The death penalty can produce irreversible miscarriages of justice.

Against

Point:

Juries are imperfect¹, and increasing the stakes of the verdict can pervert justice in a couple of ways.
First, implementation of the death penalty is often impacted by jury members' social, gender-based or racial biases², disproportionately impacting certain victimized groups in society and adding a certain arbitrariness to the justice system. A 2005 study found that the death penalty was three to four times more common amongst those who killed whites than those who killed African Americans or Latinos, while those who kill women are three and a half times more likely to be executed than those who kill men².
Regional differences in attitudes towards the death penalty can also introduce elements of randomness into sentencing. For instance, in Illinois, a person is five times more likely to get a death sentence for first-degree murder in a rural area than in Cook County².
Finally, the fear of wrongful execution can also pervert justice by biasing juries towards returning an innocent verdict when they would otherwise be deemed guilty³. When they are told that the consequence of a guilty verdict is death, they are likely to find some kind of reasonable doubt to avoid being responsible for the death of that criminal. This means that more criminals who would've otherwise been convicted do not get charged. In this sense the death penalty can pervert the goals of justice and prolong the difficult process for victims' families.
¹ "Saving Lives and Money." The Economist. March 12, 2009. Accessed June 5, 2011. [8]
²Turow [9], Scot. "To kill or not to kill," The New Yorker, January 6, 2003. Accessed June 3, 2011, [9]
³ Death Penalty Information Center. Accessed June 8, 2011. [11]

Counterpoint:

The fact that juries are prone to several biases is not a flaw inherent or unique to capital punishment.
If there are racial or prejudicial issues in sentencing, these are likely to present themselves just as often in cases where the punishment is life in prison. It is equally problematic for people to die or spend decades in jails for crimes they did not commit. These errors suggest that the judicial process may need some reform, not that the death penalty should be abolished. Implementation errors that result in discrimination can and should be corrected.
Moreover, there is little evidence that these biases are even present in most death penalty cases¹. A study funded by the National Institute of Justice in the US found that differences in sentencing for white and non-white victims disappeared when the heinousness of the crimes were factored into the study¹. Thus, factors relating to the crime, not the race, of the accused accounted for some of the purported racial disparities that were found.
Finally, jurors must be "death- qualified" in such cases, meaning that they are comfortable sentencing someone to death should the fact indicate their guilt². Thus, it is unlikely that many jurors will abstain from a guilty verdict because they are uncomfortable with the death penalty.
¹ Muhlhausen, David. "The Death Penalty Deters Crime and Saves Lives," August 28,2007. Accessed June 5, 2011. [12]
² Haney, Craig. "Juries and the Death Penalty." Crime and Delinquency. Vol 26 no 4. October 1980. [13]

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 965