capital punishment essay question

84 Capital Punishment Essay Topics & Examples

If you’ve looked for capital punishment essay topics, you’re in luck! Below, our experts have collected some death penalty title ideas and samples for your paper.

📝 Capital Punishment Essay Writing Tips

✔️ top death penalty title ideas, 🏆 best death penalty essay titles & examples, 💡 most interesting death penalty topics to write about, ❓ capital punishment research questions.

Capital punishment has been a debatable issue for decades. Some people believe that the death penalty plays a crucial role in the criminal justice system, while others think that this procedure is highly unethical.

An essay on capital punishment may be a challenging assignment because students should know much about the subject. Do not worry, we have got you covered! Read this article until the end and learn some important tips on writing capital punishment essays.

Start with choosing the subject for your paper. Here are some capital punishment essay topics that you can use:

• Capital punishment in the media
• Crime and punishment in today’s world: Death penalty
• Capital punishment essay: Arguments against death penalty
• The legal and ethical implications of capital punishment
• Capital punishment should be forbidden: Anti-death penalty arguments
• Why capital punishment may target the poor
• Death penalty: An issue of life and death

Remember that these are just examples of topics and titles for your paper. You can choose any related capital punishment essay titles. Once you have selected a topic of your essay, you can start working on the assignment. Here are the key points you should use to write an outstanding essay:

• Study the subject thoroughly. Use reliable sources to analyze the legal and ethical aspects of the death penalty. Select the sources you will use in the paper and remember that they should be credible.
• A well-developed outline is key. Make sure that your paper includes an introduction, a conclusion, and several body paragraphs.
• If you are not sure about the structure of your paper, check out essays online to see how they are organized. This step can also help you to see whether the selected problem is relevant. Remember that you should avoid copying the information you will find online. Plagiarism will make your essay look unreliable and get you a bad grade.
• Remember that you should present your capital punishment essay thesis in the last sentence of your introductory paragraph. Hint: Start working on your introductory paragraph after you research the subject. It will help you to present the background information correctly.
• Identify the goals of your paper clearly. Do you want to prove your point or provide insight on the issue? Answer these questions before starting to work on your assignment.
• Define capital punishment. You can discuss its legal implications, its prevalence in different countries, and the offenses that can potentially lead to a death penalty.
• When working on an opinion piece, state your viewpoint clearly. Do you think that all countries should legalize death penalties? Do you believe that capital punishment is unethical? Do some offenders deserve a death penalty more than others do? Answer these questions in detail.
• Remember that the purpose of your paper should be to help the reader understand capital punishment better. Your essay should motivate the audience to develop an opinion about the subject.
• Always support your arguments with evidence. Cite articles in an appropriate style (MLA, APA, Harvard, or other). The best type of sources for your paper is peer-reviewed articles and other scholarly publications.
• Restate your arguments and the thesis in a concluding section. Provide a summary of your findings along with recommendations for future research.

Need more ideas for your essay? Check out our free samples on the website!

• Why should the death penalty be abolished?
• What are some unusual punishments for crimes?
• Can the death penalty be compared to killing in cold blood?
• Is life imprisonment more just than the death penalty?
• Reasons to criticize capital punishment in China.
• Analyzing A Descending Spiral by Marc Bookman.
• What are the pros of capital punishment?
• Executing the innocent people: the issue of mistake.
• Abolishing the death penalty in Texas.
• Serial killers sentenced to capital punishment.
• Death Penalty: Utilitarian View on Capital Punishment Another significant benefit offered by the death penalty to the society is that it leads to the permanent incapacitation of the convicted person.
• Capital Punishment in the UK Should be Reintroduced? ‘Capital Punishment’ or the ‘Death Penalty’ is the judicially ordered, lawful infliction of death as a punishment for a serious crime called a ‘capital offence’ or a ‘capital crime.
• Analysis: Speech In Favor of Capital Punishment by John Stuart Mills Mills rightly points out that the very grounds of humanity used to support the removal of the death penalty should also be the ones used to support retaining of the sentence.
• Capital Punishment and Deterrence of Crime For the case of murder or crimes that necessitate capital punishment, the incentive to commit murder is directly related to the uncertainties that punishments for the crime will generate.
• Capital Punishment: Advantages and Disadvantages This paper examines death penalty from an impartial view by considering disadvantages and advantages of capital punishment in society. Thirdly, Teeters views that death penalty is a retribution action in which a victim is punished […]
• Capital Punishment Role in the World However, it is wrong and unjustified because it is inhuman, unfair, violates the human right to life, and it does not aid in reduction of crime.
• Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty Furthermore, the defense and, in the United States, the prosecution has the right of vexatious challenge, which allows it to confront several participants without providing a reason.
• Capital Punishment Is Morally and Legally Wrong The problem of the death penalty is complex and multifaceted. It affects the political, legal, moral, cultural, and other fields of life.
• Justifications for Capital Punishment This statement mostly appeals to a general deterrence argument, as the fear of punishment emerged from showing its implementation, but not from other justifications effects.
• The Significance of Capital Punishment in the UAE Current analysis of the importance of the death penalty worldwide focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of the punishment. The UAE has a mandatory death penalty which is susceptible to the judgment of authorities and […]
• Capital Punishment: Utilitarianism and Retributivism Theories However, to rule out chances of an innocent person being punished, the theory advocates for justice; before punishment is administered, the court should proof beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty.
• Capital Punishment Interpretation and Exceptions Under custody, the law applies to cases in which the conditions of custody are compromised and to situations where the suspect is held unfairly. The suspect responded with a yes and this was used as […]
• Capital Punishment Debates: Death Penalty The capital punishment has been practiced in almost all the societies and all epochs in the development of the mankind. The author educates the society as a whole on litigious issues of the death penalty […]
• Capital Punishment in Florida The system is erroneous and cases that almost end up in the ‘chair’ are overturned contrary to the expectations of the family members of the murdered.
• Capital Punishment: Term Definition In that regard, taking such issues such as euthanasia, abortion and capital punishment, the latter can be considered as the most delicate, especially considering many cases that represent exceptions that are feared to be repeated.
• Capital Punishment – Moral or Immoral? It would not be a futile exercise to interpret capital punishment in the light of religion before proceeding to the subject of my argument. Countries that give importance to such punishments should tone down and […]
• Capital Punishment in the US Analysis Capital Punishment is the lawful infliction of death as a punishment for a major crime. The first argument against Capital Punishment is that it is inhumane.
• An Orwellian Look at Capital Punishment His reaction to the actual hanging of a puny Hindu man borders on a strategy of remaining as a detached viewer and subconsciously, his gorge rises at the thought of a human being with a […]
• Public Opinion on Capital Punishment for Juveniles This essay is a study of the public opinion on Capital Punishment for juveniles, this is a very controversial subject as many people are against Captial punishment, and many are for life imprisonment, capital punishment […]
• Capital Punishment and Race Factor in the US First of all, it is necessary to briefly discuss the history of race in the U.S.to provide a foundation for the bias and explain its causes.
• The Controversy Over Capital Punishment It is as a result of this that he concludes that Ford calls for the execution of capital punishment as a penalty in criminal offences.
• Capital Punishment in Melville’s “Billy Budd, Sailor” One of the reasons for the triumph of Billy Budd, Sailor in America and the United Kingdom, was the precision, with which the author portrayed the historical and cultural context, particularly Melville analyzed both issues […]
• Capital Punishment in Indonesia The government is also known to safeguard the details of capital punishment in the country. The targeted prisoners are “executed in the middle of the night”.
• Capital Punishment, Its Ethics and Infair Justice The main factors leading to differences in stands between the anti-capital punishment and pro-death are the morality and religious issues surrounding the matter.
• Capital Punishment and Unusual Punishment The issue of capital punishment has always been on the radar of the Supreme Court of the United States. The key question that should be answered is the future of capital punishment and unusual punishment […]
• Capital Punishment in United States The most compelling argument in support of capital punishment is that failing to execute murderers may in itself put more lives in danger.
• Debates on Capital Punishment in the US For example, capital punishment is the best punishment for murder because it is equal to the crime. Thirdly, capital punishment is a violation of the human right to life.
• The Ethical and Legal Standards of Capital Punishment This is one of the details that should be considered. This is one of the pitfalls that should be avoided.
• Isolation and Capital Punishments On the other hand, capital punishments such as deaths deprives of people the freedom of life and goes against God’s command which disallows intentional killings of persons, or murder. Similarly, capital punishment in the form […]
• Does the Death Sentence Offer Justice to the Criminal? It is not enough to be locked in prison for ending the life of a fellow human being. Revenge is one of the ways that can be used.
• The Consequences of Capital Punishment The appeals in the death penalty cases are usually many and cause the social costs of the cases to be even more expensive.
• Moral Issue of Capital Punishment Capital punishment is also a form of premeditated death as the action is planned for, does it mean that the state has the right to premeditate deaths for some of its citizens because they are […]
• The Death Penalty Debate in the United States of America The punishment is believed to have been there even at the time of the earlier colonies of the United States; it as well continued to be in force within the states that came to form […]
• Psychological Aspects of Capital Punishment According to research done by Freedman and Hemenway on a group of death row inmates, it was established that almost a two-thirds of the death row inmates are retarded.
• The Death Penalty in the Modern Society The cost of maintenance of the convicted individuals is also one of the reasons that necessitate the death penalty. The reaffirmation of the death penalty is also attributed to the teachings portrayed by most religions.
• Avoiding of Capital Punishment Capital punishment is also unnecessary since there are better ways of punishing criminals such as life imprisonment to keep the society in order and at peace.
• The Economic Significance of Capital Punishment The survival of any civilization hinges on the establishment of laws and codes of conduct and the subsequent obeying of the same by the society’s members.
• Capital Punishment in Modern American History: Lists of Capital Crimes That Varied From Region to Region Politicians are frequently trying to expand the scope of capital punishment by bringing in a host of crimes under it.”The US public has deep concern over violent crimes due to the cynical manipulation of capital […]
• Analysis of Capital Punishment in the Films Those for the death penalty in the movie are represented by Ramunda who becomes a strong advocate for the death penalty and in many instances, is a counterpart of Cushing.
• Capital Punishment Legislation The main reasons that opponents of the death penalty give for their position are, the fact that the death penalty is inhumane and cruel.
• Capital Punishment as an Option in Maryland Death penalty is the most serious punishment that can be used by the government against people; and even if it costs less then keeping a person in jail till the end of his/her life and […]
• Capital Punishment in Political View This is because quiet a number of the abolitions have been associated with democratic developments in political systems of the countries that have abolished the penalties. Conservatives have in the United States been strongly opposed […]
• Capital Punishment: A Critical Evaluation of Its Appropriateness in Modern Society In line with the above argument, supporters of capital punishment argue that the practice permanently removes thieves, murderers, rapists, and other criminals from the face of society, in the process making it safer for compliant […]
• Capital Punishment: Proponents and Opponents Arguements The opponents of capital of capital punishment argue that it is not a just and humane way of punishing heinous criminals in the society because everybody has right to life.
• What Does Capital Punishment Mean in History?
• How Can Death Penalty Prevent Repeat Offenders?
• Why Should Capital Punishment Be Reinstated in Australia?
• How Objective and Justifiable Are Our Reasons for Enforcing the Death Penalty?
• Does Capital Punishment Have a Deterrent Effect?
• How Has the Death Penalty Changed Over Time?
• What Is Wrong With Capital Punishment?
• Should Federal Courts Review State Death Penalty Cases?
• Can Capital Punishment Ever Be Justified?
• Should the Death Penalty Apply to Juvenile Criminals?
• Does the Death Penalty Breach Human Rights?
• Can Capital Punishment Keep Us Safe?
• Should the Death Penalty Be a Part of the System of Justice?
• Does Capital Punishment Equate to Cruel and Unusual Punishment?
• Should the Death Penalty Be Enforced?
• How Does Capital Punishment Affirm Life?
• Should the Death Penalty Be Imposed for Drug Offences?
• Does Capital Punishment Have a Local Deterrent Effect on Homicides?
• Should the Death Penalty Be Mandatory for Homicide?
• How Does Capital Punishment Work in the United States?
• Should the Death Penalty Be Morally Acceptable?
• Does Race Affect the Way of Capital Punishment?
• What Crimes Are Charged With Death Penalty?
• Does the Capital Punishment Have a Role in Civilized Society?
• Why Should Capital Punishment Be Abolished?
• What Effects Does the Death Penalty Cause on Society?
• How Does Legislation Help to Prevent Racial Bias in Death Penalty Convictions?
• Is the Death Penalty Fair?
• Does Jodi Arias Deserve the Death Penalty?
• What Attitudes Might Christians Hold About Capital Punishment?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?

In its last six months, the United States government has put 13 prisoners to death. Do you think capital punishment should end?

By Nicole Daniels

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.

In July, the United States carried out its first federal execution in 17 years. Since then, the Trump administration has executed 13 inmates, more than three times as many as the federal government had in the previous six decades.

The death penalty has been abolished in 22 states and 106 countries, yet it is still legal at the federal level in the United States. Does your state or country allow the death penalty?

Do you believe governments should be allowed to execute people who have been convicted of crimes? Is it ever justified, such as for the most heinous crimes? Or are you universally opposed to capital punishment?

In “ ‘Expedited Spree of Executions’ Faced Little Supreme Court Scrutiny ,” Adam Liptak writes about the recent federal executions:

In 2015, a few months before he died, Justice Antonin Scalia said he w o uld not be surprised if the Supreme Court did away with the death penalty. These days, after President Trump’s appointment of three justices, liberal members of the court have lost all hope of abolishing capital punishment. In the face of an extraordinary run of federal executions over the past six months, they have been left to wonder whether the court is prepared to play any role in capital cases beyond hastening executions. Until July, there had been no federal executions in 17 years . Since then, the Trump administration has executed 13 inmates, more than three times as many as the federal government had put to death in the previous six decades.

The article goes on to explain that Justice Stephen G. Breyer issued a dissent on Friday as the Supreme Court cleared the way for the last execution of the Trump era, complaining that it had not sufficiently resolved legal questions that inmates had asked. The article continues:

If Justice Breyer sounded rueful, it was because he had just a few years ago held out hope that the court would reconsider the constitutionality of capital punishment. He had set out his arguments in a major dissent in 2015 , one that must have been on Justice Scalia’s mind when he made his comments a few months later. Justice Breyer wrote in that 46-page dissent that he considered it “highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment,” which bars cruel and unusual punishments. He said that death row exonerations were frequent, that death sentences were imposed arbitrarily and that the capital justice system was marred by racial discrimination. Justice Breyer added that there was little reason to think that the death penalty deterred crime and that long delays between sentences and executions might themselves violate the Eighth Amendment. Most of the country did not use the death penalty, he said, and the United States was an international outlier in embracing it. Justice Ginsburg, who died in September, had joined the dissent. The two other liberals — Justices Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — were undoubtedly sympathetic. And Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who held the decisive vote in many closely divided cases until his retirement in 2018, had written the majority opinions in several 5-to-4 decisions that imposed limits on the death penalty, including ones barring the execution of juvenile offenders and people convicted of crimes other than murder .

In the July Opinion essay “ The Death Penalty Can Ensure ‘Justice Is Being Done,’ ” Jeffrey A. Rosen, then acting deputy attorney general, makes a legal case for capital punishment:

The death penalty is a difficult issue for many Americans on moral, religious and policy grounds. But as a legal issue, it is straightforward. The United States Constitution expressly contemplates “capital” crimes, and Congress has authorized the death penalty for serious federal offenses since President George Washington signed the Crimes Act of 1790. The American people have repeatedly ratified that decision, including through the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 signed by President Bill Clinton, the federal execution of Timothy McVeigh under President George W. Bush and the decision by President Barack Obama’s Justice Department to seek the death penalty against the Boston Marathon bomber and Dylann Roof.

Students, read the entire article , then tell us:

Do you support the use of capital punishment? Or do you think it should be abolished? Why?

Do you think the death penalty serves a necessary purpose, like deterring crime, providing relief for victims’ families or imparting justice? Or is capital punishment “cruel and unusual” and therefore prohibited by the Constitution? Is it morally wrong?

Are there alternatives to the death penalty that you think would be more appropriate? For example, is life in prison without the possibility of parole a sufficient sentence? Or is that still too harsh? What about restorative justice , an approach that “considers harm done and strives for agreement from all concerned — the victims, the offender and the community — on making amends”? What other ideas do you have?

Vast racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty have been found. For example, Black people are overrepresented on death row, and a recent study found that “defendants convicted of killing white victims were executed at a rate 17 times greater than those convicted of killing Black victims.” Does this information change or reinforce your opinion of capital punishment? How so?

The Federal Death Penalty Act prohibits the government from executing an inmate who is mentally disabled; however, in the recent executions of Corey Johnson , Alfred Bourgeois and Lisa Montgomery , their defense teams, families and others argued that they had intellectual disabilities. What role do you think disability or trauma history should play in how someone is punished, or rehabilitated, after committing a crime?

How concerned should we be about wrongfully convicted people being executed? The Innocence Project has proved the innocence of 18 people on death row who were exonerated by DNA testing. Do you have worries about the fair application of the death penalty, or about the possibility of the criminal justice system executing an innocent person?

About Student Opinion

• Find all of our Student Opinion questions in this column . • Have an idea for a Student Opinion question? Tell us about it . • Learn more about how to use our free daily writing prompts for remote learning .

Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Nicole Daniels joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2019 after working in museum education, curriculum writing and bilingual education. More about Nicole Daniels

Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty

Click the buttons below to view arguments and testimony on each topic.

The death penalty deters future murders.

Society has always used punishment to discourage would-be criminals from unlawful action. Since society has the highest interest in preventing murder, it should use the strongest punishment available to deter murder, and that is the death penalty. If murderers are sentenced to death and executed, potential murderers will think twice before killing for fear of losing their own life.

For years, criminologists analyzed murder rates to see if they fluctuated with the likelihood of convicted murderers being executed, but the results were inconclusive. Then in 1973 Isaac Ehrlich employed a new kind of analysis which produced results showing that for every inmate who was executed, 7 lives were spared because others were deterred from committing murder. Similar results have been produced by disciples of Ehrlich in follow-up studies.

Moreover, even if some studies regarding deterrence are inconclusive, that is only because the death penalty is rarely used and takes years before an execution is actually carried out. Punishments which are swift and sure are the best deterrent. The fact that some states or countries which do not use the death penalty have lower murder rates than jurisdictions which do is not evidence of the failure of deterrence. States with high murder rates would have even higher rates if they did not use the death penalty.

Ernest van den Haag, a Professor of Jurisprudence at Fordham University who has studied the question of deterrence closely, wrote: “Even though statistical demonstrations are not conclusive, and perhaps cannot be, capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else. They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts. Whatever people fear most is likely to deter most. Hence, the threat of the death penalty may deter some murderers who otherwise might not have been deterred. And surely the death penalty is the only penalty that could deter prisoners already serving a life sentence and tempted to kill a guard, or offenders about to be arrested and facing a life sentence. Perhaps they will not be deterred. But they would certainly not be deterred by anything else. We owe all the protection we can give to law enforcers exposed to special risks.”

Finally, the death penalty certainly “deters” the murderer who is executed. Strictly speaking, this is a form of incapacitation, similar to the way a robber put in prison is prevented from robbing on the streets. Vicious murderers must be killed to prevent them from murdering again, either in prison, or in society if they should get out. Both as a deterrent and as a form of permanent incapacitation, the death penalty helps to prevent future crime.

Those who believe that deterrence justifies the execution of certain offenders bear the burden of proving that the death penalty is a deterrent. The overwhelming conclusion from years of deterrence studies is that the death penalty is, at best, no more of a deterrent than a sentence of life in prison. The Ehrlich studies have been widely discredited. In fact, some criminologists, such as William Bowers of Northeastern University, maintain that the death penalty has the opposite effect: that is, society is brutalized by the use of the death penalty, and this increases the likelihood of more murder. Even most supporters of the death penalty now place little or no weight on deterrence as a serious justification for its continued use.

States in the United States that do not employ the death penalty generally have lower murder rates than states that do. The same is true when the U.S. is compared to countries similar to it. The U.S., with the death penalty, has a higher murder rate than the countries of Europe or Canada, which do not use the death penalty.

The death penalty is not a deterrent because most people who commit murders either do not expect to be caught or do not carefully weigh the differences between a possible execution and life in prison before they act. Frequently, murders are committed in moments of passion or anger, or by criminals who are substance abusers and acted impulsively. As someone who presided over many of Texas’s executions, former Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox has remarked, “It is my own experience that those executed in Texas were not deterred by the existence of the death penalty law. I think in most cases you’ll find that the murder was committed under severe drug and alcohol abuse.”

There is no conclusive proof that the death penalty acts as a better deterrent than the threat of life imprisonment. A 2012 report released by the prestigious National Research Council of the National Academies and based on a review of more than three decades of research, concluded that studies claiming a deterrent effect on murder rates from the death penalty are fundamentally flawed. A survey of the former and present presidents of the country’s top academic criminological societies found that 84% of these experts rejected the notion that research had demonstrated any deterrent effect from the death penalty .

Once in prison, those serving life sentences often settle into a routine and are less of a threat to commit violence than other prisoners. Moreover, most states now have a sentence of life without parole. Prisoners who are given this sentence will never be released. Thus, the safety of society can be assured without using the death penalty.

Ernest van den Haag Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Policy, Fordham University. Excerpts from ” The Ultimate Punishment: A Defense,” (Harvard Law Review Association, 1986)

“Execution of those who have committed heinous murders may deter only one murder per year. If it does, it seems quite warranted. It is also the only fitting retribution for murder I can think of.”

“Most abolitionists acknowledge that they would continue to favor abolition even if the death penalty were shown to deter more murders than alternatives could deter. Abolitionists appear to value the life of a convicted murderer or, at least, his non-execution, more highly than they value the lives of the innocent victims who might be spared by deterring prospective murderers.

Deterrence is not altogether decisive for me either. I would favor retention of the death penalty as retribution even if it were shown that the threat of execution could not deter prospective murderers not already deterred by the threat of imprisonment. Still, I believe the death penalty, because of its finality, is more feared than imprisonment, and deters some prospective murderers not deterred by the thought of imprisonment. Sparing the lives of even a few prospective victims by deterring their murderers is more important than preserving the lives of convicted murderers because of the possibility, or even the probability, that executing them would not deter others. Whereas the life of the victims who might be saved are valuable, that of the murderer has only negative value, because of his crime. Surely the criminal law is meant to protect the lives of potential victims in preference to those of actual murderers.”

“We threaten punishments in order to deter crime. We impose them not only to make the threats credible but also as retribution (justice) for the crimes that were not deterred. Threats and punishments are necessary to deter and deterrence is a sufficient practical justification for them. Retribution is an independent moral justification. Although penalties can be unwise, repulsive, or inappropriate, and those punished can be pitiable, in a sense the infliction of legal punishment on a guilty person cannot be unjust. By committing the crime, the criminal volunteered to assume the risk of receiving a legal punishment that he could have avoided by not committing the crime. The punishment he suffers is the punishment he voluntarily risked suffering and, therefore, it is no more unjust to him than any other event for which one knowingly volunteers to assume the risk. Thus, the death penalty cannot be unjust to the guilty criminal.”

Full text can be found at PBS.org .

Hugo Adam Bedau (deceased) Austin Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University Excerpts from “The Case Against The Death Penalty” (Copyright 1997, American Civil Liberties Union)

“Persons who commit murder and other crimes of personal violence either may or may not premeditate their crimes.

When crime is planned, the criminal ordinarily concentrates on escaping detection, arrest, and conviction. The threat of even the severest punishment will not discourage those who expect to escape detection and arrest. It is impossible to imagine how the threat of any punishment could prevent a crime that is not premeditated….

Most capital crimes are committed in the heat of the moment. Most capital crimes are committed during moments of great emotional stress or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, when logical thinking has been suspended. In such cases, violence is inflicted by persons heedless of the consequences to themselves as well as to others….

If, however, severe punishment can deter crime, then long-term imprisonment is severe enough to deter any rational person from committing a violent crime.

The vast preponderance of the evidence shows that the death penalty is no more effective than imprisonment in deterring murder and that it may even be an incitement to criminal violence. Death-penalty states as a group do not have lower rates of criminal homicide than non-death-penalty states….

On-duty police officers do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide in abolitionist states than they do in death-penalty states. Between l973 and l984, for example, lethal assaults against police were not significantly more, or less, frequent in abolitionist states than in death-penalty states. There is ‘no support for the view that the death penalty provides a more effective deterrent to police homicides than alternative sanctions. Not for a single year was evidence found that police are safer in jurisdictions that provide for capital punishment.’ (Bailey and Peterson, Criminology (1987))

Prisoners and prison personnel do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide from life-term prisoners in abolition states than they do in death-penalty states. Between 1992 and 1995, 176 inmates were murdered by other prisoners; the vast majority (84%) were killed in death penalty jurisdictions. During the same period about 2% of all assaults on prison staff were committed by inmates in abolition jurisdictions. Evidently, the threat of the death penalty ‘does not even exert an incremental deterrent effect over the threat of a lesser punishment in the abolitionist states.’ (Wolfson, in Bedau, ed., The Death Penalty in America, 3rd ed. (1982))

Actual experience thus establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty does not deter murder. No comparable body of evidence contradicts that conclusion.”

Click here for the full text from the ACLU website.

Retribution

A just society requires the taking of a life for a life.

When someone takes a life, the balance of justice is disturbed. Unless that balance is restored, society succumbs to a rule of violence. Only the taking of the murderer’s life restores the balance and allows society to show convincingly that murder is an intolerable crime which will be punished in kind.

Retribution has its basis in religious values, which have historically maintained that it is proper to take an “eye for an eye” and a life for a life.

Although the victim and the victim’s family cannot be restored to the status which preceded the murder, at least an execution brings closure to the murderer’s crime (and closure to the ordeal for the victim’s family) and ensures that the murderer will create no more victims.

For the most cruel and heinous crimes, the ones for which the death penalty is applied, offenders deserve the worst punishment under our system of law, and that is the death penalty. Any lesser punishment would undermine the value society places on protecting lives.

Robert Macy, District Attorney of Oklahoma City, described his concept of the need for retribution in one case: “In 1991, a young mother was rendered helpless and made to watch as her baby was executed. The mother was then mutilated and killed. The killer should not lie in some prison with three meals a day, clean sheets, cable TV, family visits and endless appeals. For justice to prevail, some killers just need to die.”

Retribution is another word for revenge. Although our first instinct may be to inflict immediate pain on someone who wrongs us, the standards of a mature society demand a more measured response.

The emotional impulse for revenge is not a sufficient justification for invoking a system of capital punishment, with all its accompanying problems and risks. Our laws and criminal justice system should lead us to higher principles that demonstrate a complete respect for life, even the life of a murderer. Encouraging our basest motives of revenge, which ends in another killing, extends the chain of violence. Allowing executions sanctions killing as a form of ‘pay-back.’

Many victims’ families denounce the use of the death penalty. Using an execution to try to right the wrong of their loss is an affront to them and only causes more pain. For example, Bud Welch’s daughter, Julie, was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Although his first reaction was to wish that those who committed this terrible crime be killed, he ultimately realized that such killing “is simply vengeance; and it was vengeance that killed Julie…. Vengeance is a strong and natural emotion. But it has no place in our justice system.”

The notion of an eye for an eye, or a life for a life, is a simplistic one which our society has never endorsed. We do not allow torturing the torturer, or raping the rapist. Taking the life of a murderer is a similarly disproportionate punishment, especially in light of the fact that the U.S. executes only a small percentage of those convicted of murder, and these defendants are typically not the worst offenders but merely the ones with the fewest resources to defend themselves.

Louis P. Pojman Author and Professor of Philosophy, U.S. Military Academy. Excerpt from “The Death Penalty: For and Against,” (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998)

“[Opponents of the capital punishment often put forth the following argument:] Perhaps the murderer deserves to die, but what authority does the state have to execute him or her? Both the Old and New Testament says, “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Prov. 25:21 and Romans 12:19). You need special authority to justify taking the life of a human being.

The objector fails to note that the New Testament passage continues with a support of the right of the state to execute criminals in the name of God: “Let every person be subjected to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment…. If you do wrong, be afraid, for [the authority] does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13: 1-4). So, according to the Bible, the authority to punish, which presumably includes the death penalty, comes from God.

But we need not appeal to a religious justification for capital punishment. We can site the state’s role in dispensing justice. Just as the state has the authority (and duty) to act justly in allocating scarce resources, in meeting minimal needs of its (deserving) citizens, in defending its citizens from violence and crime, and in not waging unjust wars; so too does it have the authority, flowing from its mission to promote justice and the good of its people, to punish the criminal. If the criminal, as one who has forfeited a right to life, deserves to be executed, especially if it will likely deter would-be murderers, the state has a duty to execute those convicted of first-degree murder.”

National Council of Synagogues and the Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops Excerpts from “To End the Death Penalty: A Report of the National Jewish/Catholic Consultation” (December, 1999)

“Some would argue that the death penalty is needed as a means of retributive justice, to balance out the crime with the punishment. This reflects a natural concern of society, and especially of victims and their families. Yet we believe that we are called to seek a higher road even while punishing the guilty, for example through long and in some cases life-long incarceration, so that the healing of all can ultimately take place.

Some would argue that the death penalty will teach society at large the seriousness of crime. Yet we say that teaching people to respond to violence with violence will, again, only breed more violence.

The strongest argument of all [in favor of the death penalty] is the deep pain and grief of the families of victims, and their quite natural desire to see punishment meted out to those who have plunged them into such agony. Yet it is the clear teaching of our traditions that this pain and suffering cannot be healed simply through the retribution of capital punishment or by vengeance. It is a difficult and long process of healing which comes about through personal growth and God’s grace. We agree that much more must be done by the religious community and by society at large to solace and care for the grieving families of the victims of violent crime.

Recent statements of the Reform and Conservative movements in Judaism, and of the U.S. Catholic Conference sum up well the increasingly strong convictions shared by Jews and Catholics…:

‘Respect for all human life and opposition to the violence in our society are at the root of our long-standing opposition (as bishops) to the death penalty. We see the death penalty as perpetuating a cycle of violence and promoting a sense of vengeance in our culture. As we said in Confronting the Culture of Violence: ‘We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing.’ We oppose capital punishment not just for what it does to those guilty of horrible crimes, but for what it does to all of us as a society. Increasing reliance on the death penalty diminishes all of us and is a sign of growing disrespect for human life. We cannot overcome crime by simply executing criminals, nor can we restore the lives of the innocent by ending the lives of those convicted of their murders. The death penalty offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life.’1

We affirm that we came to these conclusions because of our shared understanding of the sanctity of human life. We have committed ourselves to work together, and each within our own communities, toward ending the death penalty.” Endnote 1. Statement of the Administrative Committee of the United States Catholic Conference, March 24, 1999.

The risk of executing the innocent precludes the use of the death penalty.

The death penalty alone imposes an irrevocable sentence. Once an inmate is executed, nothing can be done to make amends if a mistake has been made. There is considerable evidence that many mistakes have been made in sentencing people to death. Since 1973, over 180 people have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence emerged. During the same period of time, over 1,500 people have been executed. Thus, for every 8.3 people executed, we have found one person on death row who never should have been convicted. These statistics represent an intolerable risk of executing the innocent. If an automobile manufacturer operated with similar failure rates, it would be run out of business.

Our capital punishment system is unreliable. A study by Columbia University Law School found that two thirds of all capital trials contained serious errors. When the cases were retried, over 80% of the defendants were not sentenced to death and 7% were completely acquitted.

Many of the releases of innocent defendants from death row came about as a result of factors outside of the justice system. Recently, journalism students in Illinois were assigned to investigate the case of a man who was scheduled to be executed, after the system of appeals had rejected his legal claims. The students discovered that one witness had lied at the original trial, and they were able to find another man, who confessed to the crime on videotape and was later convicted of the murder. The innocent man who was released was very fortunate, but he was spared because of the informal efforts of concerned citizens, not because of the justice system.

In other cases, DNA testing has exonerated death row inmates. Here, too, the justice system had concluded that these defendants were guilty and deserving of the death penalty. DNA testing became available only in the early 1990s, due to advancements in science. If this testing had not been discovered until ten years later, many of these inmates would have been executed. And if DNA testing had been applied to earlier cases where inmates were executed in the 1970s and 80s, the odds are high that it would have proven that some of them were innocent as well.

Society takes many risks in which innocent lives can be lost. We build bridges, knowing that statistically some workers will be killed during construction; we take great precautions to reduce the number of unintended fatalities. But wrongful executions are a preventable risk. By substituting a sentence of life without parole, we meet society’s needs of punishment and protection without running the risk of an erroneous and irrevocable punishment.

There is no proof that any innocent person has actually been executed since increased safeguards and appeals were added to our death penalty system in the 1970s. Even if such executions have occurred, they are very rare. Imprisoning innocent people is also wrong, but we cannot empty the prisons because of that minimal risk. If improvements are needed in the system of representation, or in the use of scientific evidence such as DNA testing, then those reforms should be instituted. However, the need for reform is not a reason to abolish the death penalty.

Besides, many of the claims of innocence by those who have been released from death row are actually based on legal technicalities. Just because someone’s conviction is overturned years later and the prosecutor decides not to retry him, does not mean he is actually innocent.

If it can be shown that someone is innocent, surely a governor would grant clemency and spare the person. Hypothetical claims of innocence are usually just delaying tactics to put off the execution as long as possible. Given our thorough system of appeals through numerous state and federal courts, the execution of an innocent individual today is almost impossible. Even the theoretical execution of an innocent person can be justified because the death penalty saves lives by deterring other killings.

Gerald Kogan, Former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Excerpts from a speech given in Orlando, Florida, October 23, 1999 “[T]here is no question in my mind, and I can tell you this having seen the dynamics of our criminal justice system over the many years that I have been associated with it, [as] prosecutor, defense attorney, trial judge and Supreme Court Justice, that convinces me that we certainly have, in the past, executed those people who either didn’t fit the criteria for execution in the State of Florida or who, in fact, were, factually, not guilty of the crime for which they have been executed.

“And you can make these statements when you understand the dynamics of the criminal justice system, when you understand how the State makes deals with more culpable defendants in a capital case, offers them light sentences in exchange for their testimony against another participant or, in some cases, in fact, gives them immunity from prosecution so that they can secure their testimony; the use of jailhouse confessions, like people who say, ‘I was in the cell with so-and-so and they confessed to me,’ or using those particular confessions, the validity of which there has been great doubt. And yet, you see the uneven application of the death penalty where, in many instances, those that are the most culpable escape death and those that are the least culpable are victims of the death penalty. These things begin to weigh very heavily upon you. And under our system, this is the system we have. And that is, we are human beings administering an imperfect system.”

“And how about those people who are still sitting on death row today, who may be factually innocent but cannot prove their particular case very simply because there is no DNA evidence in their case that can be used to exonerate them? Of course, in most cases, you’re not going to have that kind of DNA evidence, so there is no way and there is no hope for them to be saved from what may be one of the biggest mistakes that our society can make.”

The entire speech by Justice Kogan is available here.

Paul G. Cassell Associate Professor of Law, University of Utah, College of Law, and former law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. Statement before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights Concerning Claims of Innocence in Capital Cases (July 23, 1993)

“Given the fallibility of human judgments, the possibility exists that the use of capital punishment may result in the execution of an innocent person. The Senate Judiciary Committee has previously found this risk to be ‘minimal,’ a view shared by numerous scholars. As Justice Powell has noted commenting on the numerous state capital cases that have come before the Supreme Court, the ‘unprecedented safeguards’ already inherent in capital sentencing statutes ‘ensure a degree of care in the imposition of the sentence of death that can only be described as unique.’”

“Our present system of capital punishment limits the ultimate penalty to certain specifically-defined crimes and even then, permit the penalty of death only when the jury finds that the aggravating circumstances in the case outweigh all mitigating circumstances. The system further provides judicial review of capital cases. Finally, before capital sentences are carried out, the governor or other executive official will review the sentence to insure that it is a just one, a determination that undoubtedly considers the evidence of the condemned defendant’s guilt. Once all of those decisionmakers have agreed that a death sentence is appropriate, innocent lives would be lost from failure to impose the sentence.”

“Capital sentences, when carried out, save innocent lives by permanently incapacitating murderers. Some persons who commit capital homicide will slay other innocent persons if given the opportunity to do so. The death penalty is the most effective means of preventing such killers from repeating their crimes. The next most serious penalty, life imprisonment without possibility of parole, prevents murderers from committing some crimes but does not prevent them from murdering in prison.”

“The mistaken release of guilty murderers should be of far greater concern than the speculative and heretofore nonexistent risk of the mistaken execution of an innocent person.”

Full text can be found here.

Arbitrariness & Discrimination

The death penalty is applied unfairly and should not be used.

In practice, the death penalty does not single out the worst offenders. Rather, it selects an arbitrary group based on such irrational factors as the quality of the defense counsel, the county in which the crime was committed, or the race of the defendant or victim.

Almost all defendants facing the death penalty cannot afford their own attorney. Hence, they are dependent on the quality of the lawyers assigned by the state, many of whom lack experience in capital cases or are so underpaid that they fail to investigate the case properly. A poorly represented defendant is much more likely to be convicted and given a death sentence.

With respect to race, studies have repeatedly shown that a death sentence is far more likely where a white person is murdered than where a Black person is murdered. The death penalty is racially divisive because it appears to count white lives as more valuable than Black lives. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 296 Black defendants have been executed for the murder of a white victim, while only 31 white defendants have been executed for the murder of a Black victim. Such racial disparities have existed over the history of the death penalty and appear to be largely intractable.

It is arbitrary when someone in one county or state receives the death penalty, but someone who commits a comparable crime in another county or state is given a life sentence. Prosecutors have enormous discretion about when to seek the death penalty and when to settle for a plea bargain. Often those who can only afford a minimal defense are selected for the death penalty. Until race and other arbitrary factors, like economics and geography, can be eliminated as a determinant of who lives and who dies, the death penalty must not be used.

Discretion has always been an essential part of our system of justice. No one expects the prosecutor to pursue every possible offense or punishment, nor do we expect the same sentence to be imposed just because two crimes appear similar. Each crime is unique, both because the circumstances of each victim are different and because each defendant is different. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a mandatory death penalty which applied to everyone convicted of first degree murder would be unconstitutional. Hence, we must give prosecutors and juries some discretion.

In fact, more white people are executed in this country than black people. And even if blacks are disproportionately represented on death row, proportionately blacks commit more murders than whites. Moreover, the Supreme Court has rejected the use of statistical studies which claim racial bias as the sole reason for overturning a death sentence.

Even if the death penalty punishes some while sparing others, it does not follow that everyone should be spared. The guilty should still be punished appropriately, even if some do escape proper punishment unfairly. The death penalty should apply to killers of black people as well as to killers of whites. High paid, skillful lawyers should not be able to get some defendants off on technicalities. The existence of some systemic problems is no reason to abandon the whole death penalty system.

Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. President and Chief Executive Officer, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Inc. Excerpt from “Legal Lynching: Racism, Injustice & the Death Penalty,” (Marlowe & Company, 1996)

“Who receives the death penalty has less to do with the violence of the crime than with the color of the criminal’s skin, or more often, the color of the victim’s skin. Murder — always tragic — seems to be a more heinous and despicable crime in some states than in others. Women who kill and who are killed are judged by different standards than are men who are murderers and victims.

The death penalty is essentially an arbitrary punishment. There are no objective rules or guidelines for when a prosecutor should seek the death penalty, when a jury should recommend it, and when a judge should give it. This lack of objective, measurable standards ensures that the application of the death penalty will be discriminatory against racial, gender, and ethnic groups.

The majority of Americans who support the death penalty believe, or wish to believe, that legitimate factors such as the violence and cruelty with which the crime was committed, a defendant’s culpability or history of violence, and the number of victims involved determine who is sentenced to life in prison and who receives the ultimate punishment. The numbers, however, tell a different story. They confirm the terrible truth that bias and discrimination warp our nation’s judicial system at the very time it matters most — in matters of life and death. The factors that determine who will live and who will die — race, sex, and geography — are the very same ones that blind justice was meant to ignore. This prejudicial distribution should be a moral outrage to every American.”

Justice Lewis Powell United States Supreme Court Justice excerpts from McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987) (footnotes and citations omitted)

(Mr. McCleskey, a black man, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1978 for killing a white police officer while robbing a store. Mr. McCleskey appealed his conviction and death sentence, claiming racial discrimination in the application of Georgia’s death penalty. He presented statistical analysis showing a pattern of sentencing disparities based primarily on the race of the victim. The analysis indicated that black defendants who killed white victims had the greatest likelihood of receiving the death penalty. Writing the majority opinion for the Supreme Court, Justice Powell held that statistical studies on race by themselves were an insufficient basis for overturning the death penalty.)

“[T]he claim that [t]his sentence rests on the irrelevant factor of race easily could be extended to apply to claims based on unexplained discrepancies that correlate to membership in other minority groups, and even to gender. Similarly, since [this] claim relates to the race of his victim, other claims could apply with equally logical force to statistical disparities that correlate with the race or sex of other actors in the criminal justice system, such as defense attorneys or judges. Also, there is no logical reason that such a claim need be limited to racial or sexual bias. If arbitrary and capricious punishment is the touchstone under the Eighth Amendment, such a claim could — at least in theory — be based upon any arbitrary variable, such as the defendant’s facial characteristics, or the physical attractiveness of the defendant or the victim, that some statistical study indicates may be influential in jury decision making. As these examples illustrate, there is no limiting principle to the type of challenge brought by McCleskey. The Constitution does not require that a State eliminate any demonstrable disparity that correlates with a potentially irrelevant factor in order to operate a criminal justice system that includes capital punishment. As we have stated specifically in the context of capital punishment, the Constitution does not ‘plac[e] totally unrealistic conditions on its use.’ (Gregg v. Georgia)”

The entire decision can be found here.

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Expert Commentary

The research on capital punishment: Recent scholarship and unresolved questions

2014 review of research on capital punishment, including studies that attempt to quantify rates of innocence and the potential deterrence effect on crime.

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by Alexandra Raphel and John Wihbey, The Journalist's Resource January 5, 2015

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Over the past year the death penalty has again come into focus as a major public policy and political issue, catalyzed by several high-profile events.

The botched execution of convicted murderer and rapist Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in 2014 was seen as a potential turning point in the debate, bringing increased attention to the mechanisms by which persons are executed. That was followed by a number of other closely scrutinized cases, and the year ended with few executions relative to years past. On December 31, 2014, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley commuted the sentences of the remaining four prisoners on death row in that state. In 2013, Maryland became the 18th state to abolish the death penalty after Connecticut in 2012 and New Mexico in 2009.

Meanwhile, polling data suggests some softening of public attitudes, though the majority Americans continue to support capital punishment. Gallop noted in October 2014 that the level of public support (60%) is at its lowest in 40 years. A Washington Post -ABC News poll in mid-2014 found that more Americans support life sentences, rather than the death penalty, for convicted murderers. Further, recent polls from the Pew Research Center indicate that only a bare majority of Americans now support capital punishment, 55%, down from 78% in 1996.

Scholarly research sheds light on a number of important aspects of this issue:

False convictions

One key reason for the contentious debate is the concern that states are executing innocent people. How many people are unjustly facing the death penalty? By definition, it is difficult to obtain a reliable answer to this question. Presumably if judges, juries, and law enforcement were always able to conclusively determine who was innocent, those defendants would simply not be convicted in the first place. When capital punishment is the sentence, however, this issue takes on new importance.

Some believe that when it comes to death-penalty cases, this is not a huge cause for concern. In his concurrent opinion in the 2006 Supreme Court case Kansas v. Marsh , Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that the execution error rate was minimal, around 0.027%. However, a 2014 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the figure could be higher. Authors Samuel Gross (University of Michigan Law School), Barbara O’Brien (Michigan State University College of Law), Chen Hu (American College of Radiology) and Edward H. Kennedy (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) examine data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Justice relating to exonerations from 1973 to 2004 in an attempt to estimate the rate of false convictions among death row defendants. (Determining innocence with full certainty is an obvious challenge, so as a proxy they use exoneration — “an official determination that a convicted defendant is no longer legally culpable for the crime.”) In short, the researchers ask: If all death row prisoners were to remain under this sentence indefinitely, how many of them would have eventually been found innocent (exonerated)?

Interestingly, the authors also note that advances in DNA identification technology are unlikely to have a large impact on false conviction rates because DNA evidence is most often used in cases of rape rather than homicide. To date, only about 13% of death row exonerations were the result of DNA testing. The Innocence Project , a litigation and public policy organization founded in 1992, has been deeply involved in many such cases.

Death penalty deterrence effects: What do we know?

A chief way proponents of capital punishment defend the practice is the idea that the death penalty deters other people from committing future crimes. For example, research conducted by John J. Donohue III (Yale Law School) and Justin Wolfers (University of Pennsylvania) applies economic theory to the issue: If people act as rational maximizers of their profits or well-being, perhaps there is reason to believe that the most severe of punishments would serve as a deterrent. (The findings of their 2009 study on this issue, “Estimating the Impact of the Death Penalty on Murder,” are inconclusive.) In contrast, one could also imagine a scenario in which capital punishment leads to an increased homicide rate because of a broader perception that the state devalues human life. It could also be possible that the death penalty has no effect at all because information about executions is not diffused in a way that influences future behavior.

In 1978 — two years after the Supreme Court issued its decision reversing a previous ban on the death penalty ( Gregg v. Georgia ) — the National Research Council (NRC) published a comprehensive review of the current research on capital punishment to determine whether one of these hypotheses was more empirically supported than the others. The NRC concluded that “available studies provide no useful evidence on the deterrent effect of capital punishment.”

Researchers have subsequently used a number of methods in an effort to get closer to an accurate estimate of the deterrence effect of the death penalty. Many of the studies have reached conflicting conclusions, however. To conduct an updated review, the NRC formed the Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty, comprised of academics from economics departments and public policy schools from institutions around the country, including the Carnegie Mellon University, University of Chicago and Duke University.

In 2012, the Committee published an updated report that concluded that not much had changed in recent decades: “Research conducted in the 30 years since the earlier NRC report has not sufficiently advanced knowledge to allow a conclusion, however qualified, about the effect of the death penalty on homicide rates.” The report goes on to recommend that none of the reviewed reports be used to influence public policy decisions on the death penalty.

Why has the research not been able to provide any definitive answers about the impact of the death penalty? One general challenge is that when it comes to capital punishment, a counter-factual policy is simply not observable. You cannot simultaneously execute and not execute defendants, making it difficult to isolate the impact of the death penalty. The Committee also highlights a number of key flaws in the research designs:

• There are both capital and non-capital punishment options for people charged with serious crimes. So, the relevant question on the deterrent effect of capital punishment specifically “is the differential deterrent effect of execution in comparison with the deterrent effect of other available or commonly used penalties.” None of the studies reviewed by the Committee took into account these severe, but noncapital punishments, which could also have an effect on future behaviors and could confound the estimated deterrence effect of capital punishment.
• “They use incomplete or implausible models of potential murderers’ perceptions of and response to the capital punishment component of a sanction regime”
• “The existing studies use strong and unverifiable assumptions to identify the effects of capital punishment on homicides.”

In a 2012 study, “Deterrence and the Dealth Penalty: Partial Identificaiton Analysis Using Repeated Cross Sections,” authors Charles F. Manski (Northwestern University) and John V. Pepper (University of Virginia) focus on the third challenge. They note: “Data alone cannot reveal what the homicide rate in a state without (with) a death penalty would have been had the state (not) adopted a death penalty statute. Here, as always when analyzing treatment response, data must be combined with assumptions to enable inference on counterfactual outcomes.”

However, even though the authors do not arrive at a definitive conclusion, the National Research Council Committee notes that this type of research holds some value: “Rather than imposing the strong but unsupported assumptions required to identify the effect of capital punishment on homicides in a single model or an ad hoc set of similar models, approaches that explicitly account for model uncertainty may provide a constructive way for research to provide credible albeit incomplete answers.”

Another strategy researchers have taken is to limit the focus of studies on potential short-term effects of the death penalty. In a 2009 paper, “The Short-Term Effects of Executions on Homicides: Deterrence, Displacement, or Both?” authors Kenneth C. Land and Hui Zheng of Duke University, along with Raymond Teske Jr. of Sam Houston State University, examine monthly execution data (1980-2005) from Texas, “a state that has used the death penalty with sufficient frequency to make possible relatively stable estimates of the homicide response to executions.” They conclude that “evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the months of or after executions.” Depending on which model they use, these deterrent effects range from 1.6 to 2.5 homicides.

The NRC’s Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty commented on the findings, explaining: “Land, Teske and Zheng (2009) should be commended for distinguishing between periods in Texas when the use of capital punishment appears to have been erratic and when it appears to have been systematic. But they fail to integrate this distinction into a coherently delineated behavioral model that incorporates sanctions regimes, salience, and deterrence. And, as explained above, their claims of evidence of deterrence in the systematic regime are flawed.”

A more recent paper (2012) from the three authors, “The Differential Short-Term Impacts of Executions on Felony and Non-Felony Homicides,” addresses some of these concerns. Published in Criminology and Public Policy , the paper reviews and updates some of their earlier findings by exploring “what information can be gained by disaggregating the homicide data into those homicides committed in the course of another felony crime, which are subject to capital punishment, and those committed otherwise.” The results produce a number of different findings and models, including that “the short-lived deterrence effect of executions is concentrated among non-felony-type homicides.”

Other factors to consider

The question of what kinds of “mitigating” factors should prevent the criminal justice system from moving forward with an execution remains hotly disputed. A 2014 paper published in the Hastings Law Journal , “The Failure of Mitigation?” by scholars at the University of North Carolina and DePaul University, investigates recent executions of persons with possible mental or intellectual disabilities. The authors reviewed 100 cases and conclude that the “overwhelming majority of executed offenders suffered from intellectual impairments, were barely into adulthood, wrestled with severe mental illness, or endured profound childhood trauma.”

Two significant recommendations for reforming the existing process also are supported by some academic research. A 2010 study by Pepperdine University School of Law published in Temple Law Review , “Unpredictable Doom and Lethal Injustice: An Argument for Greater Transparency in Death Penalty Decisions,” surveyed the decision-making process among various state prosecutors. At the request of a state commission, the authors first surveyed California district attorneys; they also examined data from the other 36 states that have the death penalty. The authors found that prosecutors’ capital punishment filing decisions remain marked by local “idiosyncrasies,” meaning that “the very types of unfairness that the Supreme Court sought to eliminate” beginning in 1972 may still “infect capital cases.” They encourage “requiring prosecutors to adhere to an established set of guidelines.” Finally, there has been growing support for taping interrogations of suspects in capital cases, so as to guard against the phenomenon of false confessions .

Related reading: For an international perspective on capital punishment, see Amnesty International’s 2013 report ; for more information on the evolution of U.S. public opinion on the death penalty, see historical trends from Gallup .

Keywords: crime, prisons, death penalty, capital punishment

About the Authors

Alexandra Raphel

John Wihbey

The Death Penalty: Questions and Answers

Download a PDF version of Death Penalty Questions and Answers >>

Since our nation’s founding, the government — colonial, federal, and state — has punished a varying percentage of arbitrarily-selected murders with the ultimate sanction: death.

More than 14,000 people have been legally executed since colonial times, most of them in the early 20th Century. By the 1930s, as many as 150 people were executed each year. However, public outrage and legal challenges caused the practice to wane. By 1967, capital punishment had virtually halted in the United States, pending the outcome of several court challenges.

In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia , the Supreme Court invalidated hundreds of death sentences, declaring that then existing state laws were applied in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner and, thus, violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of equal protection of the laws and due process. But in 1976, in Gregg v. Georgia , the Court resuscitated the death penalty: It ruled that the penalty “does not invariably violate the Constitution” if administered in a manner designed to guard against arbitrariness and discrimination. Several states promptly passed or reenacted capital punishment laws.

Today, states have laws authorizing the death penalty, as does the military and the federal government. Several states in the Midwest and Northeast have abolished capital punishment. Alaska and Hawaii have never had the death penalty. The vast majority of executions have taken place in 10 states from the South and over 35% have occurred in Texas. In 2004, the high courts of Kansas and New York struck down their death penalty statutes as unconstitutional and the legislatures have yet to reinstate them.

Today, about 3,350 people are on “death row.” Virtually all are poor, a significant number are mentally disabled, more than 40 percent are African American, and a disproportionate number are Native American, Latino, and Asian.

The ACLU believes that, in all circumstances, the death penalty is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. We also believe that the death penalty continues to be applied in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Frequently Asked Questions raised by the public about Capital Punishment Q : Doesn’t the Death Penalty deter crime, especially murder? A : No, there is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than states without such laws. And states that have abolished capital punishment show no significant changes in either crime or murder rates.

The death penalty has no deterrent effect. Claims that each execution deters a certain number of murders have been thoroughly discredited by social science research. People commit murders largely in the heat of passion, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or because they are mentally ill, giving little or no thought to the possible consequences of their acts. The few murderers who plan their crimes beforehand — for example, professional executioners — intend and expect to avoid punishment altogether by not getting caught. Some self-destructive individuals may even hope they will be caught and executed.

Death penalty laws falsely convince the public that government has taken effective measures to combat crime and homicide. In reality, such laws do nothing to protect us or our communities from the acts of dangerous criminals.

Q : Don’t murderers deserve to die? A : No one deserves to die. When the government metes out vengeance disguised as justice, it becomes complicit with killers in devaluing human life and human dignity. In civilized society, we reject the principle of literally doing to criminals what they do to their victims: The penalty for rape cannot be rape, or for arson, the burning down of the arsonist’s house. We should not, therefore, punish the murderer with death.

Q : If execution is unacceptable, what is the alternative? A : INCAPACITATION. Convicted murderers can be sentenced to life imprisonment, as they are in many countries and states that have abolished the death penalty. Most state laws allow life sentences for murder that severely limit or eliminate the possibility of parole. Today, 37 states allow juries to sentence defendants to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole instead of the death penalty.

Several recent studies of public attitudes about crime and punishment found that a majority of Americans support alternatives to capital punishment: When people were presented with the facts about several crimes for which death was a possible punishment, a majority chose life imprisonment without parole as an appropriate alternative to the death penalty (see PA., 2007 ).

Q : Isn’t the Death Penalty necessary as just retribution for victims’ families? A : No. “Reconciliation means accepting you can’t undo the murder; but you can decide how you want to live afterwards” ( Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation, Inc. )

Q : Have strict procedures eliminated arbitrariness and discrimination in death sentencing? A : No. Poor people are also far more likely to be death sentenced than those who can afford the high costs of private investigators, psychiatrists, and expert criminal lawyers. Indeed, capital punishment is “a privilege of the poor,” said Clinton Duffy, former warden at California’s San Quentin Prison. Some observers have pointed out that the term “capital punishment” is ironic because “only those without capital get the punishment.”

Furthermore, study after study has found serious racial disparities in the charging, sentencing and imposition of the death penalty. People who kill whites are far more likely to receive a death sentence than those whose victims were not white, and blacks who kill whites have the greatest chance of receiving a death sentence.

Minorities are death-sentenced disproportionate to their numbers in the population. This is not primarily because minorities commit more murders, but because they are more often sentenced to death when they do.

Q : Maybe it used to happen that innocent people were mistakenly executed, but hasn’t that possibility been eliminated? A : No. Since 1973, 123 people in 25 states have been released from death row because they were not guilty. In addition, seven people have been executed even though they were probably innocent. A study published in the Stanford Law Review documents 350 capital convictions in this century, in which it was later proven that the convict had not committed the crime. Of those, 25 convicts were executed while others spent decades of their lives in prison. Fifty-five of the 350 cases took place in the 1970s, and another 20 of them between l980 and l985.

Our criminal justice system cannot be made fail-safe because it is run by human beings, who are fallible. Executions of innocent persons occur.

Q : Only the worst criminals get sentenced to death, right? A : Wrong. Although it is commonly thought that the death penalty is reserved for those who commit the most heinous crimes, in reality only a small percentage of death-sentenced inmates were convicted of unusually vicious crimes. The vast majority of individuals facing execution were convicted of crimes that are indistinguishable from crimes committed by others who are serving prison sentences, crimes such as murder committed in the course of an armed robbery.

The death penalty is like a lottery, in which fairness always loses. Who gets the death penalty is largely determined, not by the severity of the crime, but by: the race, sex, and economic class of the prisoner and victim; geography — some states have the death penalty, others do not, within the states that do some counties employ it with great frequency and others do not; the quality of defense counsel and vagaries in the legal process.

Q : “Cruel and unusual punishment” — those are strong words, but aren’t executions relatively swift and painless? A : No execution is painless, whether botched or not, and all executions are certainly cruel. The history of capital punishment is replete with examples of botched executions.

Lethal injection is the latest technique, first used in Texas in l982, and now mandated by law in a large majority of states that retain capital punishment. Although this method is defended as more humane, efficient, and inexpensive than others, one federal judge observed that even “a slight error in dosage or administration can leave a prisoner conscious but paralyzed while dying, a sentient witness of his or her own asphyxiation.” In Texas, there have been three botched injection executions since 1985. In other states, dozens of botched executions have occurred, leading to suspensions of executions in Florida, California, and other states.

In 2006, it took the Florida Department of Corrections 34 minutes to execute inmate Angel Nieves Diaz by way of lethal injection, usually a 15 minute procedure. During the execution, Diaz appeared to be in pain and gasped for air for more than 11 minutes. He was given a rare second dose of lethal chemicals after the execution team observed that the first round did not kill him. A medical examiner reported the second dose was needed because the needles were incorrectly inserted through his veins and into the flesh in his arms. Not only did Diaz die a slow and excruciating death because the drugs were not delivered into his veins properly, his autopsy revealed that he suffered 12 inch chemical burns in his arms by the highly concentrated drugs flowing under his skin.

More recently, an Ohio inmate did not die when his injections were incorrectly administered. Minutes into the execution, he raised his head and said, “It don’t work, it don’t work.”

Eyewitness accounts confirm that execution by lethal injection and other means is often an excruciatingly painful, and always degrading, process that ends in death.

Capital punishment is a barbaric remnant of uncivilized society. It is immoral in principle, and unfair and discriminatory in practice. It assures the execution of some innocent people. As a remedy for crime, it has no purpose and no effect. Capital punishment ought to be abolished now.

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Capital Punishment Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on capital punishment.

Every one of us is familiar with the term punishment. But Capital Punishment is something very few people understand. Capital punishment is a legal death penalty ordered by the court against the violation of criminal laws. In addition, the method of punishment varies from country to country. Where some countries hung the culprits until death and some shoot or give them a lethal injection.

Types of Capital Punishments

In this topic, we are going to discuss the various methods of punishment that are used in different countries. But, before that let’s talk about the capital punishments that people used in the past. Earlier, the capital punishments are more like torture rather than a death penalty. They used to strain and punish the body of the culprit to the extreme that he/she dies because of the pain and fear of torture.

Besides, modern methods are quicker and less painful than traditional methods.

• Electrocution – In this method, the criminal is tied to a chair and a high voltage current that can kill a man easily is passed through the body. In addition, it causes organ failure (especially heart).
• Tranquilization – This method gives the person a slow but painless death as the toxin injections are injected into his body that takes up to several hours for the criminal to die.
• Beheading – Generally, the Arab and Gulf countries use this method. Where they decide the death sentence by the crime of the person. Furthermore, in this method, they simply cut the person’s head apart from the body.
• Stoning – In this the criminal is beaten till death. Also, it is the most painful method of execution.
• Shooting – The criminal is either shoot in the head or in his/her chest in this method.
• Hanging – This method simply involves the hanging of culprit till death.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Capital Punishments

Although many people think that it’s a violation of human rights and the Human Rights Commission strongly opposes capital punishment still many countries continue this practice.

The advantages of capital punishment are that they give people an idea of what the law is capable of doing and the criminal can never escape from the punishment no matter who he/she is.

In addition, anyone who is thinking about committing a crime will think twice before committing a crime. Furthermore, a criminal that is in prison for his crime cannot harm anyone of the outside world.

The disadvantages are that we do not give the person a second chance to change. Besides, many times the real criminal escape the trial and the innocent soul of the prosecution claimed to guilty by false claims. Also, many punishments are painful and make a mess of the body of the criminal.

To conclude, we can say that capital punishment is the harsh reality of our world. Also, on one hand, it decreases the crime rate and on the other violates many human rights.

Besides, all these types of punishment are not justifiable and the court and administrative bodies should try to find an alternative for it.

FAQs about Capital Punishment

Q.1 What is the difference between the death penalty and capital punishment?

A.1 For many people the term death penalty and capital punishment is the same thing but there is a minute difference between them. The implementation of the death penalty is not death but capital punishment itself means execution.

Q.2 Does capital punishment decrease the rate of crime?

A.2 There is no solid proof related to this but scientists think that reduces the chances of major crimes to a certain level.

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10 facts about the death penalty in the U.S.

Most U.S. adults support the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to an April 2021 Pew Research Center survey . At the same time, majorities believe the death penalty is not applied in a racially neutral way, does not deter people from committing serious crimes and does not have enough safeguards to prevent an innocent person from being executed.

Use of the death penalty has gradually declined in the United States in recent decades. A growing number of states have abolished it, and death sentences and executions have become less common. But the story is not one of continuous decline across all levels of government. While state-level executions have decreased, the federal government put more prisoners to death under President Donald Trump than at any point since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

As debates over the death penalty continue in the U.S. , here’s a closer look at public opinion on the issue, as well as key facts about the nation’s use of capital punishment.

This Pew Research Center analysis examines public opinion about the death penalty in the United States and explores how the nation has used capital punishment in recent decades. 

The public opinion findings cited here are based primarily on a Pew Research Center survey of 5,109 U.S. adults, conducted from April 5 to 11, 2021. Everyone who took part in the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology . Here are the  questions used  from this survey, along with responses, and its  methodology .

Findings about the administration of the death penalty – including the number of states with and without capital punishment, the annual number of death sentences and executions, the demographics of those on death row and the average amount of time spent on death row – come from the Death Penalty Information Center and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Six-in-ten U.S. adults strongly or somewhat favor the death penalty for convicted murderers, according to the April 2021 survey. A similar share (64%) say the death penalty is morally justified when someone commits a crime like murder.

Support for capital punishment is strongly associated with the view that it is morally justified in certain cases. Nine-in-ten of those who favor the death penalty say it is morally justified when someone commits a crime like murder; only a quarter of those who oppose capital punishment see it as morally justified.

A majority of Americans have concerns about the fairness of the death penalty and whether it serves as a deterrent against serious crime. More than half of U.S. adults (56%) say Black people are more likely than White people to be sentenced to death for committing similar crimes. About six-in-ten (63%) say the death penalty does not deter people from committing serious crimes, and nearly eight-in-ten (78%) say there is some risk that an innocent person will be executed.

Opinions about the death penalty vary by party, education and race and ethnicity. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are much more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to favor the death penalty for convicted murderers (77% vs. 46%). Those with less formal education are also more likely to support it: Around two-thirds of those with a high school diploma or less (68%) favor the death penalty, compared with 63% of those with some college education, 49% of those with a bachelor’s degree and 44% of those with a postgraduate degree. Majorities of White (63%), Asian (63%) and Hispanic adults (56%) support the death penalty, but Black adults are evenly divided, with 49% in favor and 49% opposed.

Views of the death penalty differ by religious affiliation . Around two-thirds of Protestants in the U.S. (66%) favor capital punishment, though support is much higher among White evangelical Protestants (75%) and White non-evangelical Protestants (73%) than it is among Black Protestants (50%). Around six-in-ten Catholics (58%) also support capital punishment, a figure that includes 61% of Hispanic Catholics and 56% of White Catholics.

Opposition to the death penalty also varies among the religiously unaffiliated. Around two-thirds of atheists (65%) oppose it, as do more than half of agnostics (57%). Among those who say their religion is “nothing in particular,” 63% support capital punishment.

Support for the death penalty is consistently higher in online polls than in phone polls. Survey respondents sometimes give different answers depending on how a poll is conducted. In a series of contemporaneous Pew Research Center surveys fielded online and on the phone between September 2019 and August 2020, Americans consistently expressed more support for the death penalty in a self-administered online format than in a survey administered on the phone by a live interviewer. This pattern was more pronounced among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents than among Republicans and GOP leaners, according to an analysis of the survey results .

Phone polls have shown a long-term decline in public support for the death penalty. In phone surveys conducted by Pew Research Center between 1996 and 2020, the share of U.S. adults who favor the death penalty fell from 78% to 52%, while the share of Americans expressing opposition rose from 18% to 44%. Phone surveys conducted by Gallup found a similar decrease in support for capital punishment during this time span.

A majority of states have the death penalty, but far fewer use it regularly. As of July 2021, the death penalty is authorized by 27 states and the federal government – including the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. military – and prohibited in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Death Penalty Information Center . But even in many of the jurisdictions that authorize the death penalty, executions are rare: 13 of these states, along with the U.S. military, haven’t carried out an execution in a decade or more. That includes three states – California , Oregon and Pennsylvania – where governors have imposed formal moratoriums on executions.

A growing number of states have done away with the death penalty in recent years, either through legislation or a court ruling. Virginia, which has carried out more executions than any state except Texas since 1976, abolished capital punishment in 2021. It followed Colorado (2020), New Hampshire (2019), Washington (2018), Delaware (2016), Maryland (2013), Connecticut (2012), Illinois (2011), New Mexico (2009), New Jersey (2007) and New York (2004).

Death sentences have steadily decreased in recent decades. There were 2,570 people on death row in the U.S. at the end of 2019, down 29% from a peak of 3,601 at the end of 2000, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). New death sentences have also declined sharply: 31 people were sentenced to death in 2019, far below the more than 320 who received death sentences each year between 1994 and 1996. In recent years, prosecutors in some U.S. cities – including Orlando and Philadelphia – have vowed not to seek the death penalty, citing concerns over its application.

Nearly all (98%) of the people who were on death row at the end of 2019 were men. Both the mean and median age of the nation’s death row population was 51. Black prisoners accounted for 41% of death row inmates, far higher than their 13% share of the nation’s adult population that year. White prisoners accounted for 56%, compared with their 77% share of the adult population. (For both Black and White Americans, these figures include those who identify as Hispanic. Overall, about 15% of death row prisoners in 2019 identified as Hispanic, according to BJS.)

Annual executions are far below their peak level. Nationally, 17 people were put to death in 2020, the fewest since 1991 and far below the modern peak of 98 in 1999, according to BJS and the Death Penalty Information Center. The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted legal proceedings in much of the country in 2020, causing some executions to be postponed .

Even as the overall number of executions in the U.S. fell to a 29-year low in 2020, the federal government ramped up its use of the death penalty. The Trump administration executed 10 prisoners in 2020 and another three in January 2021; prior to 2020, the federal government had carried out a total of three executions since 1976.

The Biden administration has taken a different approach from its predecessor. In July 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a halt in federal executions while the Justice Department reviews its policies and procedures.

The average time between sentencing and execution in the U.S. has increased sharply since the 1980s. In 1984, the average time between sentencing and execution was 74 months, or a little over six years, according to BJS . By 2019, that figure had more than tripled to 264 months, or 22 years. The average prisoner awaiting execution at the end of 2019, meanwhile, had spent nearly 19 years on death row.

A variety of factors explain the increase in time spent on death row, including lengthy legal appeals by those sentenced to death and challenges to the way states and the federal government carry out executions, including the drugs used in lethal injections. In California, more death row inmates have died from natural causes or suicide than from executions since 1978, according to the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation .

Note: This is an update to a post originally published May 28, 2015.

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John Gramlich is an associate director at Pew Research Center .

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• Capital Punishment Essay

Essay on Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment is the execution of a person given by the state as a means of Justice for a crime that he has committed. It is a legal course of action taken by the state whereby a person is put to death as a punishment for a crime. There are various methods of capital punishment in order to execute a criminal such as lethal injection, hanging, electrocution, gas chamber, etc. Based on moral and humanitarian grounds, capital punishment is subjected to many controversies not only at the national level but also at the global platform. One must understand the death sentence by itself.

Many records of various civilizations and primal tribal methods denote that the death penalty was a part of their justice system. The system of the prison was evolved to keep people in confinement for some time who have done wrong in their life and was harmful to society. The idea behind keeping the criminal in the prison was to give them a chance to change and reform themselves. The idea works well with people who have done minor offences like theft, robbery, etc. A complication arises when grievous offences like brutal and inhumane acts of rape, murder, mass killing, etc. are involved. So, the contentious part is the grimness of the crime, which is the deciding reason for execution. 

During the 20th century period, millions of people died in the wars between the nations or states. In this violent period, military organizations practised capital punishment as a way of maintaining discipline. The death penalty was employed for crimes in many religious beliefs and historically was practised widely with the support of religious hierarchies. Today, there is no religious faith attached to the morality of capital punishment. It has been left to the discretion of the judiciary system to award the punishment in special circumstances. 

Most people feel that punishment for crimes like murders, rapes, and mass killings should not be death but some reformative or preventive sentence. The death penalty cannot reform a criminal, since once dead he cannot be reformed. Some people hold the view that no one has the right to take away anyone’s life for any reason. One should not take the role of God in taking away anybody’s life. At the same time, a criminal has no right to take away anyone’s life for any reason at all. If a person could go to an extent of taking someone’s life, he too has no right to live in a civilized society. Both the arguments can be cited to support viewpoints that are poles apart. 

Mankind has coined a large number of methods of capital punishment:

hanging by the rope until a person breathes his last.

death by electric current.

the murderer faces a firing squad.

the offender is beheaded and executed.

the culprit is poisoned.

the offender is stoned to death.

he is burnt alive at the stake.

the criminal is made to drown.

the criminal is thrown before hungry beasts of prey.

death through crucifixion.

Guillotine.

the offender is thrown into a poisonous gas chamber.

Methods can be different but all of these methods have one thing common and that is capital punishment is barbaric in all forms. It is savage and vindictive. It is a relic of an uncivilized era. Many people say that the methods by which executions are carried out involve physical torture. Contrary to the popular belief that the death penalty deters all future crimes, various surveys have shown that the threat of the death penalty does not in any way reduce the occurrence of violent crimes. 

Capital Punishment in India

Capital punishment in India does not come with a single stoke. The practice of Capital punishment is not very common in India. In our country, the Court of Session awards a death sentence according to the gravity of the offence, and this verdict requires confirmation by the High Court. Then an appeal can be made to the Supreme Court of India. In some cases, an appeal to the Supreme Court lies as a matter of right, where the High Court has reversed the verdict of the Sessions Court either into acquittal or punishment or has enhanced the sentence to capital punishment. 

Lastly, if needed an appeal can be made to the president of India and the governors of states for mercy. The President is solely guided by the notes in the files by the Home Minister or the Secretariat. He is bound to pen down the reasons for mercy. It is exercised very judiciously. 

Contemplating over capital punishment has been ramping on for a countless number of years. It is true that the death sentence is not the solution to the increase in crimes but at the same time, capital punishment inflicts physiological fear in the minds of people. In many countries, the use of this punishment has helped to deter crimes and change the minds of future criminals against committing heinous crimes. Capital punishment should be given in the rare of the rarest cases after proper investigation of the criminal’s offence. 

FAQs on Capital Punishment Essay

Q1. What Do You Understand By Capital Punishment?

Ans. Capital Punishment is the execution of a person given by the state as a means of Justice for a crime that he has committed. It is a legal course of action taken by the state whereby a person is put to death as a punishment for a crime. There are quite a few methods of capital punishment to execute a criminal such as lethal injection, hanging, electrocution, gas chamber, etc.

Q2. Why Do Some People Argue Against Capital Punishment?

Ans. Some people argue against capital punishment because they hold the view that no one other than God has the right to take anyone’s life. They argue that criminals should get a chance to change or reform themselves into good and responsible human beings. If they are executed, then they cannot be reformed.

Q3. What are Some Methods that Mankind has Coined for Capital Punishment?

Ans. Mankind has coined various methods of capital punishment:

the criminal is burnt alive at the stake.

the offender is thrown before hungry beasts of prey.

Q4. Does Capital Punishment Deter the Rate of Crimes?

Ans. There is no solid evidence to the theory of capital punishment that it reduces the crime rate but yes it does instil psychological fear in the minds of future criminals against committing heinous crimes.

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Capital Punishment Debate Essay: Hints Prompts and Other Ideas

October 26, 2015

Creating an Essay Based on Capital Punishment Facts

Capital punishment is an emotionally and politically charged issue. Because of this, there is probably more rhetoric than fact available on the subject. This can make it difficult to research this topic. You will probably spend more time vetting your sources and discounting useless ones than you will taking notes and writing your paper. Unfortunately, this is a necessary step when you write about topics that tend to generate strong emotional reactions. Our recommendation is to use the following criteria when judging a source:

• Are the facts cited in the source linked to evidence?
• Is the source well written and free from an overly emotional language?
• Is the source current?

Capital Punishment Essay Prompts and Ideas

• Write a capital punishment pros and cons essay
• Is capital punishment a true deterrent for violent crimes?
• Should the United States ban capital punishment in cases involving the intellectually disabled?
• Is capital punishment in the U.S. used too frequently?
• Choose a side in the capital punishment debate and argue the merits of that point of view
• Should executions be halted in light of the many botched executions?
• Should governors be allowed to issue mass death penalty commutations?
• Write a persuasive essay for or against the death penalty for juvenile offenders
• How does mental illness impact the death penalty?
• How does socioeconomic status impact the death penalty?
• What are the causes of the disparate death penalty sentences among minorities?
• Should a convicted criminal be allowed to choose the death penalty?
• Explore the works of an anti-death penalty activist
• Explore the works of a pro-death penalty activist
• Write about an exonerated death penalty inmate

Good Death Penalty Resources

If you are having difficulty selecting death penalty sources, here are a few that we believe most students will find to be quite useful:

• This website provides a lot of information that is valuable to somebody arguing against the death penalty. The author's of the website work on behalf of condemned inmates, but the information presented is accurate.
• This is an excellent resource for information on case law relating to the death penalty and many other legal issues.
• The website of a group who seeks to use DNA evidence to exonerate innocent men and women.
• These are statistics and analyses of data collected by the BJS about capital punishment and other issues.

Some Final Advice

This is a challenging and at times emotional topic to address. Just keep in mind that reasoned arguments will get you much further than emotional ones. It is also very important to make rational arguments and to support those arguments with links to great sources. Do that, and your essay is sure to be a success. If you need additional help, just remember that Trust My Paper Is always happy to assist.

While being committed to a number of charitable causes, like volunteering at special events or giving free art lessons to children, Marie doesn’t forget her vocation – writing. She can write about almost anything but has focused on time management, motivation, academic and business writing.

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October 26 2015

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