Death penalty will not prevent criminal violence
By John J. Hetts
In a recent viewpoint article on the death penalty ("Enforce
death sentences for cold-blooded killers," Jan. 24), Aanand Patel
argues for more rigorous enforcement of the death penalty, imposing
time limits and other limitations on appeals by criminals and
expanding crimes eligible for the death penalty.
Patel asserts that the appeal process overloads the legal system
with high costs and undermines criminals’ beliefs that they will be
executed. Further, Patel has "no doubt" that the death penalty
would serve as a very powerful deterrent if criminals knew they
would be sentenced to death and that death sentences were carried
out swiftly and consistently.
Unfortunately, Patel’s confidence in the deterrence of even a
swiftly and consistently applied death penalty is misplaced.
Scientific evidence regarding the deterrent effects of the death
penalty is, at best, mixed.
Though some researchers have concluded in the past that the
death penalty has a small deterrent effect, many others have found
no evidence to support this. In some cases, a reverse deterrence
effect has been observed – the use of the death penalty as a
punishment (compared to places where it is not used) is associated
with higher rather than lower rates of violent crime.
In perhaps the most comprehensive examination of the deterrence
effect of capital punishment, Archer and Rosemary compiled data in
1984 on the patterns of crime and violence in 110 countries and 44
major international cities, finding little evidence of the
deterrence of capital punishment, and support for the possibility
that the death penalty may instead legitimize violence.
Furthermore, the few studies that have examined the certainty of
execution as important to deterrence still did not find evidence of
a deterrence effect. If that isn’t enough, studies that compare the
deterrence of the death penalty to that of life imprisonment
without parole show no additional deterrent effect of the death
penalty. In a few studies, severe imprisonment even appears to be a
more effective deterrent of violent crime than the death
penalty.
Beyond the absence of a deterrent effect, there are other
serious problems with the application of the death penalty in the
United States. Individuals morally opposed to the death penalty are
excluded from the jury pool in some states leading to
"death-qualified" juries that are disproportionately likely to
convict a defendant.
In addition, death sentences are at many levels still
disproportionately given to African Americans and Latinos. Cases in
which prosecuting attorneys choose to pursue the death penalty are
also disproportionately those of African Americans and Latinos.
Furthermore, death sentences are even applied in a
discriminatory fashion based on the race of the victim; murderers
whose victims were white are much more likely to receive a death
sentence than murderers whose victims were African Americans,
institutionalizing a devaluation of the lives of African
Americans.
Additionally, the death penalty is also disproportionately
applied to the poor because they are less able to mount a capable
defense, even when innocent, and are often represented by
overburdened public defense attorneys.
In his article, Patel wrote, "Currently, thousands of inmates
sit on death row across the nation, waiting to be executed. Let’s
get on with the process; the delays are useless and time-consuming
nonsense." Given the highly problematic application of the death
penalty in the United States, the ineffectiveness of the death
penalty as a deterrent to violent crime, and the possibility that
capital punishment enhances the legitimacy of violence as a
solution to difficult problems, I cannot agree with Patel that we
should "get on with," much less expand, state-sanctioned
killing.
We must instead gather the courage to systematically replace the
death penalty with life imprisonment without parole and seek more
creative ways to reduce violent crime in our nation. This would
have the additional benefit of eliminating the burden of death
penalty appeals on our judicial system, which Patel so abhors.
Thousands of years have passed in which capital punishment has
taken the lives of many, even some who were innocent. Neither
humanity nor justice have been served. Will they ever?
Hetts is a fourth-year graduate student in psychology.Comments
to [email protected]