Brendan Sileo

 

Brendan Sileo’s Thoughts on the Death Penalty

 

The death penalty should not be used as a punishment for criminals. Not because it is too harsh, but because it is inadequate. Punishments such as life in prison are more effective. It also has the advantage of being much cheaper than the death penalty. There are no reasons to use the death penalty other than because of old traditions from our countries inception.

The death penalty  has been used as a way to punish criminals who have committed terrible crimes such as murder and rape. It is seen as the highest form of punishment, with the next step down being life in prison. However, no matter how effective the death penalty seems as a punishment, it has some very glaring flaws. The death penalty should not be used as a punishment because there are worse punishments for the worst of criminals, there are no societal gains from using the death penalty, it is the most expensive form of punishment, and there is the ever present possibility of killing an innocent man or woman.

To most people, death is the worst thing that could happen to a person. You lose your life, your chance to experience the world and everything in it. According to some people, death is not actually the pinnacle of punishment. According to William Blake, a prisoner for 26 years, this is not true. He told a reporter that “If I try to imagine what kind of death, even a slow one, would be worse than twenty-five years in the box — and I have tried to imagine it — I can come up with nothing.” William didn’t even have a life sentence, and he was wishing for death during his sentence. Why would a someone with a life sentence want something different? Compared to the life of confinement suffered by prisoners for life, death would be like releasing them from their punishment. Suicide is the 5th most common cause of death in all state prisoners, and the leading cause for inmates under 35. The amount of prisoners that prefer to kill themselves instead of spending any more time confined shows how much better a punishment life in jail is compared to the death penalty. In The Stranger, the main characters Meursault is in jail for a murder and says that he “felt […] that [his] life was coming to a standstill there” and that he was often “gripping the bars, [his] face straining toward the light.” This shows the torture that prisoners go through while in jail, forced to deal with that fact that as the world goes on, their life is reduced to only a small box of cement and metal bars. It is similar to how death robs you of the rest of your life, except life in prison makes sure that you stay alive so that you know it. The death penalty, if anything, allows these criminals to escape their punishment, while prison makes them live it for the rest of their life.

One of the largest arguments in favor of the death penalty is that the possibility of death for their crimes is a much better deterrent than the threat of imprisonment. Although this may be a viable claim, it is not as true as it seems. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), there are many reasons why the death penalty is not a good deterrent. One of them is that “a punishment can be an effective deterrent only if it is consistently and promptly”. Very few of first-degree murderers are given the death penalty, and even fewer of them are actually executed, with most of them being changed to life in prison. With such a small group of people actually being sentenced to death, a criminal allowing that to control their actions would be similar to a skydiver not skydiving to avoid the possibility of being hit by a falling meteor. The ACLU also says that “most capital crimes are committed in the heat of the moment”. In such a situation that would make a person commit a crime such as murder (an extremely heated argument, drugs, alcohol, etc) they are not thinking in a way that allows them to understand the consequences. In The Stranger,  Meursault kills the Arab at a time when he is experiencing great emotional stress, which can be seen when he says “That’s when everything began to reel. The sea carried up a thick, fiery breath. It seemed to me as if the sky had split open from one end to the other to rain down fire. My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver.” Meursault was obviously not thinking about the possibility of any punishment, let alone the death penalty. In some cases, the threat of the death penalty actually increases the amount of murders that occur in an area. This is because “a return to the exercise of the death penalty weakens socially based inhibitions against the use of lethal force to settle disputes” meaning that when the government uses death as a punishment, it makes the idea of using lethal force to resolve arguments and disputes much easier to reach.

A common opinion about the death penalty is that it is much cheaper than life in prison, so it makes sense to use the death penalty to waste less money, however, the death penalty is more expensive than one would think. It costs millions more than life in prison. For example, the Death Penalty Information Center says that “Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole.” This is because since the death penalty is permanent, and punishing the wrong person can not be taken back, there are many more trials and appeals before the actual punishment is given. This to more jail time, with some inmates on death row spending “well over 20 years” waiting for their punishment. While that is not as long as life in prison, the amount of trials that happen during this time are much higher, costing the state millions of dollars per inmate. In addition to these costs, many of them later end up either released or sentenced with life in prison anyway. Since 2000, 59 death row inmates have been exonerated in the United States alone. That’s almost 10 percent of the inmates who have actually been executed.

Human judgement is not infallible. The advantage of most criminal punishments is that it can always be reversed by releasing them from prison. The death penalty is different in that it is the only punishment that is irreversible. If the government executes and innocent man there is no taking it back. According to the ACLU, “ there have been on the average more than four cases each year in which an entirely innocent person was convicted of murder.” Many of these individuals were not found innocent until after they died. The fact that innocent people have the chance to die makes the death penalty a very difficult idea to support. Until our societies ability to determine who actually committed a murder or other crime is improved to be 100% correct, it is not ethically permissible to continue issuing the death penalty.

The death penalty is not a viable option for punishing criminals. There are too many variables to consider. With the possibility of ending the life of an innocent person combined with the incredible costs of this form of punishment, life in prison is a much better option for punishing the harshest of criminals.