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The research on capital punishment: Recent scholarship and unresolved questions

2014 review of research on capital punishment, including studies that attempt to quantify rates of innocence and the potential deterrence effect on crime.

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by Alexandra Raphel and John Wihbey, The Journalist's Resource January 5, 2015

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Over the past year the death penalty has again come into focus as a major public policy and political issue, catalyzed by several high-profile events.

The botched execution of convicted murderer and rapist Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in 2014 was seen as a potential turning point in the debate, bringing increased attention to the mechanisms by which persons are executed. That was followed by a number of other closely scrutinized cases, and the year ended with few executions relative to years past. On December 31, 2014, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley commuted the sentences of the remaining four prisoners on death row in that state. In 2013, Maryland became the 18th state to abolish the death penalty after Connecticut in 2012 and New Mexico in 2009.

Meanwhile, polling data suggests some softening of public attitudes, though the majority Americans continue to support capital punishment. Gallop noted in October 2014 that the level of public support (60%) is at its lowest in 40 years. A Washington Post -ABC News poll in mid-2014 found that more Americans support life sentences, rather than the death penalty, for convicted murderers. Further, recent polls from the Pew Research Center indicate that only a bare majority of Americans now support capital punishment, 55%, down from 78% in 1996.

Scholarly research sheds light on a number of important aspects of this issue:

False convictions

One key reason for the contentious debate is the concern that states are executing innocent people. How many people are unjustly facing the death penalty? By definition, it is difficult to obtain a reliable answer to this question. Presumably if judges, juries, and law enforcement were always able to conclusively determine who was innocent, those defendants would simply not be convicted in the first place. When capital punishment is the sentence, however, this issue takes on new importance.

Some believe that when it comes to death-penalty cases, this is not a huge cause for concern. In his concurrent opinion in the 2006 Supreme Court case Kansas v. Marsh , Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that the execution error rate was minimal, around 0.027%. However, a 2014 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the figure could be higher. Authors Samuel Gross (University of Michigan Law School), Barbara O’Brien (Michigan State University College of Law), Chen Hu (American College of Radiology) and Edward H. Kennedy (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) examine data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Justice relating to exonerations from 1973 to 2004 in an attempt to estimate the rate of false convictions among death row defendants. (Determining innocence with full certainty is an obvious challenge, so as a proxy they use exoneration — “an official determination that a convicted defendant is no longer legally culpable for the crime.”) In short, the researchers ask: If all death row prisoners were to remain under this sentence indefinitely, how many of them would have eventually been found innocent (exonerated)?

Interestingly, the authors also note that advances in DNA identification technology are unlikely to have a large impact on false conviction rates because DNA evidence is most often used in cases of rape rather than homicide. To date, only about 13% of death row exonerations were the result of DNA testing. The Innocence Project , a litigation and public policy organization founded in 1992, has been deeply involved in many such cases.

Death penalty deterrence effects: What do we know?

A chief way proponents of capital punishment defend the practice is the idea that the death penalty deters other people from committing future crimes. For example, research conducted by John J. Donohue III (Yale Law School) and Justin Wolfers (University of Pennsylvania) applies economic theory to the issue: If people act as rational maximizers of their profits or well-being, perhaps there is reason to believe that the most severe of punishments would serve as a deterrent. (The findings of their 2009 study on this issue, “Estimating the Impact of the Death Penalty on Murder,” are inconclusive.) In contrast, one could also imagine a scenario in which capital punishment leads to an increased homicide rate because of a broader perception that the state devalues human life. It could also be possible that the death penalty has no effect at all because information about executions is not diffused in a way that influences future behavior.

In 1978 — two years after the Supreme Court issued its decision reversing a previous ban on the death penalty ( Gregg v. Georgia ) — the National Research Council (NRC) published a comprehensive review of the current research on capital punishment to determine whether one of these hypotheses was more empirically supported than the others. The NRC concluded that “available studies provide no useful evidence on the deterrent effect of capital punishment.”

Researchers have subsequently used a number of methods in an effort to get closer to an accurate estimate of the deterrence effect of the death penalty. Many of the studies have reached conflicting conclusions, however. To conduct an updated review, the NRC formed the Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty, comprised of academics from economics departments and public policy schools from institutions around the country, including the Carnegie Mellon University, University of Chicago and Duke University.

In 2012, the Committee published an updated report that concluded that not much had changed in recent decades: “Research conducted in the 30 years since the earlier NRC report has not sufficiently advanced knowledge to allow a conclusion, however qualified, about the effect of the death penalty on homicide rates.” The report goes on to recommend that none of the reviewed reports be used to influence public policy decisions on the death penalty.

Why has the research not been able to provide any definitive answers about the impact of the death penalty? One general challenge is that when it comes to capital punishment, a counter-factual policy is simply not observable. You cannot simultaneously execute and not execute defendants, making it difficult to isolate the impact of the death penalty. The Committee also highlights a number of key flaws in the research designs:

• There are both capital and non-capital punishment options for people charged with serious crimes. So, the relevant question on the deterrent effect of capital punishment specifically “is the differential deterrent effect of execution in comparison with the deterrent effect of other available or commonly used penalties.” None of the studies reviewed by the Committee took into account these severe, but noncapital punishments, which could also have an effect on future behaviors and could confound the estimated deterrence effect of capital punishment.
• “They use incomplete or implausible models of potential murderers’ perceptions of and response to the capital punishment component of a sanction regime”
• “The existing studies use strong and unverifiable assumptions to identify the effects of capital punishment on homicides.”

In a 2012 study, “Deterrence and the Dealth Penalty: Partial Identificaiton Analysis Using Repeated Cross Sections,” authors Charles F. Manski (Northwestern University) and John V. Pepper (University of Virginia) focus on the third challenge. They note: “Data alone cannot reveal what the homicide rate in a state without (with) a death penalty would have been had the state (not) adopted a death penalty statute. Here, as always when analyzing treatment response, data must be combined with assumptions to enable inference on counterfactual outcomes.”

However, even though the authors do not arrive at a definitive conclusion, the National Research Council Committee notes that this type of research holds some value: “Rather than imposing the strong but unsupported assumptions required to identify the effect of capital punishment on homicides in a single model or an ad hoc set of similar models, approaches that explicitly account for model uncertainty may provide a constructive way for research to provide credible albeit incomplete answers.”

Another strategy researchers have taken is to limit the focus of studies on potential short-term effects of the death penalty. In a 2009 paper, “The Short-Term Effects of Executions on Homicides: Deterrence, Displacement, or Both?” authors Kenneth C. Land and Hui Zheng of Duke University, along with Raymond Teske Jr. of Sam Houston State University, examine monthly execution data (1980-2005) from Texas, “a state that has used the death penalty with sufficient frequency to make possible relatively stable estimates of the homicide response to executions.” They conclude that “evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the months of or after executions.” Depending on which model they use, these deterrent effects range from 1.6 to 2.5 homicides.

The NRC’s Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty commented on the findings, explaining: “Land, Teske and Zheng (2009) should be commended for distinguishing between periods in Texas when the use of capital punishment appears to have been erratic and when it appears to have been systematic. But they fail to integrate this distinction into a coherently delineated behavioral model that incorporates sanctions regimes, salience, and deterrence. And, as explained above, their claims of evidence of deterrence in the systematic regime are flawed.”

A more recent paper (2012) from the three authors, “The Differential Short-Term Impacts of Executions on Felony and Non-Felony Homicides,” addresses some of these concerns. Published in Criminology and Public Policy , the paper reviews and updates some of their earlier findings by exploring “what information can be gained by disaggregating the homicide data into those homicides committed in the course of another felony crime, which are subject to capital punishment, and those committed otherwise.” The results produce a number of different findings and models, including that “the short-lived deterrence effect of executions is concentrated among non-felony-type homicides.”

Other factors to consider

The question of what kinds of “mitigating” factors should prevent the criminal justice system from moving forward with an execution remains hotly disputed. A 2014 paper published in the Hastings Law Journal , “The Failure of Mitigation?” by scholars at the University of North Carolina and DePaul University, investigates recent executions of persons with possible mental or intellectual disabilities. The authors reviewed 100 cases and conclude that the “overwhelming majority of executed offenders suffered from intellectual impairments, were barely into adulthood, wrestled with severe mental illness, or endured profound childhood trauma.”

Two significant recommendations for reforming the existing process also are supported by some academic research. A 2010 study by Pepperdine University School of Law published in Temple Law Review , “Unpredictable Doom and Lethal Injustice: An Argument for Greater Transparency in Death Penalty Decisions,” surveyed the decision-making process among various state prosecutors. At the request of a state commission, the authors first surveyed California district attorneys; they also examined data from the other 36 states that have the death penalty. The authors found that prosecutors’ capital punishment filing decisions remain marked by local “idiosyncrasies,” meaning that “the very types of unfairness that the Supreme Court sought to eliminate” beginning in 1972 may still “infect capital cases.” They encourage “requiring prosecutors to adhere to an established set of guidelines.” Finally, there has been growing support for taping interrogations of suspects in capital cases, so as to guard against the phenomenon of false confessions .

Related reading: For an international perspective on capital punishment, see Amnesty International’s 2013 report ; for more information on the evolution of U.S. public opinion on the death penalty, see historical trends from Gallup .

Keywords: crime, prisons, death penalty, capital punishment

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Alexandra Raphel

John Wihbey

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Article Contents

Imperatives, acknowledgements.

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A Factful Perspective on Capital Punishment

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David T Johnson, A Factful Perspective on Capital Punishment, Journal of Human Rights Practice , Volume 11, Issue 2, July 2019, Pages 334–345, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huz018

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Substantial progress has been made towards worldwide abolition of capital punishment, and there are good reasons to believe that more progress is possible. Since 2000, the pace of abolition has slowed, but by several measures the number of executions in the world has continued to decline. Several causes help explain the decline, including political leadership from the front and an increased tendency to regard capital punishment as a human rights issue rather than as a matter of domestic criminal justice policy. There are significant obstacles in the movement to eliminate state killing in the world, but some strategies could contribute to additional decline in the years to come.

People tend to notice the bad more than the good, and this ‘negativity instinct’ is apparent when it comes to capital punishment ( Rosling et al. 2018 : 48). For example, two decades ago, Leon Radzinowicz (1999 : 293), the founder of Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology, declared that he ‘did not expect any substantial further decrease’ in the use of capital punishment because ‘most of the countries likely to embrace the abolitionist cause’ had already done so. In more recent years, other analysts have claimed that the human rights movement is in crisis, and that ‘nearly every country seems to be backsliding’ ( Moyn 2018 ). If this assessment is accurate, it should be cause for concern for opponents of capital punishment because a heightened regard for human rights is widely regarded as the key cause of abolition since the 1980s ( Hood and Hoyle 2009 ).

To be sure, everything is not fine with respect to capital punishment. Most notably, the pace of abolition has slowed in recent years, and executions have increased in several countries, including Iran and Taiwan (in the 2010s), Pakistan (2014–15), and Japan (2018). But too much negativity will not do. I adopt a factful perspective about the future of capital punishment: I see substantial progress toward worldwide abolition, and this gives me hope that further progress is possible ( Rosling et al. 2018 ).

This article builds on Roger Hood’s seminal study of the movement to abolish capital punishment, which found ‘a remarkable increase in the number of abolitionist countries’ in the 1980s and 1990s ( Hood 2001 : 331). It proceeds in four parts. Section 1 shows that in the two decades or so since 2000 the pace of abolition has slowed but not ceased, and the total number of executions in the world has continued to decline. Section 2 explains how death penalty declines have been achieved in recent years. Section 3 identifies obstacles in the movement toward elimination of state killing in the modern world. And Section 4 suggests some priorities and strategies that could contribute to additional decline in the death penalty in the third decade of the third millennium.

These examples exclude estimates for the People’s Republic of China, which does not disclose reliable death penalty figures, but which probably executes more people each year than the rest of the world combined.

Table 1 displays the number of countries with each of these four death penalty statuses in five years: 1988, 1995, 2000, 2007, and 2017. Overall, the percentage of countries to retain capital punishment has declined by half over that period, from 56 per cent in 1988 to 28 per cent in 2017. But Table 2 shows that the pace of abolition has slowed since the 1990s, when 37 countries abolished. By comparison, only 23 countries abolished in the 2000s, with 11 more countries abolishing in the first eight years of the 2010s. The pace of abolition has declined partly because much of the lowest hanging fruit has already been picked.

Number of abolitionist and retentionist countries, 1988–2017

Note : Figures in parentheses show the percentage of the total number of countries in the world in that year.

Sources : Hood 2001 : 334 (for 1988, 1995, and 2000); Amnesty International annual reports (for 2007 and 2017).

Number of Countries That Abolished the Death Penalty by Decade, 1980s – 2010s

Sources : Death Penalty Information Center; Amnesty International annual reports.

Table 3 uses Hood’s figures for 1980 to 1999 ( Hood 2001 : 335) and figures from Hands Off Cain and Amnesty International to report the estimated number of executions and death sentences worldwide from 1980 to 2017. Because several countries (including China, the world’s leading user of capital punishment) do not disclose reliable death penalty statistics, the figures in Table 3 cannot be considered precise measures of death sentencing and execution trends over time, but the numbers do suggest recent declines. For instance, the average number of death sentences per year in the 2010s (2,220) was less than half the annual average for the 2000s (4,576). Similarly, the average number of executions per year in the 2010s (867) was less than half the annual average for the 2000s (1,762). Moreover, while the average number of countries per year to impose a death sentence remained fairly flat in the four decades covered in Table 3 (58 countries in the 1980s, 68 in the 1990s, 56 in the 2000s, and 58 in the 2010s), the average number of countries per year which carried out an execution declined by about one-third, from averages of 37 countries in the 1980s and 35 countries in the 1990s, to 25 countries in the 2000s and 23 countries in the 2010s. In short, fewer countries are using capital punishment, and fewer people are being condemned to death and executed.

Number of death sentences and executions worldwide, 1980–2017

Notes : (a) The numbers of reported and recorded death sentences and executions are minimum figures, and the true totals are substantially higher. (b) In 2009, Amnesty International stopped publishing estimates of the minimum number of executions per year in China.

Sources : Hood 2001 : 335 (1980–1999); Hands Off Cain (2001); Amnesty International annual reports (2002–2017).

In 2001, Hood (2001 : 336) reported that 26 countries had executed at least 20 persons in the five-year period 1994–1998. Table 4 compares those figures with figures for the same 26 countries in 2013–2017, and it also presents the annual rate of execution per million population for each country (in parentheses). The main pattern is striking decline. In 2009, Amnesty International stopped publishing estimates of the minimum number of executions per year in the People’s Republic of China, so trend evidence from that source is unavailable, but other sources indicate that executions in China have declined dramatically in the past two decades, from 15,000 or more per year in the late 1990s and early 2000s ( Johnson and Zimring 2009 : 237), to approximately 2,400 in 2013 ( Grant 2014 ) and 2,000 or so in 2016. Of the other 25 countries in Hood’s list of heavy users of capital punishment in the 1990s, 11 saw executions disappear (Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Congo, Sierra Leone, Kyrgyzstan, South Korea, Libya, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe), eight had the execution rate decline by half or more (USA, Nigeria, Singapore, Belarus, Taiwan, Yemen, Jordan, Afghanistan), and two experienced more modest declines (Saudi Arabia and Egypt). Altogether, 22 of the 26 heavy users of capital punishment in the latter half of the 1990s have experienced major declines in executions. Of the remaining four countries, one (Japan) saw its execution rate remain stable until executions surged when 13 former members of Aum Shinrikyo were hanged in July 2018 (for murders and terrorist attacks committed in the mid-1990s), while three (Iran, Pakistan, and Viet Nam) experienced sizeable increases in both executions and execution rates.

Executions and execution rates by country, 1994–1998 and 2013–2017

a The figure of 429 executions for Viet Nam is for the three years from August 2013 to July 2016.

Notes: Countries reported to have executed at least 20 persons in 1994–1998, and execution figures for the same countries in 2013–2017 (with annual rates of execution per million population for both periods in parentheses).

As explained in the text, in addition to the 26 countries that appeared in Table 3 of Hood (2001 : 336), India had at least 24 judicial executions in 1994–1998, Indonesia had four, and Iraq had an unknown number. The comparable figures for these countries in 2013–2017 (with the execution rate per million population in parentheses) are India = 2 (0.0003), Indonesia = 23 (0.09), and Iraq = 469 (2.78).

Sources : Hood 2001 : 336 (1994–1998); Amnesty International (2013–2017); the Death Penalty Database of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide (for India, Indonesia, and Iraq); Johnson and Zimring 2009 : 430 (for India 1994–1998).

The execution rate increases in Table 4 are striking but exceptional. In Iran, the fourfold increase in the execution rate gives it the highest per capita execution rate in the world for 2013–2017, with 6.68 executions per million population per year. This is approximately four times higher than the estimated execution rate for China (1.5) in the same period. The increase in Viet Nam is also fourfold, from 0.38 executions per million population per year to 1.5, while the increase in Pakistan is tenfold, from 0.05 to 0.49. Nonetheless, Viet Nam’s substantially increased execution rate in the 2010s would not have ranked it among the top ten executing nations in the 1990s, while Pakistan’s increased rate in the 2010s would not have ranked it among the top 15 nations in the 1990s. Even among the heaviest users of capital punishment, times have changed.

At least two countries that did not appear on Hood’s heavy user list for the 1990s executed more than 20 people in 2013–2017. The most notable newcomer is Iraq, which executed at least 469 persons in this five-year period, with an execution rate of 2.78 per million population per year. And then there is Indonesia. In the five years from 1994 to 1998, this country (with the world’s largest Muslim population) executed a total of four people, while in 2013–2017 the number increased to 23, giving it an execution rate of 0.09 per year per million population—about the same as the (low) execution rates in Japan and Taiwan.

When Iraq and Indonesia are added to the heavy user list for 2013–2017, only five countries out of 28 have execution rates that exceed one execution per year per million population, giving them death penalty systems that can be deemed ‘operational’ in the sense that ‘judicial executions are a recurrent and important part’ of their criminal justice systems ( Johnson and Zimring 2009 : 22). By contrast, in 1994–1998, 14 of these 28 countries had death penalty systems that were ‘operational’.

India is a country with a large population that does not appear on the frequent executing list for either the 1990s or the 2010s. In 2013–2017, this country of 1.3 billion people executed only two people, giving it what is probably the lowest execution rate (0.0003) among the 56 countries that currently retain capital punishment. India has long used judicial execution infrequently, but its police and security forces continue to kill in large numbers. In the 22 years from 1996 through 2017, India’s legal system hanged only four people, giving it an annual rate of execution that is around 1/25,000th the rate of executions in China. But over the same period, India’s police and security forces have killed thousands illegally and extrajudicially, many in ‘encounters’ that officials try to justify with the lie that the bad guy fired first.

Two fundamental forces have been driving the death penalty down in recent decades ( Johnson and Zimring 2009 : 290–304). First, while prosperity is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for abolition, economic development does tend to encourage declines in judicial execution and steps toward the cessation of capital punishment. Second, the general political orientation of government often has a strong influence on death penalty policy, at both ends of the execution spectrum. High-execution rate nations tend to be authoritarian, as in China, Viet Nam, North Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq. Conversely, low-execution rate nations tend to be democracies with institutionalized limits on governmental power, as in most of the countries of Europe and in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Korea, and India. Of course, these are tendencies, not natural laws. Exceptions exist, including the USA at the high end of the execution spectrum, and Myanmar and Nepal at the low end.

In addition to economic development and democratization, concerns about wrongful convictions and the execution of innocents have made some governments more cautious about capital punishment. In the USA, for example, the discovery of innocence has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to sharp declines in the use of capital punishment by prosecutors and juries across the country ( Baumgartner et al. 2008 ; Garrett 2017 ). In China, too, wrongful convictions and executions help explain both declines in the use of capital punishment and legal reforms of the institution ( He 2016 ).

The question of capital punishment is fundamentally a matter of human rights, not an isolated issue of criminal justice policy.

Death penalty policy should not be governed by national priorities but by adherence to international human rights standards.

Since capital punishment is never justified, a national government may demand that other nations’ governments end executions. ( Zimring 2003 : 27)

As the third premise of this orthodoxy suggests, political pressure has contributed to the decline of capital punishment. This influence has been especially striking in Europe, where abolition of capital punishment is an explicit and absolute condition for becoming a member of the European Union. In other countries, too, from Singapore and South Korea to Rwanda and Sierra Leone, the missionary zeal of European governments committed to abolition has led to the elimination of capital punishment or to major declines in its usage.

Political leadership has also fostered the death penalty’s decline. There are few iron rules of abolition, but one seems to be that when the death penalty is eliminated, it invariably happens despite the fact of majority public support for the institution at the time of abolition. This—‘leadership from the front’—is such a common pattern, and public resistance to abolition is so stubborn, that some analysts believe ‘the straightest road to abolition involves bypassing public opinion entirely’ ( Hammel 2010 : 236). There appear to be at least two political circumstances in which the likelihood of leadership from the front rises and the use of capital punishment falls ( Zimring 2003 : 22): after the collapse of an authoritarian government, when new leaders aim to distance themselves from the repressive practices of the previous regime (as in West Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Cambodia, and Timor Leste); and after a left-liberal party gains control of government (as in Austria, Great Britain, France, South Korea, and Taiwan).

Although use of the death penalty continues to decline, there are countervailing forces that continue to present obstacles to abolition, as they have for decades. First and foremost, there is an argument about national sovereignty made by many states, that death penalty policy and practice are not human rights issues but rather matters of criminal justice policy that should be decided domestically, according to the values and traditions of each individual country. There is the role of religion—especially Islamic beliefs, where in some countries and cultures it is held that capital punishment must not be opposed because it has been divinely ordained. There are claims that capital punishment deters criminal behaviour and drug trafficking, though there is little evidence to support this view ( National Research Council 2012 ; Muramatsu et al. 2018 ). And there is the continued use of capital punishment in the USA, which helps to legitimate capital punishment in other countries ( Hood 2001 : 339–44).

The death penalty also survives in some places because it performs welcome functions for some interests. For instance, following the Arab Spring movements of 2010–2012, Egypt and other Middle Eastern governments employed capital punishment against many anti-government demonstrators and dissenters. In other retentionist countries, capital punishment has little to do with its instrumental value for government and crime control and much to do with the fact that it is ‘productive, performative, and generative—that it makes things happen—even if much of what happens is in the cultural realm of death penalty discourse rather than the biological realm of life and death’ or the penological realms of retribution and deterrence ( Garland 2010 : 285). For elected officials, the death penalty is a political token to be used in electoral contests. For prosecutors and judges, it is a practical instrument that enables them to harness the rhetorical power of death in the pursuit of professional objectives. For the mass media, it is an arena in which dramas can be narrated about the human condition. And for the onlooking public, it is a vehicle for moral outrage and an opportunity for prurient entertainment.

In addition to these long-standing obstacles to abolition, several other impediments have emerged in recent years. Most notably, as populism spreads ( Luce 2017 ) and democracy declines in many parts of the world ( Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018 ), an ‘anti-human rights agenda’ is forcing human rights proponents to rethink their assumptions and re-evaluate their strategies ( Alston 2017 ). Much of the new populist threat to democracy is linked to post-9/11 concerns about terrorism, which have been exploited to justify trade-offs between democracy and security. Of course, we are not actually living in a new age of terrorism. If anything, we have experienced a decline in terrorism from the decades in which it was less of a big deal in our collective consciousness ( Pinker 2011 : 353). But emotionally and rhetorically, terrorism is very much a big deal in the present moment, and the cockeyed ratio of fear to harm that is fostered by its mediated representations has been used to buttress support for capital punishment in many countries, including the USA (the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995), Japan (the sarin gas attacks of 1994 and 1995), China (in Xinjiang and Tibet), India (the Mumbai attacks of 1993 and 2008 and the 2001 attack on the Parliament in New Delhi), and Iraq (where executions surged after the post-9/11 invasion by the USA, and where most persons executed have been convicted of terrorism). More broadly, the present political resonance of terrorism has resulted in some abolitionist states assisting with the use of capital punishment in retentionist nations ( Malkani 2013 ).

Some analysts believe that the ‘abolition of capital punishment in all countries of the world will ensure that the killing of citizens by the state will no longer have any legitimacy and so even more marginalize and stigmatize extra-judicial executions’ ( Hood and Hoyle 2008 : 6). Others claim that the abolition of capital punishment is ‘one of the great, albeit unfinished, triumphs of the post-Second World War human rights movement’ ( Hodgkinson 2004 : 1). But states kill extrajudicially too, and sometimes the scale so far exceeds the number of judicial executions that death penalty reductions and abolitions seem like small potatoes. The most striking example is occurring under President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines: thousands of extrajudicial executions in a country that abolished capital punishment (for the second time!) in 2006.The case of the Philippines illustrates a pattern that has been seen before and will be seen again in polities with weak law, strong executives, and fearful and frustrated citizens ( Johnson and Fernquest 2018 ). State killing often survives and sometimes thrives after capital punishment is abolished (as in Mexico, Brazil, Nepal, and Cambodia, among other countries). And in countries where capital punishment has not been abolished, extrajudicial executions are frequently carried out even after the number of judicial executions has fallen to near zero (as in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Thailand).

Despite these obstacles to abolition, the decline of capital punishment seems likely to continue in the years to come. The trajectory of this institution is shaped by political and cultural processes over which human rights practices have little influence ( Garland 2010 : Chapter 5), but priorities and strategies do matter. In this section I suggest five imperatives for the future.

First, opponents of capital punishment should recognize the limited importance of public opinion and the generally disappointing results of public education campaigns. There is in fact ‘no real evidence of a public relations campaign ever having had a significant, sustained effect on mass public opinion on capital punishment’ ( Hammel 2010 : 39). Such campaigns are not useless ( Singer 2016 ), but when they make a difference they usually do so by influencing the views of elites. To put the point a little differently, cultural change can stimulate death penalty reform, but the cultural shifts that matter most are those that operate ‘on and through state actors’ ( Garland 2010 : 143). This is where abolitionists should focus their efforts at persuasion.

Second, legal challenges to capital punishment should continue, for they have been effective in Africa, the former British colonies of the Caribbean, the USA, and many other countries (see the Death Penalty Project, https://www.deathpenaltyproject.org ). Moreover, legal challenges tend to be most effective when they come not from individual attorneys but from teams of attorneys and their non-attorney allies—social workers, scholars, mitigation investigators, and the like ( Garrett 2017 : Chapters 5–6). The basic strategy of successful teams is to ‘Make the law do what it promises. Make it be perfect’ ( Von Drehle 2006 : 196). One result is the growing recognition that state killing is incompatible with legal values. Another is a shift in focus from what the death penalty does for people to what it does to them. The evidence of the death penalty’s decline summarized in the first section of this article suggests that country after country has realized that retaining capital punishment breeds disrespect for law by exposing many of its shortcomings ( Sarat 2001 ). In some contexts, this recognition is best cultivated not by invoking ‘human rights’ as a ‘rhetorical ornament’ for anti-death penalty claims ( Dudai 2017 : 18), but simply by concentrating on what domestic law promises—and what it fails to deliver.

Third, research has contributed to the decline of capital punishment, both by undermining claims about its purported deterrent effects and by documenting flaws in its administration. In these ways, a growing empirical literature highlights ‘the lack of benefits associated with capital punishment and the burgeoning list of problems with its use’ ( Donohue 2016 : 53). Unfortunately, much of the available research concentrates on capital punishment in one country—the USA—which provides ‘a rather distorted and partial view of the death penalty’ worldwide ( Hood and Hoyle 2015 : 3). Going forward, scholars should explore questions about capital punishment in the many under-researched retentionist nations of Asia and the Middle East, and they should focus their dissemination efforts on the legal teams and governmental elites that have the capacity to challenge and change death penalty policy and practice, as described above in the first and second imperatives.

Fourth, abolition alone is not enough, in two senses. For one, it is not acceptable to replace capital punishment with a sentence of life without parole which is itself a cruel punishment that represents ‘life without hope’ and disrespect for human rights and human dignity ( Hood 2001 : 346). Moreover, when life without parole sentences are established, far more offenders tend to receive them than the number of offenders actually condemned to death. Overall, the advent of life without parole sometimes results in small to modest reductions in execution, but its main effect on the criminal process is ‘penal inflation’ ( Zimring and Johnson 2012 ). For most human rights practitioners, this is hardly a desirable set of outcomes. In addition, abolition is a hollow victory when extrajudicial executions continue or increase afterwards, yet this occurs often. The nexus between judicial and extrajudicial executions is poorly understood and much in need of further study, but the available evidence from countries such as Mexico and the Philippines suggests that ending judicial executions may do little to diminish state killing. In the light of this legal realism, a single-issue stress on abolishing capital punishment because it is inconsistent with human rights might well be considered more spectacle than substance ( Nagaraj 2017 : 23).

Finally, while the present moment is in some ways an ‘extraordinarily dangerous time’ for human rights advocates ( Alston 2017 : 14), there is room for optimism that the death penalty may be nearing the ‘end of its rope’ ( Garrett 2017 ). Overall, a factful consideration of contemporary capital punishment suggests that the situation in the world today is both bad and better ( Rothman 2018 ). A factful perspective on capital punishment also makes it reasonable to be a ‘possibilist’ about the future of this form of state killing ( Rosling et al. 2018 : 69). Substantial progress has been made toward worldwide abolition, and there are good reasons to believe that more progress is possible.

Special thanks to Professor Roger Hood for his foundational studies of the death penalty worldwide.

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Deterrence and the Death Penalty (2012)

Chapter: 1 introduction.

Introduction

I n 1976 the Supreme Court decision Gregg v. Georgia (428 U.S. 153) ended the 4-year moratorium on executions that had resulted from its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia (408 U.S. 238) . In Furman the Court had ruled that the death penalty, as then administered in the United States, constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. Then, in Gregg , it had ruled that the death penalty is not, in all circumstances, cruel and unusual punishment, thereby opening the way for states to revise their capital punishment statutes to conform to the requirements of Gregg .

In the immediate aftermath of Gregg, a National Research Council report reviewed the evidence relating to the deterrent effect of the death penalty that had been published through the mid-1970s. That review was highly critical of the available research, concluding (1978, p. 9):

The flaws in the earlier analyses finding no effect and the sensitivity of the more recent analysis to minor variations in model specification and the serious temporal instability of the results lead the panel to conclude that available studies provide no useful evidence on the deterrent effect of capital punishment.

THE CURRENT DEBATE

During the 35 years since Gregg , and particularly in the past decade, many studies have renewed the attempt to estimate the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates. Most researchers have used post- Gregg data from the United States to examine the statistical association between

homicide rates and the legal status or the actual implementation of the death penalty.

The studies have reached widely varying, even contradictory, conclusions, and commentary on the findings has sometimes been acrimonious. Some researchers have concluded that deterrent effects are large and robust across datasets and model specifications. For example, Dezhbakhsh, Rubin, and Shepherd (2003, p. 344) concluded that:

Our results suggest that capital punishment has a strong deterrent effect; each execution results, on average, in eighteen fewer murders with a margin of error of plus or minus ten. Tests show that results are not driven by tougher sentencing laws and are robust to many alternative specifications.

Similarly, Mocan and Gittings (2003, p. 453) stated the following:

The results show that each additional execution decreases homicides by about five, and each additional commutation increases homicides by the same amount, while an additional removal from death row generates one additional murder.

In 2004 testimony before Congress, Shepherd (2004, p. 1) summarized this line of evidence on the deterrent effect of capital punishment as follows:

Recent research on the relationship between capital punishment and crime has created a strong consensus among economists that capital punishment deters crime.

However, the claims that the evidence shows a substantial deterrent effect have been vigorously challenged. Kovandzic, Vieraitis, and Boots (2009, p. 803) concluded that:

Employing well-known econometric procedures for panel data analysis, our results provide no empirical support for the argument that the existence or application of the death penalty deters prospective offenders from committing homicide … policymakers should refrain from justifying its use by claiming that it is a deterrent to homicide and should consider less costly, more effective ways of addressing crime.

Others do not go so far as to claim that there is no deterrent effect, but instead argue that the findings supporting a deterrent effect are fragile, not robust. Donohue and Wolfers (2005, p. 794) reanalyzed several of the data sets used by the authors who claimed to have found robust deterrent effects and concluded that:

We find that the existing evidence for deterrence is surprisingly fragile, and even small changes in specifications yield dramatically different re-

sults. Our key insight is that the death penalty—at least as it has been implemented in the United States since Gregg ended the moratorium on executions—is applied so rarely that the number of homicides it can plausibly have caused or deterred cannot be reliably disentangled from the large year-to year changes in the homicide rate caused by other factors.

Berk (2005, p. 328) reached a similar conclusion:

… the results raise serious questions about whether anything useful about the deterrent value of the death penalty can ever be learned from an observational study with the data that are likely to be available.

Not surprisingly, the criticisms of the research claiming to have found deterrent effects have generated defenses of the research findings and the methodologies used, as well as counterclaims about the deficiencies in the methods used by the critics. For instance, in response to the Kovandzic, Vieraitis, and Boots (2009) claim of no deterrent effect, Rubin (2009, p. 858) argued that:

the weight of the evidence as well as the theoretical predictions both argue for deterrence, and econometrically flawed studies such as this article are insufficient to overthrow this presumption.

In response to Donohue and Wolfers (2005, 2009), Zimmerman (2009, p. 396) argued that:

This paper shows that many of D&W’s [Donohue and Wolfers] criticisms of Zimmerman’s original work do not hold up under scrutiny, and other authors have also rebutted D&W’s criticisms of their research.

Beyond disagreement about whether the research evidence shows a deterrent effect of capital punishment, some researchers claim to have found a brutalization effect from state-sanctioned executions such that capital punishment actually increases homicide rates (see, e.g., Cochran and Chamlin, 2000; Thomson, 1999). Evidence in support of a brutalization effect is mostly the work of sociologists, but it is notable that in her latter work Shepherd also concluded that brutalization effects may be present (Shepherd, 2005).

COMMITTEE CHARGE AND SCOPE OF WORK

The Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty was organized against this backdrop of conflicting claims about the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates, with the following charge:

This study will assess the evidence on the deterrent effect of the death penalty—whether the threat of execution prevents homicides. The focus will be on studies completed since an earlier National Research Council assessment (National Research Council, 1978). A major objective of this study is to evaluate underlying reasons for the differing conclusions in more recent empirical studies about the effects of the legal status and actual practice of the death penalty on criminal homicide rates. The committee will develop a report about what can be concluded from these studies and also draw conclusions about the potential for future work to improve upon the quality of existing evidence.

Issues and questions to be examined include the following:

1.   Does the available evidence provide a reasonable basis for drawing conclusions about the magnitude of capital punishment’s effect on homicide rates?

2.   Are there differences among the extant analyses that provide a basis for resolving the differences in findings? Are the differences in findings due to inherent limitations in the data? Are there existing statistical methods and/or theoretical perspectives that have yet to be applied that can better address the deterrence question? Are the limitations of existing evidence reflective of a lack of information about the social, economic, and political underpinnings of homicide rates and/or the administration of capital punishment that first must be resolved before the deterrent effect of capital punishment can be determined?

3.   Do potential remedies to shortcomings in the evidence on the deterrent effect of capital punishment have broader applicability for research on the deterrent effect of noncapital sanctions?

In addressing those questions, we focused on the studies that have been undertaken since the earlier assessment (National Research Council, 1978). That assessment has stood largely unchallenged: none of the recent work, whatever its conclusion regarding deterrence, relies on the earlier studies criticized in that report or attempts to rehabilitate the value of those studies.

It is important to make clear what is not in the committee’s charge. Deterrence is but one of many considerations relevant to deciding whether the death penalty is good public policy. Not all supporters of capital punishment base their argument on deterrent effects, and not all opponents would be affected by persuasive evidence of such effects. The case for capital punishment is sometimes based on normative retributive arguments that the death penalty is the only appropriate and proportional response to especially heinous crimes; the case against it is sometimes based on

similarly normative claims that the sanctity of human life precludes state-sanctioned killings, regardless of any possible social benefits of capital punishment. Separate from normative considerations, deterrence is not the only empirical issue relevant to the debate over capital punishment. Other considerations include whether capital punishment can be administered in a nondiscriminatory and consistent fashion, whether the risk of a mistaken execution of an innocent person is acceptably small, and the cost of administering the death penalty in comparison with other sanction alternatives.

Although there is empirical evidence on the issues of discrimination, mistakes, and cost, the charge to the committee does not include these questions. Nor have we been charged with rendering an overall judgment on whether capital punishment is good public policy. We have been tasked only with assessing the scientific quality of the post- Gregg evidence on the deterrent effect of capital punishment and making recommendations for improving the scientific quality and policy relevance of future research.

In including recommendations for future research, the study’s statement of task recognized that potential remedies to shortcomings in the evidence on the deterrent effect of capital punishment on homicide might also be used in the study of the crime prevention effects of noncapital sanctions. Thus, this report also offers recommendations for improving the scientific quality and policy relevance of that research.

The post- Gregg studies can be divided into two types on the basis of the type of data analyzed. Panel data studies analyze sets of states or counties measured over time, usually from about 1970 to 2000. These studies relate homicide rates over time and the jurisdictions covered to the legal status of capital punishment or the frequency of executions or both. Time-series studies generally cover only a single geographic unit, which may be as large as a nation or as small as a city. These studies usually examine whether there are short-term changes in homicide rates in that geographic unit in the aftermath of an execution. We review and critique these two types of studies separately because their design and statistical methods are quite different.

Assessing the deterrent effect of the death penalty is much more than a question of interest to social science research. It is a matter of importance to U.S. society at large, and we expect that a potentially broad audience will want to understand how the committee reached its conclusions. Yet the research that the committee has had to appraise is a body of formal empirical work that makes use of highly technical concepts and techniques. The committee has been mindful of the importance of reaching as broad an audience as possible while meeting the fundamental requirement that the report be scientifically grounded. With this in mind, Chapters 1 , 2 , and 3 (as well as the summary) have been written for a broad, largely policy audience, largely avoiding technical language. In contrast, Chapters 4 and

5 include some exposition and analyses that are aimed for the researchers in the field.

Chapter 2 summarizes homicide rates and the legal status and practice of execution in the United States from 1950 to the present. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the possible mechanisms by which the legal status and practice of execution might affect homicide rates and also provides a nontechnical primer on some of the key challenges to making valid inferences about the deterrent effect of the death penalty. Chapters 4 and 5 review and assess the panel and time-series studies, respectively. Chapter 6 elaborates on the theoretical and statistical challenges to drawing valid conclusions about the deterrent effect of the death penalty, and presents our conclusions and recommendations for future research.

Berk, R. (2005). New claims about executions and general deterrence: Déjà vu all over again? Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 2 (2), 303-330.

Cochran, J.K., and Chamlin, M.B. (2000). Deterrence and brutalization: The dual effects of executions. Justice Quarterly, 17 (4), 685-706.

Dezhbakhsh, H., Rubin, P.H., and Shepherd, J.M. (2003). Does capital punishment have a deterrent effect? New evidence from postmoratorium panel data. American Law and Economics Review, 5 (2), 344-376.

Donohue, J.J., and Wolfers, J. (2005). Uses and abuses of empirical evidence in the death penalty debate. Stanford Law Review, 58 (3), 791-845.

Donohue, J.J., and Wolfers, J. (2009). Estimating the impact of the death penalty on murder. American Law and Economics Review, 11 (2), 249-309.

Kovandzic, T.V., Vieraitis, L.M., and Boots, D.P. (2009). Does the death penalty save lives? Criminology & Public Policy, 8 (4), 803-843.

Mocan, H.N., and Gittings, R.K. (2003). Getting off death row: Commuted sentences and the deterrent effect of capital punishment. Journal of Law & Economics, 46 (2), 453-478.

National Research Council. (1978). Deterrence and Incapacitation: Estimating the Effects of Criminal Sanctions on Crime Rates . Panel on Research on Deterrent and Incapacitative Effects, A. Blumstein, J. Cohen, and D. Nagin (Eds.). Committee on Research on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice. Assembly of Behavioral and Social Sciences. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Rubin, P.H. (2009). Don’t scrap the death penalty. Criminology & Public Policy, 8 (4), 853-859.

Shepherd, J.M. (2004). Testimony on Crime and Deterrence: Hearing on H.R. 2934, the Terrorist Penalties Enhancement Act of 2003 . Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, House Judiciary Committee. Available: http://judiciary.house.gov/legacy/shepherd042104.pdf [January 2012].

Shepherd, J.M. (2005). Deterrence versus brutalization: Capital punishment’s differing impacts among states. Michigan Law Review, 104 (2), 203-255.

Thomson, E. (1999). Effects of an execution on homicides in California. Homicide Studies, 3 (2), 129-150.

Zimmerman, P.R. (2009). Statistical variability and the deterrent effect of the death penalty. American Law and Economics Review, 11 (2), 370-398.

Many studies during the past few decades have sought to determine whether the death penalty has any deterrent effect on homicide rates. Researchers have reached widely varying, even contradictory, conclusions. Some studies have concluded that the threat of capital punishment deters murders, saving large numbers of lives; other studies have concluded that executions actually increase homicides; still others, that executions have no effect on murder rates. Commentary among researchers, advocates, and policymakers on the scientific validity of the findings has sometimes been acrimonious.

Against this backdrop, the National Research Council report Deterrence and the Death Penalty assesses whether the available evidence provides a scientific basis for answering questions of if and how the death penalty affects homicide rates. This new report from the Committee on Law and Justice concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates is not useful in determining whether the death penalty increases, decreases, or has no effect on these rates. The key question is whether capital punishment is less or more effective as a deterrent than alternative punishments, such as a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Yet none of the research that has been done accounted for the possible effect of noncapital punishments on homicide rates. The report recommends new avenues of research that may provide broader insight into any deterrent effects from both capital and noncapital punishments.

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Capital Punishment does not Deter Murder

This essay about whether capital punishment deters crime explores the arguments and evidence surrounding the efficacy of the death penalty as a deterrent. It discusses the classical criminology theory that rational actors are dissuaded by the severity of capital punishment. However, it also highlights studies, including a landmark 2006 study by Donohue and Wolfers, that find no conclusive evidence supporting the death penalty’s role in reducing crime more effectively than life sentences without parole. The essay further considers the moral and ethical implications of capital punishment, including the risks of wrongful executions and the societal acceptance of killing. Additionally, it addresses the practical issues of lengthy legal processes that might dilute the deterrent effect due to delays. The conclusion suggests a global trend away from capital punishment, driven by doubts about its deterrent effect and a broader focus on addressing crime’s root causes through rehabilitation and other preventive measures.

How it works

The quandary of whether capital punishment deters transgression persists as one of the most contentious and disputed matters within the spheres of criminology and public policy. Proponents of capital punishment assert that the apprehension of facing the ultimate penalty serves as a notable impediment against perpetrating atrocious transgressions, notably homicide. Conversely, adversaries contend that there exists scant empirical substantiation to validate the assertion that prospective wrongdoers are dissuaded by the prospect of execution. This treatise scrutinizes the substantiation and contentions from both standpoints to delve into the effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent to transgression.

Historically, the rationale behind capital punishment as a deterrent finds its roots in classical criminology, which postulates that humans are rational agents who calculate the costs and benefits of their deeds. From this vantage point, the severe severity of the death penalty is posited to tilt the scales decisively against committing capital offenses. Theoretically, the dread of death is presumed to wield sufficient potency as a deterrent to outweigh any conceivable gains from committing a transgression.

However, the empirical substantiation regarding the efficacy of capital punishment as a deterrent remains far from conclusive. Myriad studies have endeavored to scrutinize transgression rates in areas with and without capital punishment, striving to ascertain if discernible disparities exist that could be ascribed to the presence of capital punishment. A seminal study by Donohue and Wolfers in 2006 scrutinized decades of data and arrived at the conclusion that there existed no credible evidence that capital punishment deterred transgression more efficaciously than lengthy sentences such as life imprisonment. Their findings, which are echoed by additional research in the domain, intimate that capital punishment does not distinctly contribute to a diminution in transgression rates.

Further muddling the discourse is the contemplation of the moral, ethical, and societal repercussions of capital punishment. Some posit that the state’s utilization of capital punishment could conceivably augment societal acquiescence to killing, thereby undermining any deterrent efficacy. Additionally, there is the irreversible nature of capital punishment, which engenders considerable apprehensions regarding erroneous convictions. The dread of executing an innocent individual and documented instances of such errors may further attenuate the contention for capital punishment as a deterrent, as the legitimacy and integrity of the judicial system are cast into doubt.

On the pragmatic front, the implementation of capital punishment frequently entails protracted legal procedures that can protract for numerous years, if not decades. This hiatus between the commission of a transgression and the execution could abate the perceived immediacy of the penalty, thereby diminishing its deterrent impact. Prospective wrongdoers might remain unperturbed by a penalty perceived as distant and uncertain, a pivotal facet when considering the psychological ramifications of deterrence theory.

Globally, the trajectory has been veering away from capital punishment. Numerous nations have abolished the death penalty, not solely due to apprehensions about its efficacy as a deterrent but also owing to ethical considerations. The international pivot towards rehabilitation, rather than punitive measures, reflects a broader comprehension of transgression prevention that concentrates more on addressing the fundamental causes of transgression such as destitution, inequality, and educational insufficiency.

In conclusion, the question of whether capital punishment deters transgression does not yield a straightforward response. While the theoretical framework of deterrence may buttress the utility of capital punishment, the empirical evidence predominantly intimates that it fails to exert a pronounced impact on diminishing transgression rates compared to alternative punitive modalities. The ethical apprehensions and the prospect of irrevocable errors further complicate the advocacy for its employment. Consequently, more nations and states are reevaluating their stance on capital punishment, reflecting a burgeoning consensus that efficacious transgression deterrence is better achieved through alternative avenues.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Human Rights — Capital Punishment

Essays on Capital Punishment

Capital punishment is a controversial and thought-provoking topic that has been debated for decades. Writing an essay on capital punishment can be a challenging task, especially when it comes to choosing the right topic. In this article, we will discuss the importance of the topic, provide advice on choosing a topic, and present a detailed list of recommended essay topics, divided by category.

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a highly divisive issue that has sparked fierce debate around the world. It raises questions about morality, justice, and the role of the state in taking the life of a convicted criminal. Writing an essay on capital punishment allows students to explore these complex issues and develop critical thinking skills. Moreover, it provides an opportunity to examine the social, ethical, and legal implications of the death penalty, making it an important and relevant topic for academic study.

When choosing a topic for a capital punishment essay, it is important to consider your interests and the specific aspects of the death penalty that you find compelling. You may want to explore the history of capital punishment, its ethical implications, its effectiveness as a deterrent, or its impact on society. Additionally, consider the current debates and controversies surrounding the death penalty, as these can provide a rich source of material for your essay.

Recommended Capital Punishment Essay Topics

History of capital punishment.

• The origins of capital punishment
• The evolution of execution methods
• Famous historical cases of capital punishment
• The abolition of the death penalty in certain countries

Ethical and Moral Considerations

• The morality of the death penalty
• Religious perspectives on capital punishment
• The rights of the condemned
• The ethics of executing the innocent

Effectiveness and Deterrence

• The effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent
• Comparing crime rates in states with and without the death penalty
• The psychological impact of the death penalty on society
• Alternatives to capital punishment

Legal and Social Justice Issues

• Racial disparities in death penalty sentencing
• The role of capital punishment in the criminal justice system
• International perspectives on the death penalty
• The impact of capital punishment on victims' families

Contemporary Debates and Controversies

• The use of lethal injection as an execution method
• The debate over capital punishment for juveniles
• The role of the media in shaping public opinion on the death penalty
• The impact of public opinion on the future of the death penalty

These are just a few examples of the many possible essay topics related to capital punishment. Regardless of the specific topic you choose, it is important to approach the subject with an open mind and a willingness to engage with different perspectives. By considering the historical, ethical, legal, and social aspects of the death penalty, you can develop a well-rounded and insightful essay that contributes to the ongoing discourse on this important issue.

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The Death Penalty: Pros and Cons

The ethics of capital punishment: death is not a right decision, against the death penalty: a persuasive argument for abolition, reasoning against the death penalty in america, justice and death penalty: views of edward i. koch and david von drehle, analysis of the effect of death penalty on crime rates in iran, evaluation of the justification of the death penalty, controversial topic of the death sentence, analysis of "death and justice: how capital punishment affirms life" by edward koch, revisiting the debate on capital punishment: an ielts perspective, emotivism and social darwinism and its ethical applications, analysis of edward koch’s argument in death and justice, capital punishment: legality, effectiveness, and availability of alternatives, the conflict theory perspective on poverty, death penalty: a cruel and unusual punishment or justice in work, how the death penalty violates human rights, thesis statement is capital punishment constitutional, death penalty as a cruel and unusual punishment, how the death penalty violates the 8th amendment, the death penalty's ineffectiveness as a crime deterrent, relevant topics.

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Avoiding of Capital Punishment Research Paper

Introduction, recommendations.

Capital punishment is used to execute criminals and suppress political dissent terms of murder, espionage, and treason. In the most historical records and practices, punishment was used as a way of enforcing justice. They used different ways to punish different extends of crime. They could stone person to death, boil to death, crucifixion, using a gun, burning, slow slicing, and neck lacing to death. Crimes which resulted into death penalty varied from one society to another.

In some, sexual crimes such as rape, adultery, incest, and sodomy qualified for a death penalty while others included religious crimes such as apostasy in Islamic nations, and human and drug trafficking. In military, it included offenses such as cowardice, insubordination, and mutiny (Banks, 2004).

Those against capital punishment are known as abolitionists. They believe that death penalty is not a legal system of punishing crimes. They otherwise argue that life imprisoned without parole can replace death penalty and is able to keep the society safe from criminals.

They say that there are greater chances of killing innocent people who were mistaken for the crime, discrimination in the legal system, and poor people who can’t access to quality legal help. They believe that killing at any chance either in war or defense is morally wrong (Braswell, 2011).

There is also a movement that supports capital punishment. They are known as retentionists. They support justice in terms of social utility. They believe that justice can only prevail when a criminal is punished in an equal way to the crime committed.

They say that if a person murders an entire family or terrorist blows up a building, it is only right to save the lives of innocent people than that of the murderer. If left alive he might as well kill again. Philosopher Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804) supports the law of retaliation where the punishment equalizes the offense (Braswell, 2011).

In favor of capital punishment

Retribution; which supports that criminals or wrongdoers should be punished in a way that deserves the crime committed. Deterrence; argues that death penalty help prevent or reduce the cases of murder. Rehabilitation; gives chances to the criminals to repent and change without taking them back to the society but preparing them for the death penalty.

Prevention of re-offending; many people believe that a murderer should be killed at once to prevent him from killing again. Even though not in the society, he can kill those in prison too. Closure and vindication; some people think that death penalty will help relieve the family out of revenge.

Incentives for helping the police; instead of using death penalty, the police tend to reduce the incentives to life imprisonment to take advantage of doing further investigations. Japanese argument; they support capital punishment on the basis that bad things will be paid in bad ways (Pollock, 2009).

Against the capital punishment

Some people believe that human life is of great value and no one should be deprived of it despite the offence committed. Everyone has a right to live. It is better and more worth to keep a criminal for a life sentence to suffer enough to pay his crimes than to take away his life at once. There may be other causes of murder which are unpreventable such as those committed by insane people and emotional murders.

It is also not evident that death penalty is better in preventing or reducing murder cases than life imprisonment. The innocent will find themselves being prosecuted for things they did not do. Death penalty should be avoided to allow further investigations. The way the death penalty is carried out is not fair enough to the criminals. They sometimes wait for long before being executed. Crimes like adultery do not match the punishment of death penalty (Pollock, 2008).

Capital punishment is not good because it brutalizes society, laws and the state by increasing the number of murder rates causing uncertainty everywhere. This ruins the relationship between the state and its citizens. Capital punishment is also unnecessary since there are better ways of punishing criminals such as life imprisonment to keep the society in order and at peace.

It becomes very expensive especially when it comes to innocent people, unfair treatments, and discrimination to the accused. Most of the religious views are also against capital punishment.

Capital punishment should be avoided at all cost because it provides more harm than benefit. There is no crime that matches death penalty because the suffering of a long time provides the best punishment.

Banks, C. (2004). Criminal justice ethics: theory and practice . Bullhead City, AZ: SAGE.

Pollock, J. (2008). Ethical dilemmas and decisions in criminal justice . Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Pollock, J. (2009). Ethical dilemmas and decisions in criminal justice . Ney York, NY: Lightning Source

Braswell, M. (2011). Justice, crime, and ethics . New York, NY: Elsevier

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"Avoiding of Capital Punishment." IvyPanda , 24 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/capital-punishment-5/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Avoiding of Capital Punishment'. 24 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Avoiding of Capital Punishment." December 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/capital-punishment-5/.

1. IvyPanda . "Avoiding of Capital Punishment." December 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/capital-punishment-5/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Avoiding of Capital Punishment." December 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/capital-punishment-5/.

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• Marriage and Adultery Laws of Emperor Augustus
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• Spanking as an Alternative for Punishing Children
• The Death Penalty, a Just Punishment
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Capital Punishment Research Paper Examples

Type of paper: Research Paper

Topic: Social Issues , Punishment , Criminal Justice , Death , Death Penalty , Capital Punishment , Crime , Finance

Published: 12/06/2019

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Capital punishment is defined as the legal infliction of death as a punishment. Capital punishment was first recorded in the United States in Jamestown colony in 1608. It is used in thirty-eight American states even today. There are five means of carrying out the death penalty; hanging, the electric chair, gas chamber, lethal injection and the firing squad. In 1967, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the capital punishment, and in 1972 the Supreme Court seemed to have done away with capital punishment for good. Buut again in 1974, it upheld the decisions of three states which drafted new laws for capital punishment. Right now, the Supreme Court is of the opinion that the Constitution permits capital punishment. Human rights activists have been protesting against the law for quite some time now, claiming that capital punishment is inhuman, that it is often practiced in a racially discriminatory way, that it does not give the effect it need to give, and that it is wrong.

Argument for

The most important argument supporting capital punishment is that it permanently and effectively removes the worst criminals from society. It is safer for the public to have them dead than have them in prison from where a lot of deadly criminals have escaped over the ages. Also, how good a method is taking care of these criminals in prison? The government is spending the money of the taxpayer to give food and lodging to the worst criminals of society. How fair is that, when there are sick people dying and poor people starving everywhere? Therefore is it not a better idea to just get rid of them forever? It is also shown that in countries like Singapore where the death penalty is carried out very effectively, there is a much less crime rate than in countries where it is not. This is one way to show that the fear of the capital punishment may actually deter the potential criminal from commiting crimes. And one of the most important arguments is that it is only the law of nature that any person who does any crime against society must pay back from what he has, as retribution for what he has done. Thus in cases where a criminal takes a life or more than one life, it is only fair to have his life taken to balance nature’s system.

Arguments against

Now there are many humanitarian arguments against the death penalty, and the most important one is that it is very much possible that a totally innocent person can get capital punishment, and even if it is known later that the person is not guilty it would be too late to amend. If on the other hand, the person was only sentenced to a prison sentence it would still be possible to give him justice. There are also people who may have killed somebody without intending to, but often the drama that happens in the courtroom may eventually lead to the accused getting a death penalty which certainly is not just. We should also think about the family and friends of the person who has been awarded the death penalty. Loss of a close person may irreparably damage that person’s life. Also, there are people who actually repent after doing a crime. Although they may deserve a harsh sentence, they are ready to go back to society to pay back for their crimes, if given a chance. While it may not be a great idea to let very hardened criminals back into society, people who have done the lesser intense crimes and people against whom there is not a lot of solid evidence could be granted a chance to repent. And last but not the least we should realize that the criminals too are in fact human beings with feelings and emotions. While they may have been bad enough to commit crimes, the thought of pain and suffering and eventual death will hurt any human beyond imagination. It will be only being human to not give them death but give them alternative punishments.

Death penalty seems a rather inhuman thing from most view points, but there are cases(mass murder, terrorism etc) in which the criminal seems to deserve nothing less than death. There will always be arguments for and against this topic, but I think that until a better system is invented, the very hard criminals need to be executed at least as a lesson to the people in the world that such crimes do not deserve any mercy.

LawBrain.com (2010), retrieved from web http://lawbrain.com/wiki/Capital_Punishment Smith J. (2006), retrieved from web http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/thoughts.html

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