What is the most appropriate way to deal with the world’s most heinous of criminals? This question is one philosophers, politicians, criminal justice workers, and everyday citizens have been attempting to answer for centuries. As a society, over time we’ve adjudicated certain punishments, such as crucifixion, hanging, lashings, acid burning, and pillory to be unethical and incongruous with modern civilization
. The 21st century United States justice system has decided on two ways of punishing those convicted of the uttermost egregious of crimes – life imprisonment and the death penalty. For crimes deemed abhorrent enough for the death penalty, the only truly suitable and just punishment is life imprisonment because it allows for personal reform, is more humane, and research claiming the death penalty as a deterrent is inaccurate. Life imprisonment is a more effective punishment than the death penalty because it allows for reform. Criminal reform is accomplished when an offender recognizes the immorality of their actions and seeks out opportunities to compensate for the harm they’ve caused. Making amends is not a realistic goal for every single criminal – some may never even feel guilt for what they’ve done, but the death penalty inherently takes away any chance there ever was for remorse by taking away the offender’s time to work towards it. In contrast, life sentences give an inmate nothing but time – time to reflect on the consequences of their actions, on those they’ve hurt, directly or indirectly, and on what they now must do to afford retribution. An example of someone who, while imprisoned after facing the possibility of the death penalty, experienced repentance, is Billy Moore. Moore confessed and pled guilty to the robbery and murder of an elderly man. As he was his own attorney, Moore had access to legal records important in his case, including the names and addresses of members of the victim, Fredger Stapleton’s, family.
While incarcerated, Moore took the courageous initiative to mail out letters to Stapleton’s relatives, writing, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause the death of your uncle, your brother, but I did do it. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me I would truly appreciate it. But if I were you, I wouldn’t forgive me. If I were you, I would throw this letter away’ (Moore). With these words, Moore became more than the nameless, emotionless degenerate that took these peoples’ family member away from them, he became complex. After a period of mutual communication, Stapleton’s family began to see Moore as a person deserving of empathy and basic human decency, in spite of the atrocities he committed. In fact, after years of Moore’s imprisonment, his case went to the parole board, which was, surprisingly enough, persuaded to hear the case at the request of 50 friends and family members of Fredger Stapleton, who all advocated in favor of Moore and spoke to the purity of his character (Moore).
This case is an example of how imprisonment can cause a criminal to repent for their actions and reach out to those they’ve hurt, while the death penalty rips away any chance of reconciliation. “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind” is a popular adage that reflects the idea that violence in pursuit of vengeance only insights more violence. The death penalty is a barbaric institution that allows the state-sanctioned murder of people to continue. Regardless of the crimes an individual has committed, they are still human – human beings who hold the right to not be killed with an audience watching and participating in inappropriate, cruel, ceremonious fanfare. Killing a murderer does not bring back their victims, in the same way that raping a rapist does not reverse the trauma imposed on the original victim. As a society, we can not be predisposed to violence as the answer to every wrong, because then, who is truly good? For instance, a defendant in California by the name of Robert Harris was sentenced to death by gas chamber in 1992 for the murder of two teenage boys. After Harris was exposed to the gas and began to drool and flail, a friend of his, Michael Kroll, noted that, “Some of the witnesses laughed. [Kroll] thought of the label ‘Laughing Killer’ affixed to Robert by the media, and [Kroll] knew these good people would never be described as laughing killers” (Kroll). With this quote, Kroll is illustrating how hypocritical society is in relation to capital punishment, how society can despise the crimes an individual committed to such an extent that it supports this criminal’s death, the same crime society was harshly in opposition to in the first place. Imprisoning criminals accomplishes the same ends of protecting society from danger and punishing criminal activity that the death penalty accomplishes, but eliminates the factor of brutality and hypocrisy.
Deterrence is a commonly discussed factor when arguing in favor of capital punishment. In order to deter, or discourage, criminal behavior, there must be consequences in place, but the controversy arises in attempting to label the most apt consequence. Time and time again, studies surrounding the death penalty have shown it to be ineffective as a deterrent. In fact, 90% of criminologists surveyed by Professor Michael Radelet and Traci Lacock in a University of Colorado study stated that there is no correlation between implementation of the death penalty and crime rates (Radelet & Lacock). Instead of trusting credible studies such as Professor Radelet’s, proponents of the death penalty continue citing biased, arbitrary, and simply inaccurate studies. One of the most infamous of these spurious case studies cited by death penalty supporters is that of economist Isaac Ehrlich. His study claims to prove a correlation between capital punishment and deterrence, but the study is comprised of a few assumptions on Ehrlich’s part that led to a minute decrease in murder rates that he labels as evidence in favor of his argument, despite this correlation being disproved by multiple repeat experiments and in-depth analysis (Bailey). It is also important to consider that given the extreme circumstances that a murder or equally horrific crime occur under, the “people who commit these crimes are not in a normal state of mind — they do not consider the consequences in a logical way” (Groner).
The death penalty cannot be a deterrent as repercussions are often the last thing on an offender’s mind when they’ve resorted to actions as drastic as murder or rape. In today’s world, where protecting human rights is at the forefront of government and citizen concern, it is imperative to protect the most important right – the right to live. By design, the death penalty violates fundamental human rights in an irreversible manner that should not be tolerated in our constantly advancing society. Life imprisonment offers an appropriate alternative to the death penalty as it provides and facilitates an opportunity for reform among criminals, promotes humanity within society, and is no less of a deterrent than capital punishment.
