III ER (Șveduneac Mihaela Elena, Cozma Simira Anișoara, Cozachevici

Alexandra și Duduman Adina)

Death Penalty, an inadequate punishement

Death penalty is a capital punishment given by a court of law for very

serious crimes, like murder. Death penalty was reinstated in United States of
America in 1976. At that time the Supreme Court left open the possibility of
imposing the death penalty for offenses other than murder, such as armed robbery.
Out of the 50 States, only 29 use Death Penalty and since 1976, 1506 people were
executed. The main method of execution is the lethal injection, but there were other
methods, like electrocution, lethal gas, hanging, and firing squad used as well. In
this essay we will prove that death penalty is a costly, cruel and inhumane
punishment, with long lasting psychological effects, which should be abolished.
Human life is sacred and it is morally wrong to take another life. This fact
doesn’t change in the case of those who commit murder. Their life is sacred too and
just as we cannot teach that stealing is wrong by stealing, just as well we cannot
teach that killing is wrong by killing. A Poll in 2010 done by Lake Research
Partners proves that the majority of voters (61%) would choose a punishment other
than the death penalty for murder. And it is rightly so, because using death penalty
it robs the offender the right to change and one of the roles of prisons is to help
restore the people. Another thing to take into consideration is that death penalty is
irreversible. Therefore it can be used on the wrong person and an innocent person
can be put to death unjustly. According to Death Penalty Information Center, 166
people were exonerated and freed from death row, such as on the basis of DNA
evidence. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 1506
individuals have been executed in the U.S. It is difficult to know for sure how many
innocent people have been executed, but it appears at least 15 have. Therefore, at
least 15 people were wrongly accused and unjustly deprived of their right to live.
Also, taking the life of a murderer is a disproportionate punishment, especially in
light of the fact that the U.S. executes only a small percentage of those convicted of
murder, and these defendants are typically not the worst offenders, but merely the
ones with the fewest resources to defend themselves. (Șveduneac Mihaela Elena)
 Something else to take into consideration is the financial issue when it comes
to death penalty. Death penalty is far more expensive than a system utilizing life-
without-parole sentences as an alternative punishment. Many death penalty cases
involve a long, drawn out, complex, and expensive judicial process. Therefore,
some of the reasons for the high cost of the death penalty are the longer trials and
appeals required when a person’s life is on the line the need for more lawyers and
experts on both sides of the case, and the relative rarity of executions. As a
conservative estimate, it costs $137 million per year for death penalty vs. life
sentence without parole - about 12 times more. And the gap is increasing over time
as the amount of time between sentencing and execution increases. 
Also, it was proved that death penalty targets the poor. According to Death
Penalty Information Center, of the 22,000 murders that occur each year in the U.S.,
about 1% results in death sentences. This 1% depends largely on the effectiveness
of the attorney, which often depends on how much money the accused has. Even
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said: “People who are well
represented at trial do not get the death penalty.” Ginsburg also criticized the
"meager" amount of money spent to defend poor people. OJ Simpson's lawyer—
who received $5 million for defending him—said, "In the U.S., you're better off, if
you're in the system, being guilty and rich than being innocent and poor.”
Therefore, there are no billionaires or millionaires on death row. (Cozma Simira
Anișoara)

Another thing to take into consideration is the psychological impact on the jurors,
governors, executioners, and the victim’s family and convicts family. Death penalty
does not represent only the consequence of the murderer, the one who committed
the crime, but also it involves and collateral damage. Jurors, who must decide
whether a defendant should live or die, have to live with their decisions for the rest
of their lives, they are unrecognized victims of the death penalty.  Like many of the
capital jurors, who stated that they often “regretted” the life and death decisions
they made as jurors, some Supreme Court justices have also looked back with
regret. Also, some family members of murder victims feel that a death
sentence will provide closure. But death penalty court proceedings can drag out for
years, which prolongs their pain. By contrast, a life sentence is swift and certain,
allowing families to move on.
 For example, The Capital Jury Project interviewed 1,198 jurors from 353 capital
trials in 14 states and found that 81% of female jurors and 18% of male jurors
regretted their decisions, and 63% of female jurors and 38% of male jurors
sought counseling after the trial. As the former superintendent of the Oregon State
Penitentiary said, "After each execution, I had staff members who decided they did
not want to be asked to serve in that capacity again. Others quietly sought
employment elsewhere. A few told me they were having trouble sleeping, and I
worried they would develop post-traumatic stress disorder if they had to go through
it another time." (Cozachevici Alexandra)

Some scholars argue that a sufficient justification for legal executions is

retribution. According to the retributive doctrine, all the individuals that commit
certain kinds of wrongful acts, paradigmatically serious crimes, morally deserve to
suffer a proportionate punishment1. Ernest van den Haag states that “Retribution is
to restore an objective order rather than to satisfy a subjective craving for
revenge."2 This statement emphasizes the retributivists’ opinion that a retributive
punishment is not uncontrolled vengeance, but rather it is punishment prescribed
and administered in accordance with law, which is to say a legal punishment. In
other words, death penalty is necessary in order to support real justice. However,
there is no actual utilitarian value of this kind of punishment giving the fact that
there is no evidence that death penalty is deterrent to murder. So what is the
effectiveness of an execution if it is applied only for the sake of punishing? The
retributive argument in favor of death penalty invalidates the basis for human rights
which are inalienable, so they apply to each of us. By taking the life of a murderer,
he/she is deprived of the right to rehabilitate. (Duduman Adina)

Bibliography
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/ (Accessed on 09-12-2019)
Edited by Radelet, Michael L., Facing the Death Penalty, Temple University Press,
Philadelphia, 1989
Meltsner, Michael, Cruel and unusual: the Supreme Court and capital punishment, Quid
Pro Books, New Orleans, 2011
Stern, Vivien, Creating Criminals, Zed Books Ltd, New York, 2013
Prime, Megatron, Death Penalty, Smashwords, 2017