Face-off: Capital punishment - To kill or not to kill?

By Armand Domalewski and Brooke Boniface

Armand Domalewski: The case of death as justice

It was philosopher, statesman and humanitarian Tupac Shakur who once said, "I believe that everything that you do bad comes back to you." Because I believe Tupac perfectly articulates the founding principle of our justice system, I stand firmly resolved in favor of the death penalty.

The biggest problem with the arguments of those who oppose the death penalty is that they do not listen to enough of the ‘Pac. If they did, they would understand that the central argument they present, that the death penalty does not deter crime, does not actually matter.

The purpose of our justice system, in fact, of all justice systems, is not merely to deter future crimes but also to exact retribution for past ones. To deliver justice is, according to Merriam-Webster, the "upholding of fair treatment and due reward." In short, it is the deliverance of what is due.

Society does not impose punishment merely to prevent future evil action; it does so because it believes, inherently, that evil action must be punished. Countless studies have indicated that humans are biologically hard wired to value justice.

This is why the Supreme Court points out that the desire for capital punishment is "an expression of the community's belief that certain crimes are themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response may be the penalty of death." Therefore it doesn't matter whether the death penalty deters crime or not; the only thing that matters is whether anything short of death is an adequate response to crimes like mass murder or terrorism. The fact that CNN polling shows 64 percent of Americans support the death penalty indicates that it is not.

It becomes easy to understand this communal desire for justice when you take even a moment to review the cases we are talking about. Melvin and Linda Lorenz, and their son Richard, were killed by Roger Stafford when Melvin stopped on a highway near Purcell, Okla., to help what he thought was a woman whose car had broken down.

Richard Mallory was one of the eight people brutally tortured and killed by Aileen Wuornos. Sandrell Crosby, a one year old baby girl, was assaulted and murdered by her very own father.

The sad and stark truth is even in modern society there are monsters in our midst, and when we catch those monsters, we face a moral responsibility to their victims and our society to punish them adequately. And nothing short of death comes even close to being "adequate" for a man who murders his own child or tortures and rapes innocent women or, potentially, kills three thousand Americans on one fateful September day.

While I agree that the execution of innocent people must be avoided, I would point to the fact that even the ACLU highlights that "the increasing use of DNA testing…is one among many reforms that will help ensure that innocent people are not sentenced to death."

Nonetheless, despite an improved track record, it is true that the justice system will never be perfect; it will continue to, at times, punish innocent people.

However, it would be irresponsible and immature to let the 138 innocents who were unfairly executed outweigh the millions who would not receive justice without the death penalty.

Any society has to make tradeoffs, even ghastly ones, and there are no more ghastly tradeoffs than those involving a death penalty.

But as long as we remain a society truly committed to not merely deterring crime but punishing it, to not merely limiting harm but maximizing justice, than we must do everything we can to preserve the death penalty.

After all, we'll need it once we find out who really killed Tupac…

Armand Domalewski is a junior Economics major.

Brooke Boniface: Death to the death penalty

The death penalty must be abolished in the United States.  I say this not because of some moral reason — that the taking of a life is prima facia wrong no matter if it is done by a human being or by the state for retribution of another murder — though I hold those views as well.

Instead I say this because the death penalty is riddled with arbitrariness — meaning that sentences are decided based on race, region and socio economic status rather than on their actual merits — and as currently enforced allow for too much room for human bias and discretion. The legal system of the United States must allow for some measure of wiggle room to ensure that each defendant is treated humanely and with respect to the individual merits of his crime, but the death penalty goes too far. Capital punishment, according to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty is a "lethal lottery: of the 22,000 homicides committed every year, approximately 150 people are sentenced to death."

Race is most often cited as a factor in capital punishment.  According to a 1996 report by Amnesty International: One case which indicated that racial prejudices result in an unfair sentence was the case of African American, Eddie Lee Ross.  Ross' court appointed lawyer was the Imperial Wizard of the local Ku Klux Klan for over 50 years, and constantly referred to Ross as "nigger." Ross' lawyer was incompetent: filing no pre-trial motions, falling asleep during court, and even missing some court dates completely.  

Furthermore, a 2001 study in North Carolina found that the race of the victim played a statistically significant role in capital punishment. Defendants of any race, who murdered a white person, were 3.5 times more likely to get the death penalty than defendants who killed someone of another race. A 2000 Department of Justice study found that prosecutors were almost twice as likely to seek the death penalty for black defendants who killed whites than for black defendants who killed blacks.

The death penalty is also arbitrarily enforced by region. In 2008, 95 percent of executions occurred in the South, and since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 following Gregg v Georgia, 80 percent of all executions have taken place in the South.  

  Finally, capital punishment is arbitrarily enforced by socio economic status. According to Justice Ginsburg, "people who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty." Currently, according to the ACLU and congressional records anywhere from 90-95 percent of capitally charged defendants lack the resources to retain a private attorney.  In 1994, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun declared, "It is virtually self evident to me now that no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies."  

The death penalty in the United States prima facia appears fair and constitutional, but its inherent problems made it vulnerable to error and prejudice. Whether you believe that it is morally right or wrong for the state to have the power to sentence citizens to death is irrelevant, the death penalty has not and can not be enforced in an unbiased manner. The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that cases are not decided on their individual merit but rather on the race of the defendant and victim, region in which the crime was committed, or the socio-economic status of the accused. And so it must be abolished as a method of punishment in this country.

There are only three countries in the world that perform more executions than the United States: China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.  The United States should no longer remain in this company because "the death penalty symbolizes whom we fear and don't fear, whom we care about and whose lives are not valid."

Brooke Boniface is a junior Political Science and History double major.