R.I.P. Death Penalty
After 4,000 years, it’s finally time to close the case on the death penalty.
Between two rivers sat the foundation for the world as we know it. If the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers did not exist and form the region known as the Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia, and consequently human civilization as we know it, would have never come to fruition. In their many gifts, perhaps the most significant precedent left behind by these ancestors was the law. The first legal system, Hammurabi’s Code, was quite simple: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” While this might have been opportune for the time — the 4000s BCE, for the record — unfortunately, the barbaric principle of retributive justice has followed us into the 21st century, and, over and over again, it has done nothing but fail.
King Hammurabi believed that the fear of death or loss of property would deter potential wrongdoers enough to prevent them from carrying out their heinous deeds. This idea of retributive justice has even been seen in some far more modern scholarship. Derek Cornish of the London School of Economics and Ronald Clarke of the Rutgers School of Justice argue, “human actions are based on “rational” decisions-that is, they are informed by the probable consequences of that action. According to the deterrence theory, the rational calculus of the pain of legal punishment offsets the motivation for the crime (presumed to be constant across offenders but not across offenses), thereby deterring criminal activity.” This is called rational choice theory. Thus, the death penalty is the most effective method of deterrence because criminals weigh the consequence of death much more than the potential gain of the crime.
However, if we were able to pull the crime statistics from Mesopotamian scribes, we would probably learn that the wise king was wrong on this account. The death penalty does nothing to deter murderers. There are two main issues with this rational choice theory thesis; first, it assumes that criminals are rational in the first place, that they act based upon analyzing the potential outcomes. This flaw is outlined by the work of Robert Merton, a sociologist at Columbia University in the 1940s, who formulated what is called Anomie Theory. Anomie Theory contends that crime rates are dependent on the economic priorities of a nation (that is, how much their resident society values the pursuit of money and the economic inequities present in a society.) The American Dream, regardless of what we want it to be, has always been about money, as he acknowledges himself. Because of this, it is important to note that the rational choice constituency, “Messner and Rosenfeld have not significantly altered the original meaning of “the American Dream.” It still refers to a value orientation characterized by the near-universal goal of personal monetary success. Merton furthers that “the anomic pressures inherent in the American Dream channel into criminal behavior depending on the stratification of legitimate economic opportunities. The more unequal the opportunities, the higher the strain and, in consequence, the level of criminal offending.” Clearly, criminal behavior is not based on a complicated analysis of the “consequences” but rather a lack of opportunities to make money. No amateur impact-weighing will change that.
Disregarding this, even if Cornish’s theory is valid, the death penalty is still highly unnecessary. It implies that a life sentence in a maximum security prison is somehow a less-effective deterrent than death. This makes little sense, as there has never been a case in American history in which a prisoner given a life sentence has been released on parole. Ever. A life sentence is practically a death sentence in and of itself, so there is literally nothing to gain by enforcing the death penalty. Criminals will weigh death in their “rational calculation” whether they get the death penalty or life without parole. Either criminals are irrational and won’t consider their consequences before they commit a murder, or they are rational and they realize that committing a murder is practically a signature of their own death warrants. You can’t have it both ways.
The death penalty is, paradoxically, ridiculously expensive. The lethal injection itself isn’t expensive; the Texas Department of Criminal Justice clocked it at around $83 per execution. It’s the trial to sentence someone to the death penalty that really bites the taxpayer. The Kansas Judicial Council Death Penalty Advisory Committee concluded that death penalty cases cost nearly four times as much as those trying to convict for life without parole. In Nebraska, it costs taxpayers $1.5 million more for death penalty trials than life without parole, which amounts to $23.5 million per year lost. Death penalty trials must check off a large number of prerequisite boxes, boxes that don’t need to be checked off for other criminal cases. Two attorneys are legally mandated to be present, but in most cases, there are more than three. Unique to a capital trial is “mitigating information,” information that could absolve a criminal of the death penalty — factors like a bad upbringing, mental health issues, etc. This requires an expert, which costs an exorbitant amount of money. If the experts hired in the initial trial are deemed “inadequate,” then the case can quickly be appealed, and the whole process begins once again. The cases themselves are also significantly longer because first the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and then the judge must rule in favor of the death penalty. This process is arduous, because there are numerous circumstances that absolve the defendant of death: upbringing, mental health, etc. All of this extends the trial — one which, remember, will have the same impact as a much less time-consuming life in prison ruling case would — eating up more taxpayer dollars, and it happens more frequently than one would hope. A sample of 350 cases resulted in 118 of them being fully overturned, and this isn’t helped by the fact that, in some states, an extra appeal is mandatory after a conviction. Those overturned decisions still cost taxpayer dollars. Additionally, it’s not like as soon as a criminal is put in the electric chair immediately upon conviction, either. The average death row inmate waits for his or her day of reckoning for 17 years. It costs $61.58 per DAY to house a death row inmate. That adds up to $49,380/year, as opposed to $24,690/year for regular inmates. This is because death row inmates are placed in administrative segregation: essentially solitary confinement. Solitary confinement cells cost significantly more because the cells must befully independent of one another and suppress sound, and the necessary qualifications for staff rise significantly. What are the benefits of execution if the system still has to hold the inmates for exceedingly long periods of time? The costs that capital punishment attempts to cut just manifest themselves elsewhere, and they return with a vengeance.
Jury selection takes a month (as opposed to a few days for life without parole cases) because the court is required to find judges who believe in capital punishment in the first place. This is particularly dangerous; if jurors believe in the death penalty they are actually more inclined to dish it out. After all, there are so few people that love the death penalty so much that they are “disqualified” from making objective decisions over it. Even more ominously, this means that the guarantee of a “jury of your peers” is wiped away in death penalty cases for those greatest targeted by the law enforcement system: minorities. Studies have shown that juries on capital cases are disproportionately white and male, as more women and minorities oppose the death penalty. The seeds of racial bias are sown and nurtured to pervert the concept of a fair capital case. Professor David Baldus of the University of Iowa observed that in 87% of cases where the death penalty was given, the victim was white even though only 40% of the cases involved white victims. He notes, “ When the race of the defendant is added to the analysis, the following pattern appears: 22% of black defendants who kill white victims are sentenced to death; 8% of white defendants who kill white victims are sentenced to death; 1% of black defendants who kill black victims are sentenced to death; and 3% of white defendants who kill black victims are sentenced to death,”. Black lives are not valued by these juries, and even though one could say that about any criminal court in America, it is especially true for criminals in a capital case.
Now let’s take our eyes away from our wallets, and analyze what the death penalty does to our nation’s psyche. The largest problem with the death penalty is certainty, or lack thereof. Murder is not a rational act; if someone kills another person they have forfeited their title as a human. They did something irrational, and should not have the same rights as humans. The dehumanization of criminals has been a tactic used since the beginning of civilization, but it is hopelessly paradoxical. This mentality assumes that the murderer has no ability to do good, no ability to be rational once again. Criminals are never given an opportunity to redeem themselves when convicted in a capital case. The criminal did not dehumanize himself or herself, the state did, by taking away their potential for rationality. The criminal was never given a chance to redeem themselves, like they potentially could have with a life sentence. It’s not deterrence, it’s good old-fashioned retribution.
Also, we’re not even getting to the philosophical implications of the “freest country in the world” killing it’s own citizenry, with sufficiently horrifying implications in its own right.
There are countless lessons that Mesopotamia taught us as humans; how to farm, how to store away excess grain for the winter, how to write, and much more. But the cradle of civilization should not be the cradle of the legal system. It’s time we end the death penalty.
