Essay, Research Paper: The Ethics Behind Capital Punishment

Blood. There was blood everywhere. There were streaks on the wall, droplets on the floor and huge pools on the bed and carpet. Three bodies lay sprawled on the floor, those of a woman and her two young children. Their throats had been cut to the point of near decapitation; the multiple stab wounds, lacerations, and foot prints on the skin loudly spoke of the viciousness of the crime. The only sound was that of a man laughing. He was sitting in the chair in the middle of the living room, surrounded by the corpses, just laughing. That was the scene that greeted the police upon their arrival to check out a suspicious sound at the Jones household, called in by a next door neighbor. When confronted by the officers the man said, "I didn't like them, they seemed too happy". There was no question of the man's guilt, his fingerprints were all over the house, on the murder weapon, his semen was on the clothes of two of the victims, and he signed a full confession. After an extensive psychological evaluation, he was determined fit to stand trial. The courtroom procedure was a media circus; the community was frightened by a story of a quiet young man so viciously murdering his neighbors from across the street. Everyone was expecting a death sentence, but was shocked to find out that it had been abolished in the state a few years earlier. After the sentencing one of the more overzealous reporters ran up to the defendant to ask about his opinion on the life sentence he just received. The man simply snorted, " Free food and cable TV. And you say the system works". Does a man like this deserve death?
Richard H. Nicholson, an editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics disagrees in his article "Is Capital Punishment Ever Ethical?" He asks how a civilized country can result to such barbaric methods of dealing with the criminals, " … a genuine perplexity in understanding how a civilized, supposedly enlightened, country could have returned to the use of capital punishment" (Nicholson). He is genuinely concerned with the ethics behind the capital punishment in the United States. Unlike the United Kingdom, where the death sentence has been abolished thirty years ago, most of the states still have this sentence. But is it ethical? Several years ago, the British Commonwealth discussed the quality of life on the inmates on death row as well as the cruelty of the punishment itself. While reviewing a case from Jamaica, they ruled that "to hold a prisoner on death row for more than five years was cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment. As a result, hundreds of prisoners around the world have had their death sentences commuted" (Nicholson). In the United States, it is extremely rare for an execution to take place less then five years after the sentence. The methods commonly used for executions in the US are lethal injection, electrocution, and the gas chamber. Nicholson argues that besides killing the inmate, the methods are designed to cause severe pain and suffering. "Several electrocutions in recent years have taken more than fifteen minutes to kill the condemned man, and meanwhile he has been severely burnt. How can it serve the purposes of the modern society to condone such torture?" (Nicholson). He brings up two more alarming ethical issues in his article, those of medical personnel participating in the executions and the use of organs from executed men for transplantation. Regardless of the opinions of organizations that protest executions, doctors in the United States are still participate "either by helping to find veins in to which to put lethal injections, or by advising on whether the prisoners are dead or need another dose of whatever substance - gas, electricity, poison, or bullet - is being used" (Nicholson).
"Some 27 US states require the presence of doctors at executions. The roles of these doctors include administering lethal injections, witnessing executions, and certifying prisoners' deaths. In Illinois, doctors who participate in executions are afforded anonymity by the state, to prevent their persecution by medical societies. Two states, Utah and Missouri, have recently revoked the requirement for doctors' participation in the death penalty. Meanwhile, the American Medical Association (AMA), the American College of Physicians, and most state medical societies bar doctors from taking part in executions. The AMA censures doctors who participate in capital punishment and includes both witnessing an execution and certifying death as participation. Psychiatric evaluation of competency to sit for an execution is allowed by the AMA, but the treatment of a mentally or psychologically incompetent condemned prisoner is proscribed if such treatment is likely to lead to execution" (Josefson).
Another issue that concerns the bioethics community is the use of body organs from executed men for organ transplants. "This practice has been widespread in China and has been strongly opposed by the International Transplantation Society, among many others" (Nicholson 5). As a whole, Richard Nicholson is opposed to capital punishment and involvement of medical personnel in the executions. He calls to the bioethics community of the United States to consider the facts and participate more actively in the organizations that fight against executions of criminals.
The opinion of Dr. Nicholson deserves all the respect, but I cannot help but disagree with it. The fact is that capital punishment belongs historically to a penal system based on violence of an unspeakably brutal kind; and the morality which allowed this system to operate has for some two hundred years been in retreat before the advance of humanitarian and scientific influences. We all know that, and the history has been accepted. On the other hand, we need to explore some of the ethical questions that would give us insight into the debate about capital punishment.
The first question is that of deterrence, does capital punishment actually deter from committing violent offences? There have not been any major studies done in the United States on the homicide rates versus the number of executions performed. However, reviewing the statistics provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the United States Department of Justice, we can see a small correlation between the number of violent offences and number of executions performed. Since the statistics are varied by state and year, it is difficult to come to any general conclusion, but there some interesting points that require a second viewing. In 1962, the number of executions went down from forty-seven to two and in 1967 to zero; in just two years, the homicide rate that has been holding relatively steady, started to rise. A particularly large increase was in 1967, after the last person has been executed. Of course, this cannot be considered a sufficient statistical proof, but it is a point of interest. "Some men, probably, abstain from murder because they fear that if they committed murder they would be hanged. Hundreds of thousands abstain from it because they regard it with horror. One great reason why the regard it with horror is that murderers are hanged" (Stephen).
It is likely that the deterrence value would be a lot higher if the executions were performed soon after the sentencing, not after keeping the prisoners on death row for a number of years. The democratic laws of the United States allow for due process for all the criminals that go through the justice system. This allows to prevent the executions of innocent men, who were wrongly accused, or those who cannot be executed due to their mental condition. Of course, the time on death row could be reduced, but then we have a chance of sacrificing a life of an innocent person to make an example for future criminals.
Who are the people on death row and do they deserve execution? According to the Bureau of Prisons, in 1997, the thirty-four States and the Federal prison system held 3,219 inmates under the sentence of death; all of them were convicted of murder. Two out of three of those prisoners had prior felony convictions, and one in twelve had a prior homicide conviction.
"When there has been brought home to any one, by conclusive evidence, the greatest crime known to the law; and when the attendant circumstances suggest no palliation of the guilt, no hope that the culprit may even yet not be unworthy to live among mankind, nothing to make it probable that the crime was an exception to his general character rather than a consequence of it, then I confess it appears to me that to deprive the criminal of the life of which he has proved himself to be unworthy--solemnly to blot him out from the fellowship of mankind and from the catalogue of the living--is the most appropriate as it is certainly the most impressive, mode in which society can attach to so great a crime the penal consequences which for the security of life it is indispensable to annex to it" (Mill).
Even the Bible agrees that a murder should be put to death: "Do not accept a ransom for the life of a murderer, who deserves to die. He must surely be put to death" and "bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it".
Our humanitarian society is always looking to be as kind as possible. Gone are the days of preliminary torture, boiling in oil, burning at the stake, burying alive, and so forth. The whole tendency during the past fifty years and more has been to make the death penalty as "humane" as possible. Executions are now held in private rather than in public; in America, though this is not true of Britain, the bodies of executed people are returned to their relatives for burial in consecrated ground. The twenty-six American states that have substituted electrocution for hanging, and the eight that have substituted lethal gas, have done so in the belief that these are less, not more, fearful ways of dying. The abolitionists insist on reformation, but is it possible? George Bernard Shaw has an answer ready: "The thoughtless humanitarian is ready with his reply. Reform the criminal: be kind to him. But the criminal who can be reformed is not the problem. If you can reform him (or her), reform him; that is all. Do not make him a martyr. The real problem is the criminal you cannot reform: the human mad dog or cobra. The answer is, kill him kindly and apologetically, if possible without consciousness on his part. Let him go comfortably to bed expecting to wake up in the morning as usual, and not wake up. His general consciousness that this may happen to him should be shared by every citizen as part of his moral civic responsibility" (Shaw).
This ethical question, as any other can be debated endlessly, the society is ultimately the one to choose. Perhaps one day the capital punishment will not be necessary and the criminals can be returned to normal lives by the justice system. Until then, the only thing we can do is educate, help improve the system to make the reformation possible.
References
1. Nicholson, Richard H. "Is Capital Punishment Ever Ethical?" Bulletin of Medical Ethics. 1995.
2. Gross, H. A Theory of Criminal Justice. P. 489. 1979. (Attributing this passage to Sir James Fitzjames Stephen).
3. Shaw, George Bernard. "Capital Punishment". The Atlantic Monthly. June 1948.
4. Mill, John Stuart. "Speech In Favor of Capital Punishment". April 21, 1868.
5. United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. "Number of Persons Executed in the United States, 1930-1997". http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance.exe.txt.
6. United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Prisons. "Inmate Population Statistics". http://www.bop.gov.
7. The Holy Bible. Numbers 35:30-33.
8. Josefson, Deborah. "US doctors want no part in executions". British Medical Journal,317:702. September 1998.