Should Capital Punishment be abolished? Discuss.

If having capital punishment serves the best in curbing crimes, then why is it that there are 140 countries that had chosen to be abolitionists in law or practice, whereas only the very minority of 58 countries still practices capital punishment (Amnesty International, 2012)? According to Encyclopædia Britannica (2012), capital punishment, also known as death penalty is the execution of an offender sentenced to death after being convicted of a criminal offense by a court of law. As reported by Channel NewsAsia (2012), in a UN General Assembly, there is a record of 111 countries backing up a resolution to call for the abolition of the death penalty. Just like cancers, the top life-threatening illness, no one could 100% guarantee that after being cured, there will not be any possibility of relapsing. Hence the same applies to the law, there will also not be any 100% fool proof plan instead we can only devise plans that are highly helpful to the situations after weighing the arguments for and against the death penalty. To begin with, the stand of this essay is that death penalty should be abolished both in practice and the law, although the main argument for the death penalty is the deterrence effect it can bring but it may not seems so in reality, also arguments provided against the death penalty which include the high expenses incurred of the execution proceedings, the possibility of unfair application which may lead to wrongful application of the death penalty which will all be discussed in the following paragraphs to further substantiate the stand to abolish the death penalty.    

Deterrence, an argument the retentionists are using for death penalty to not be abolished but in reality, research is difficult to measure the deterrence level with the homicide rates due to many external factors that needs to be consider. Deterrence is a noun for the word deterrent meaning a thing that discourages or is intended to discourage someone from doing something (Oxford Dictionaries, 2012). Over the years, there are many studies to show the deterrence of death penalty relating to the crime rate such as the famous research done from 1933 through 1969 by Professor Isaac Ehrlich of the State University of New York, which concluded that death penalty can deter on an average of seven to eight homicides but it was later discredited by criminologists William Bowers and Glenn Pierce’s brutalization theory in 1975 due to Professor Ehrlich’s research did not include important factors such as homicides usually takes place when murderers are emotionally unstable (Haines, 1996). Furthermore, a study published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology titled "Do executions lower homicide rates?: The views of leading criminologists" by Professor Michael Radelet and Traci Lacock of the University of Colorado (2009), found that 88% of USA’s leading criminologists do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime. In addition, as shown in the tables, at the bottom of the post (Table 1 and 2), after comparing the data and resources from Amnesty International (2012), International Statistics on Crime and Justice published by HEUNI and UNODC (2010) and Internet WorldStats, it can be concluded that among the countries with highest homicide rates of between twenty to thirty per 100,000 population, the abolitionists are more than the retentionists. And among the countries with the lowest homicide rates of fewer than 3 per 100,000 populations, for the Europe and Oceania regions which has all the abolitionists and Asia having more retentionists than abolitionists. Hence it can be concluded that except for the Asia region, it is shown that countries that abolishes death penalty reflects lower homicide rates whereas those countries which retains the death penalty by practice or by law reflects higher homicide rates. Therefore it further proves that by having the death penalty does not deter homicides.

The strongest argument against the death penalty will be the very high cost of time and money needed for each capital case. Quoting from Haines, Associate Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Cortland (1996), “not all costs of the death penalty can be measured in dollars and cents. Capital cases also gobble up tremendous amounts of criminal court time, thereby delaying the processing of other important cases” (p. 171). According to criminology Professor Larry J. Siegel of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell (2000), the death penalty is indeed very costly. An example given was in 1998 there were 508 men and 9 women on death row in California. Due to the high numbers of appeals, the median time between sentencing and executing was 14 years. Just by processing the appeals alone, it is very expensive. In the year 2000, the annual budget of US$5 million (About S$6.1million) pays for California’s public defender staff of 45 lawyers who represent the inmates in death penalty cases (p. 567). Referring to a study done by the New York State Defenders’ Association, the average death penalty case which includes the trials and the first appeal will cost the government US$1.8million (About S$2.2million). This is three times as much as it would cost to keep an offender imprisonment for life (Gottfried, 1997, p. 52). To further support the high expenses needed, according to Gerber and Johnson (2007), though in Kansas, no executions were held but on average, a capital cases were 70 percent more expensive than non-capital cases. The median cost for a capital case was US$1.26 million (About S$1.6million) versus US$740,000 (About S$0.9million) which is almost half as much. Trial cost was on average sixteen times greater for capital cases compared to life imprisonment (p. 167). If in the USA, it is costing so much, then how about in Singapore whereby according to the United Nations, the per capita use of death penalty in Singapore is about 13.57 executions per one million population (Stearman, 2007, p. 9)? After looking at the many case studies, it can be determined that to abolish the death penalty is still the best decision so as to save the cost in terms of time and money to lessen the country’s financial burden, taxpayers’ money and also to prevent the delay to process other important cases.

Unfair application is the next main concern of anti-death penalty supporters as it may lead to unfair judgments or even wrongful application of the death penalty. “It is impossible to undo any penalty imposed on an innocent man.” said by Garett, a Phoenix-based writer in 1996 in his article “The Executioner’s Error,” in Liberty Magazine (Garett, 2000, p. 159). Indeed, once the person is executed, there is no way we could revive him and mistakes can never be rectified. Furthermore, after the case has ended, if there are no more appeals, there is little chance that anyone would probe further into the case to return justice to the innocent ones. These cases of wrongfully or unfair execution are especially possible to happen on those convicts who are of the poorer status, they are the ones who do not have the money to hire competent attorneys to fight for their case and look for useful evidence. In a research done by Professor David C. Baldus, Tye professor of law at the University of Lowa and his colleagues (1983), they notice the disparities based on the socioeconomic status of victims. They have notice that if the defendants whose victims were of a higher socioeconomic status, they are much highly to be sentenced to death penalty compared to those of their victims are of a lower socioeconomic status (Gerber and Johnson, 2007, p. 58). According to the book written by Professor of Criminology and Director of the Centre for Criminology Research in University of Oxford, Hood (1998), he wrote that, “defendant charged with a capital offence has a right to communicate with a counsel of his or her own choice and a right to legal assistance for trials and appeals, without payment if the defendant does not have sufficient means to pay for it. However, they often have to be earning low amounts to qualify for full legal aid and the fees paid to their lawyers are well below normal professional expectations” (Hood, 2002, p. 107). Hence then with the very low pay, how would any lawyer be able to fully fight for the defendant. This is further proved to be true as in a Texas case; the Federal Appeal Court for the Fifth Circuit stated in 1992, “The state paid defense counsel $11.84 per hour. Unfortunately the justice system got only what it paid for” (Hood, 2002, p.109). From 1989-1993, 41 cases were overturned or commuted by Bangladesh (Hood, 2002, p. 104), in US at least 141 people have been released from the prison after being either acquitted of all charges, dismissed charges from the prosecution or granted a complete pardon based on evidence of innocence (Death Penalty Information Center, 2012). These are just some of the examples of the possible innocent deaths if cases were not tried properly and if the defendants’ counsels are not competent enough, they would have been dead. In China, Teng Xingshan was convicted of the murder of a waitress in 1987 and, despite his pleas of innocence, he was executed in 1989. Years later, Teng’s children tracked down the waitress living in her home town. Teng was posthumously exonerated in January 2006 (Stearman, 2007, p.23). Let us consider, the many more possibilities of unfair applications and wrongful applications of the death penalty world-wide, how many more lives shall be taken innocently or unfairly? Hence, to prevent more innocent lives to be taken, death penalty should be abolished.

In conclusion, once said by Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center in 2005, “It’s not that the death penalty is thought to be morally wrong, but it is shown to have problems, risk and costs associated with it. The more fair and accurate you want to be with the death penalty, the more it will cost and the longer it will take” (Gerber and Johnson, 2007, p.165). Hence, how much time and money are we able to spend on the death penalty trials and procedures? Does death penalty really serves as a great deterrence? Should more innocent lives be taken just because they are poorer? These are the questions we should really ponder on before we consider to support the death penalty law. Therefore to end the whole essay, a solution suggested to minimize the above concerns is to replace the death penalty to life imprisonment without parole so that the dangerous murderers will not be able to kill anymore, the cost is also lesser to keep one prisoner for life than to have them on execution trials and most importantly there will be no more innocent life being taken away. 

Table 1: Highest homicide rates: Between 20 and 30 per 100,000 population

Countries	Retentionists in practice or law	Abolitionists in all crimes
Southern Africa	Botswana Lesotho Swaziland	Namibia South Africa
Central America	Belize Guatemala El Salvador	Costa Rica Honduras Mexico Nicaragua Panama
Caribbean	Antigua and Barbuda Bahamas Barbados Cuba Dominica Jamaica St. Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Trinidad and Tobago	Anguilla Aruba Bonaire Saint Eustatius and Saba British Virgin Islands Cayman Curaçao Islands Dominican Republic Grenada Guadeloupe Haiti Martinique Monserrat Puerto Rico Saint-Barthélemy Saint Martin Sint Maarten Turks and Caicos Islands Virgin Islands (US)

Table 2: Lowest homicide rates: Under 3 per 100,000 population

Countries	Retentionists in practice or law	Abolitionists in all crimes
Europe		Austria Belgium Bulgaria Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Poland Portugal Romania Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden United Kingdom Albania Andorra Belarus Bosnia Croatia
Oceania		Australia Fiji French Polynesia Guam Kiribati Marshall Islands Micronesia New Caledonia New Zealand Papua New Guinea Samoa Samoa, American Solomon, Islands Tonga Vanuatu
Asia	Afganistan Bangladesh Brunei Darussalam China Hong Kong Japan Kazakhstan Malaysia Myanmar (ex-Burma) Singapore India Indonesia Korea, North Maldives Mongolia Taiwan Thailand Laos Viet Nam, Korea, South Sri Lanka (ex-Ceilan) Tajikistan	Armenia Azerbaijan Bhutan Cambodia Georgia Kyrgyzstan Macao Nepal Pakistan Phillipines Timor Leste (West) Turkmenistan Uzbekistan

References:

• Amnesty International (2012). Abolitionist and retentionist countries | Amnesty International.Amnesty International | Working to Protect Human Rights. Retrieved December 17, 2012, from http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty/abolitionist-and-retentionist-countries
• Encyclopædia Britannica (2012). capital punishment (law). In Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved December 17, 2012, from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/93902/capital-punishment
• Channel NewsAsia (2012, December 21). Record vote against death penalty at UN - Channel NewsAsia. Channel NewsAsia - Latest News, Singapore, Asia, World and Business News - channelnewsasia.com. Retrieved December 27, 2012, from http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/1243874/1/.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
• Oxford Dictionaries (2012). Definition of deterrent - inhibitor, weapon and military (British & World English). Oxford Dictionaries Online. Retrieved from http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/deterrent?q=deterrence#deterrent__9
• Radelet, M. L., & Lacock, T. L. (2009). Do executions lower homicide rates?: The views of leading criminologists. The journal of criminal law & criminology, 99(2). Retrieved from http://www.deathpenalty.org/downloads/RadeletDeterrenceStudy2009.pdf.
• Haines, H. H. (1996). Re framing capital punishment: Pragmatic Abolitionism. In Against capital punishment: The anti-death penalty movement in America, 1972-1994(pp. 174-175, 171). New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
• European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, Affiliated with the United Nations (HEUNI), & United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (2010). International Statistics on Crime and Justice. Heuni - Heuni. Retrieved from http://www.heuni.fi/Satellite?blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobcol=urldata&SSURIapptype=BlobServer&SSURIcontainer=Default&SSURIsession=false&blobkey=id&blobheadervalue1=inline;%20filename=Hakapaino_final_07042010.pdf&SSURIsscontext=Satellite%20Server&blobwhere=1266335656647&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&ssbinary=true&blobheader=application/pdf
• Internet WorldStats (n.d.). Country List by Geographical Regions - Internet WorldStats - ISO 3166. Internet World Stats - Usage and Population Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.internetworldstats.com/list1.htm#AS
• Siegel, L. J. (2000). The Judicatory Process. In Criminology (7th ed., p. 567). USA: Wadsworth/Thomsom Learning.
• Gottfried, T. (1997). The case against executions. In Capital punishment: The death penalty debate (p. 52). Springfield, NJ: Enslow Publishers.
• Gerber, R. J., & Johnson, J. M. (2007). In The top ten death penalty myths: The politics of crime control (p. 58, 165 & 167). Westport, Conn: Praeger.
• Stearman, K. (2007). In The death penalty - (Ethical debates) (p. 9 & 23). London, England: Wayland.
• Garrett, L. S. (2000). Innocent people could be executed. In Problems of death: Opposing viewpoints (p. 159). San Diego, USA: Greenhaven Press.
• Hood, R. G. (2002). The observance of standards and safeguards. In The death penalty: A worldwide perspective (2nd ed., p. 107 & 109). New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
• Death Penalty Information Center (2012). Innocence: List of Those Freed From Death Row | Death Penalty Information Center. Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row

Signing off,

Evelyn