web. 05 May 2011.

Anti-death penalty forces have gained momentum in the past few years, with a moratorium in Illinois, court disputes over lethal injection in more than a half-dozen states and progress toward outright abolishment in New Jersey.

     The steady drumbeat of DNA exonerations--pointing out flaws in the justice system--has weighed against capital punishment. The moral opposition is loud, too, echoed in Europe and the rest of the industrialized world, where all but a few countries banned executions years ago.

     What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument--whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.

     The reports have horrified death penalty opponents and several scientists, who vigorously question the data and its implications.

     So far, the studies have had little impact on public policy. New Jersey's commission on the death penalty this year dismissed the body of knowledge on deterrence as "inconclusive."

     But the ferocious argument in academic circles could eventually spread to a wider audience, as it has in the past.

     "Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it," said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. "The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect."

     A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters)--what am I going to do, hide them?"

     Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 that capital punishment has deterrent effects. They all explore the same basic theory--if the cost of something (be it the purchase of an apple or the act of killing someone) becomes too high, people will change their behavior (forego apples or shy from murder).

     To explore the question, they look at executions and homicides, by year and by state or county, trying to tease out the impact of the death penalty on homicides by accounting for other factors, such as unemployment data and per capita income, the probabilities of arrest and conviction, and more.

     Among the conclusions:

     •Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

     •The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

     •Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

     In 2005, there were 16,692 cases of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter nationally. There were 60 executions.

     The studies' conclusions drew a philosophical response from a well-known liberal law professor, University of Chicago's Cass Sunstein. A critic of the death penalty, in 2005 he co-authored a paper titled "Is capital punishment morally required?"

     "If it's the case that executing murderers prevents the execution of innocents by murderers, then the moral evaluation is not simple," he told The Associated Press. "Abolitionists or others, like me, who are skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the death penalty."

     Sunstein said that moral questions aside, the data needs more study.

     Critics of the findings have been vociferous.

     Some claim that the pro-deterrent studies made profound mistakes in their methodology, so their results are untrustworthy. Another critic argues that the studies wrongly count all homicides, rather than just those homicides where a conviction could bring the death penalty. And several argue that there are simply too few executions each year in the United States to make a judgment.

     "We just don't have enough data to say anything," said Justin Wolfers, an economist at the Wharton School of Business who last year co-authored a sweeping critique of several studies, and said they were "flimsy" and appeared in "second-tier journals."

     "This isn't left vs. right. This is a nerdy statistician saying it's too hard to tell," Wolfers said. "Within the advocacy community and legal scholars who are not as statistically adept, they will tell you it's still an open question. Among the small number of economists at leading universities whose bread and butter is statistical analysis, the argument is finished."

     Several authors of the pro-deterrent reports said they welcome criticism in the interests of science, but said their work is being attacked by opponents of capital punishment for their findings, not their flaws.

     "Instead of people sitting down and saying 'let's see what the data shows,' it's people sitting down and saying 'let's show this is wrong,'" said Paul Rubin, an economist and co-author of an Emory University study. "Some scientists are out seeking the truth, and some of them have a position they would like to defend."

     The latest arguments replay a 1970s debate that had an impact far beyond academic circles.

     Then, economist Isaac Ehrlich had also concluded that executions deterred future crimes. His 1975 report was the subject of mainstream news articles and public debate, and was cited in papers before the U.S. Supreme Court arguing for a reversal of the court's 1972 suspension of executions. (The court, in 1976, reinstated the death penalty.)

     Ultimately, a panel was set up by the National Academy of Sciences which decided that Ehrlich's conclusions were flawed. But the new pro-deterrent studies haven't gotten that kind of scrutiny.

     At least not yet. The academic debate, and the larger national argument about the death penalty itself--with questions about racial and economic disparities in its implementation--shows no signs of fading away.

     Steven Shavell, a professor of law and economics at Harvard Law School and co-editor-in-chief of the American Law and Economics Review, said in an e-mail exchange that his journal intends to publish several articles on the statistical studies on deterrence in an upcoming issue.

Rodgers, Walter. "America's New Drug of Choice: Revenge." Christian Science Monitor. 29 Nov 2010: n.p. SIRS Researcher. Web. 04 May 2011.

The United States seems increasingly obsessed with vengeance at every level of society. Unable or unwilling to try to fathom the complexities of our times, we find solace in revenge. It is our narcotic. And it dulls public thinking by excusing us from having to address the moral and political complications we choose not to deal with.

I spent much of last summer in New England, arguing over dinners with friends as to whether Steven Hayes, a habitual criminal convicted of torturing and savagely murdering a Connecticut mother and her two daughters, deserved to be executed.

A jury decided he did.

My friends, along with the jury, believed the case so heinous that the perpetrator deserved to die. But isn’t every murder heinous?

A Shameful History

The issue, then, is not whether Mr. Hayes and his yet-to-be-tried alleged accomplice, Joshua Komisarjevsky, merited the death penalty. Hayes clearly wants to die. He smiled when he heard the verdict. His attorney called the sentence “suicide by the state.” The issue is the death penalty itself.

The indisputable fact remains that as long as the death penalty is available to judges and juries, we will execute people to satisfy people’s lust for revenge, and often mistakenly. As a nation we have a shameful history of executing innocents, from Salem’s alleged witches, to cattle rustlers, to “uppity blacks” and alleged murderers who we later discovered had incompetent defense attorneys. The only way a civilized people can prevent execution of the innocent is to outlaw the death penalty as an option.

Until only recently, when the Supreme Court forbade it, American courts were even executing the mentally retarded and juveniles, employing the Connecticut rationale that the crime was too heinous.

As a reporter, whenever I interviewed a murder victim’s surviving parents or spouse, it was clear they passionately wanted an eye for an eye.

A Connecticut friend, an educated physician, said she wanted Hayes and his partner to die. When I exclaimed, “That’s revenge!” my doctor friend said, “That’s right!”

A Vengeful Society

There is no question as to the grievous injustice a victim’s family suffers. And there is no question as to the moral wrong of murder and base criminality. But awful crimes can also be committed when vengeance masquerades as justice. And revenge has become our drug of choice.

In 2003, in Nineveh Province in Iraq, an officer in the 101st Airborne pointed to one of his men and in a hushed tone said, that soldier “wants to be here because he lost family in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.” I was led to understand that this soldier eagerly killed more than a few Iraqis to avenge the death of kin, despite the fact Iraqis had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. It would seem Iraqis are Muslims, and that seemed to slake his need for vengeance.

But American politics, too, is riddled with a quest for vengeance. The recent midterm elections were rife with a strong element of revenge. The tea party was out to punish President Obama because he hasn’t mended everything they think is wrong with America. In recent years, Republicans wanted vengeance because they felt a sense of entitlement to the White House.

Speaking to the Heritage Foundation shortly after the election, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell articulated the Republicans’ chief goal: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Justice or Revenge?

We are assailed on every front by subtle attempts to legitimize vengeance. Watching an NFL football game on TV, I saw a commercial for “Faster,” a new movie featuring a big dude--Dwayne Johnson (The Rock)--with a huge gun. He announces that he is going to avenge the killing of his brother. A voice says “They’re going after everyone on his list.” Johnson then intones, “God can’t save you from me.”

I rather thought that in democratic societies justice is meted out in the courts. Does no one remember that law is the glue that holds societies together? Individual score-settling is a criminal act.

Only a Hollywood film? No, it’s art imitating life. The Associated Press recently reported that administrative judges who hear Social Security disability cases have faced more than 80 threats in the past year from disgruntled claimants “angry over being denied benefits or frustrated at lengthy delays in processing claims.” The same Social Security vigilantes also target the judges’ families.

People may have strong feelings about the need for Connecticut to execute Hayes for murder, but let’s be honest: Capital punishment is itself about killing. It is a conjoined twin of vengeance, which is blatantly immoral. Do we really find any moral high ground in executing someone for murder, especially when we do not need to kill to punish them?

A juror who voted for the death penalty in the Connecticut trial wrestled with that question, clearly grasping the larger dilemma in matters of societal vengeance and the death penalty. Quoted in The New York Times, juror Ian Cassell said, “No one is happy. Nothing is better. Nothing is solved.”

Duhaime, Lloyd. "Death Penalty Definition." Duhaime.org - Bringing Legal Information To The World. Web. 04 May 2011. .

Death Penalty definition:

Also known as capital punishment, this is the most severe form of corporal punishment as it is requires law enforcement officers to kill the convicted offender.

Forms of the death penalty include hanging from the neck, gassing, firing squad and has included use of the guillotine.

Death Penalty

Is the death penalty effective?My research topic is going to be based on this controversial question. I know it's a morbid thought but I am unaware of my stance on the issue. I thought I always agreed with it to a point, until my father once asked me, "Could you kill another person for a living?" I honestly don't think  I could, I could not kill a person and go to bed at night without a guilty conscience. I will do my research and then discover where I really stand on the issue.