Reprieve: against the death penalty

The death penalty is a broken system that must be abolished.

Myths and facts about the death penalty.

MYTH: The death penalty is permissible as long as the majority of the public support it.

FACT: History is littered with human rights violations that were supported by the majority but in modern times are reviled. Slavery and racial segregation had widespread support in the societies where they occurred but constituted gross violations of the victims’ human rights. Public support for capital punishment is overwhelmingly based on a desire to be free from crime, as is illustrated by polls in the USA and other countries which show significant falls in support for the death penalty when life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is offered as an alternative. In the USA, a May 2006 poll by the Gallup company found support for the death penalty dropped from a majority of 65% to a minority of 48% when life imprisonment without parole was offered as an alternative.

MYTH: Executions provide the most cost-effective solution to violent crime.

FACT: Firstly, a society cannot condone violence and sacrifice human rights as a cost-cutting measure. The decision to take a human life should not rest on financial motives. Secondly, using the death penalty to reduce prison populations is futile. The USA, for example, has a prison population of approximately 2.2 million but only around 3,000 prisoners are condemned to death. Thirdly, at least in America, it is actually extraordinarily expensive to maintain death row prisoners and their lengthy appeals processes. In California, for example, the annual costs of the death penalty system are around $137 million annually. The cost of a system which replaced the death penalty with the maximum penalty of lifetime incarceration would be around $11.5 million annually.

MYTH: The death penalty deters violent crime and makes society safer.

FACT: In 2004 in the USA, the average murder rate for states that used the death penalty was 5.71 per 100,000 of the population, compared with 4.02 per 100,000 in states that did not use it. In Canada in 2003, 27 years after the country abolished the death penalty the murder rate had fallen by 44 per cent since 1975, when capital punishment was still enforced. Far from making society safer, the death penalty has been shown to have a brutalizing effect on society. Executions desensitize the public to the immorality of killing, increasing the probability that some people will be motivated to kill, and legitimize the notion that vengeance for past misdeeds is acceptable. Executions also have an imitation effect, where people actually follow the example set by the state, after all, people feel if the government can kill its enemies, so can they (Bowers and Pierce, 1980; King, 1978, Forst. 1983).

MYTH: The execution of a criminal provides ‘closure’ and emotional release for the loved ones of his or her victims.
FACT: "When the execution does happen, they (the victims' families) find that they are still left empty, unsatisfied and unhealed after wards. They have been victimized again, this time, by the system they sought to give them justice. Capital punishment desperately disappoints the families and it degrades, dehumanizes and debilitates us as a Society". (Marietta Jaeger Lane, the mother of a young rape and murder victim). One might also present the eagerness with which the Bali bombers welcomed their death sentences as evidence for the argument that executions can instil a profound sense of uncertainty about whether justice has really been done in those left behind.

Some uncomfortable statistics about the death penalty.

* Every 3 hours a man, a woman or even a child is being put to death somewhere in the world.

* Every hour, someone somewhere receives a death sentence.

* Between 2007 and 2008, the number of executions nearly doubled.

* According to one defence lawyer, 99.9% of people accused of murder in China are found guilty and put to death.

* Today, 21 juveniles are waiting on death row in Iran. 100 are condemned for crimes committed before the age of 18.

* The process of suffocation that results from lethal injection lasts 15 minutes on average. In one case it took 34 minutes for the sentenced prisoner to die.

Electronic resources - primary sources

To watch a video testimony from Marietta Jaeger Lane, click here.

To watch video testimony from a victim who was both a member of the murderer’s family and of the victim’s family, click here.

To listen to a recording of the botched execution by electric chair of Alpha Otis O’Daniel Stephens (© Sound Portraits), click here.

To listen to a recording of the execution of Ivon Ray Stanley (© Sound Portraits and WNYC Radio), click here.

To listen to excerpts from death chamber recordings (© Sound Portraits and WNYC Radio), click here.

In 1999, Stacy Abramson and Dave Isay were in Huntsville, Texas to record the oral histories of two men on death row when they began to wonder about the effects upon the prison personnel who participate in, carry out, and witness multiple executions as part of their jobs at the Walls Unit in Huntsville.The result was the piece 'Witness to an Execution'. To listen to the recording, click here.

Electronic resources - secondary sources

To listen to radio discussions on the topic of executions and particularly their public element (© Sound Portraits and WNYC Radio), click here, here, here, and here.

To watch a video of actor Jeremy Irons talking about the death penalty, human rights and the sanctity of life, click here.

To view a video on the problem with lethal injections and botched execution, click here.

To watch a video of the story of Mohammed Hassanzadeh, executed in Iran by hanging at the age of 16, click here.

In China prison officials often remove organs from the bodies of executed prisoners and sell them. To watch a video on the disturbing relationship between executions and the transplant industry, click here.

The Iranian parliament has approved a bill that would criminalise blogs and websites that would “spread mischief” or “undermine the authority of the State”. The new law currently considered would allow the death penalty for “offensive bloggers”. To watch a video about the potential death penalty for blogging in Iran click here.

“Spreading mischief” or “undermining authority” covers several different offenses, including homosexuality, punishable by hanging. To watch a video of an execution by hanging, click here.