Brief-Capital Punishment

Motion: This house would abolish the death penalty for all crimes in the U.S.

Background

In the U.S., 15 states and the District of Columbia have abolished capital punishment. Of the 35 "death-penalty states," one-third rarely sentence anyone to death and another third impose death sentences but rarely carry them out. In many states, the only people to be executed are "volunteers" -- death row inmates who abandon an appeals process that would otherwise keep them alive. Eighty percent of executions now take place in the states of the former Confederacy, the vast majority of them in Texas. Death sentences have also decreased in recent years. One reason is that states now give juries the power to impose life imprisonment without parole. Another is that prosecutors advise victims' families that they may be better off seeking a prison sentence instead of capital punishment. That way, they will not have to watch year after year as the murderer goes to court seeking to have the death sentence overturned.

Capital punishment in the United States varies by jurisdiction. In practice it applies only for aggravated murder and more rarely for felony murder or contract killing.[1] Capital punishment existed in the colonies that predated the United States and that were later annexed to the United States under the laws of their mother countries and continued to have effect in the states and territories they became.

The methods of execution and the crimes subject to the penalty vary by jurisdiction and have varied widely throughout time. Some jurisdictions have banned it, others have suspended its use, but others are trying to expand its applicability. There were 37 executions in 2008.[2] That is the lowest number since 1994[3] (largely due to lethal injection litigation).[4][5] There were 52 executions in the United States in 2009, 51 by lethal injection and 1 by electric chair (Virginia).


International
More than two-thirds of the countries of the world have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. While 58 countries retained the death penalty in 2009, most did not use it. Eighteen countries were known to have carried out executions, killing a total of at least 714 people; however, this figure does not include the thousands of executions that were likely to have taken place in China, which again refused to divulge figures on its use of the death penalty.

In 1977, only 16 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. As of December 2009 that figure stands at 95 and more than two thirds of the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
Of the 58 retentionist countries, only 18 are known to have carried out executions in 2009.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948, recognizes each person’s right to life. It categorically states that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” (Article 5). In Amnesty International’s view, the death penalty violates these rights.

The community of states has adopted four international treaties specifically providing for the abolition of the death penalty. Through the years, several UN bodies discussed and adopted measures to support the call for the worldwide abolition of the death penalty.

In December 2007 and 2008 the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted resolutions 62/149 and 63/168, calling for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. Since then, other regional bodies or civil society coalitions adopted resolutions and declarations advocating for a moratorium on executions as a step towards global abolition of the death penalty.

Arguments for

The death penalty is too expensive
• A state study in Indiana showed that capital sentences cost 10 times more than life-without-parole cases
• An appeals case in federal court can cost up to $275,000 and people are allowed to appeal multiple times, as opposed to the $20,000 it costs to keep an inmate in prison each year.
• A December 2009 news article from Lubbock, Texas revealed that a capital punishment case in the state at the time cost $1 million whereas the average cost of a case devoid of capital punishment is $3,000. This does not include the cost of appeals in capital punishment cases, either, which can more than double the cost. Then there is the cost while the person is in prison. It costs $47.50 to house a criminal in prison in the state of Texas for one day. If someone were sentenced to life in prison, it would cost $693,500 to house him or her for 40 years. That is still only a fraction of the cost of a death penalty court case. Also, prisoners on death row spend, on average, at least 12 years in prison before they are executed. In Texas, this would mean an extra $208,050 added to the high cost of the court case and appeals process.
• In Florida, budget problems resulted in the early release of 3,000 prisoners. In Texas, prisoners serve an average of 20% of their sentences and rearrests are common. Georgia laid off 900 correctional personnel and New Jersey had to dismiss 500 police officers. Yet these states also pour millions of dollars into the death penalty. The costs of the death penalty are decreasing the amount of police on the streets, and increasing the amount of criminals on the streets, which only increases the danger for our society
• In a small county in Washington, the anticipated death penalty costs are causing them to delay pay raises to 350 of their employees, let one government position to go unfilled, and drain their $300,000 contingency fund. In another county in Washington, $346,000 has been spent to seek the third death sentence for Mitchell Rupe. He is dying of liver disease, but the state is making extreme efforts to keep him alive so they can execute him.

Innocent people get killed
There have been 113 people released from death row since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, but only 907 executions since that time. That means that for every 7 executions in the U.S., 1 person has been found innocent on death row
Case studies of innocent people on death row:
• Gary Gauger - Illinois - Conviction: 1993, Released: 1996 --- He was convicted of killing his parents, but was found innocent after his conviction, when police heard the real murderers talking about the killing.
• Sabrina Butler - Mississippi - Conviction: 1990, Released 1995: --- Convicted of murdering her nine-month old child. When she found her baby not breathing, she performed CPR and took him to the hospital. Even after doing this, the police thought that she was the killer, and she ended up getting sentenced to death. It is now believed that the child died of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome).
• Andrew Golden - Florida - Conviction: 1985, Released: 1995 --- Convicted of killing his wife, even though the prosecution failed to prove that his wife's death was anything more than an accident. He was finally released from death row in 1995, "to the waiting arms of his sons."

It is not effective in deterring crime
• According to the 2009 FBI Uniform Crime Report, the South has the highest percentage of executions (80 percent). Yet from 2001 to 2009, the region saw no significant drop in its murder rate.
• In one study done in Oklahoma, it was found that after Oklahoma resumed capital punishment, no deterrent effect was found - in fact, a brutalization effect (increase in homicides) was reported
• A 1995 poll of police chiefs showed that the police do not believe that the death penalty lowers homicide rates. In fact, they ranked the death penalty last (1%) in effective ways to decrease violent crime
• The studies and evidence show that the death penalty is not effective in deterring criminals from committing murders. Therefore the death penalty is unnecessary and unneeded
The death penalty is racist
• African-Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population, but make up 40% of the prisoners on death row
• People executed for interracial murders:
o White defendant/black victim – 11
o Black defendant/white victim – 167
• 84% of victims in death penalty cases are white, although only 50% of murder victims are white
• Roughly 98% of our nation’s prosecutors are white

Arguments against

The death penalty is used responsibly
• Last year in the U.S., there were over 15,000 murders, yet only 52 of those murderers were executed.
• Our system works in weeding out the people who deserve the death penalty from those who deserve a different sentence or are innocent
• We rarely convict people who turn out to be innocent, but we have parts of our justice system that allow time for appeals for the truth to be found for when the original trial is flawed or makes a mistake

We could save money in the long run using the death penalty
• It costs an average of $20,000 per year to keep someone in prison. There are currently 143,000 people in prison for life or on death row. To keep these criminals alive and away from society costs almost $2.9 billion a year.
• If we are able to execute these murderers and harmful criminals that are going to sit in jail for life already, then we can save a considerable amount of money

The problem is not the death penalty, it is the appeals system
• Obviously, there is a major problem in the costs and time it takes to go through the appeals courts
• The proper response is not to eliminate the death penalty altogether, but to reform this system so that we spend less money and waste less time

Quotations

“The evidence on whether it has a significant deterrent effect seems sufficiently plausible that the moral issue becomes a difficult one,” said Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago who has frequently taken liberal positions. “I did shift from being against the death penalty to thinking that if it has a significant deterrent effect it’s probably justified.”
Professor Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, a law professor at Harvard, wrote in their own Stanford Law Review article that “the recent evidence of a deterrent effect from capital punishment seems impressive, especially in light of its ‘apparent power and unanimity,’ ” quoting a conclusion of a separate overview of the evidence in 2005 by Robert Weisberg, a law professor at Stanford, in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science.
“Capital punishment may well save lives,” the two professors continued. “Those who object to capital punishment, and who do so in the name of protecting life, must come to terms with the possibility that the failure to inflict capital punishment will fail to protect life.”

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Political_Rights#Rights_to_physical_integrity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_debate
http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/thoughts.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/us/18deter.html?_r=1
http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=106
http://www.opposingviews.com/questions/should-the-us-abolish-the-death-penalty
http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty
http://www.prodeathpenalty.com
https://www.msu.edu/~millettf/DeathPenalty/morality.html
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/crown-point/article_726fe7a3-97df-599e-bc64-599c8b9af3de.html
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/all-charges-dismissed-against-former-texas-death-row-inmate-139th-exoneration-nationally
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/13/AR2008041302605_pf.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071602717.html
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=13&did=2180165061&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1288922345&clientId=20972
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=14&did=2180165051&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1288922345&clientId=20972
http://law.jrank.org/pages/5002/Capital-Punishment-COSTS-CAPITAL-PUNISHMENT.html
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf