Capital punishment
The death penalty refers to the lawful infliction of death as punishment for a criminal act. Capital punishment is a cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment that breaches human entitlements, more so the entitlement to life. The death penalty is executed through various methods, which include hanging, beheading, shooting, electrocution, and lethal injection. The report shows that Amnesty International has recorded at least 149 executions of juvenile offenders in 10 nations, including China, DRC, Saudi Arabia, and the USA, with Iran leading on the list. The report also shows that most of the juvenile executions in 2019 occurred in China, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, with China being the world’s leading executioner. Amnesty International documented about 657 executions, excluding the executions that occurred in China. The executions recorded in 2019 exhibited a slight decrease of around five percent from the 690 executions recorded in 2018 and reflects the least number that Amnesty International has documented in at least a decade. Amnesty International also documented approximately 2,307 death penalties in 56 nations in 2019, while in 2018, it recorded a total of 2,531.
Research shows that as of December 2019, capital punishment is legal in 29 states in the USA. The US Highest Court reinstated capital punishment in the USA in 1976, and till December 12th, 2019, about 1,512 people have been killed. Similarly, 2,656 persons in the USA are on a death row as of July 1st, 2019, based on the data of the Criminal Justice Project of the NAACP. As of December 2019, there have been 166 death row exonerations since 1973, with 29 of them coming from Florida. The state of Florida has had 99 death penalty executions since the death penalty was reinstated.
Importance of issue
Many nations have adopted the death penalty as a form of punishment for people who commit high order crimes like murder, armed robbery, or rape, yet this form of punishment is cruel and degrading. Similarly, statistics show that many people are executed globally every year. However, some of the people who get executed are usually innocent, and executing them breaches their human rights, especially the entitlement to life. Also, evidence shows that many offenders who have been put in a death-row have ended up being exonerated having been found not guilty, a proof that the death penalty judgments are not based on valid evidence. Juvenile execution is also common in some countries despite it being prohibited under international law. There is, therefore, a need to harmonize countries to abolish capital punishment and adopt other forms of punishment for offenders.
The topic will influence the correctional practices to change from capital punishment to other forms of punishment along with influencing behavior change in individuals to reduce crime in the society. It will capacitate the correctional system to adopt punishment methods that can highly transform the character of the victims, especially juvenile offenders, to protect them from executions while also reducing crime. The topic will impact the victims, making them that they can still make appeals for a review of their cases to confirm their innocence even after the capital punishment has been passed on them. The topic of the death penalty will help the public understand the various methods used in executing the death penalty. It will also expand the knowledge of the public regarding the capital punishment issue and will make them aware that some death penalty sentences have been passed on innocent people who were not supposed to be held culpable for their offenses. This will help the public develop a different viewpoint of the issue and consider it an inhuman act that should be abolished. It will also make them alert to make appeals to cases of their close ones who might happen to be sentenced to death to enable a review of the case to assess the guilt of the convicted persons. Besides, the topic will capacitate the system-involved persons to know the types of crimes that attract the death penalty and, therefore, be alert not to accept death sentences on cases that are not worth this sentence. Moreover, it will help them know that they can make appeals over their cases in the event they are sentenced to death without any tangible proof of their guilt.
Capital punishment should be abolished because of various reasons. First, the act is irreversible, yet mistakes always happen. Execution is a permanent punishment, and the danger of killing a guilt-free person cannot be eradicated. For instance, many people in the USA have been sent to death sentence but later acquitted because they were found to be innocent while some have been killed with some suspicions on their culpability. Once a person has been executed, the act cannot be reversed even if they are later found to be innocent. Also, capital punishment does not deter offense, as it is imagined. Most of the nations which execute tend to refer to capital punishment as a way to deter individuals from committing offenses. However, there is no evidence that this method is more effective in minimizing crime than life imprisonment.
Besides, execution is discriminatory as it mostly affects persons from vulnerable socio-economic settings or those belonging to a minority group in terms of race, ethnic affiliation, or faith. People from such backgrounds have less access to legal representation, while others have less experience of the judicial system, making them feel the weight of capital punishment. Finally, the death penalty in some nations is not used for the intended purpose of punishing offenders, but rather as a political tool to punish political rivals. For example, in countries like Sudan and Iran, authorities use capital punishment to punish their political opponents.
Solution or recommendation
Capital punishment leads to the execution of innocent people; thus, it should be abolished and alternative forms of punishment imposed on people who commit crimes depending on the magnitude of the crimes. For instance, nations should punish people who commit crimes by imposing a life sentence. Executions of juveniles should also be abandoned, and instead, other corrective measures like and non-incarceration forms to enhance behavior change among juvenile offenders. Similarly, the state of Florida should abolish the death penalty and employ the following alternative measures:
- It should use life sentencing to punish people who commit high order crimes.
- The state should do away with the capital sentencing schemes that allow judges to impose capital punishment even if one or more judges vote for life as they put a higher risk of wrongfully convicting and sentencing an innocent person to death.
- It should use alternative ways of reducing crimes, for example, community policing, crime-fighting technology, along with restorative justice. Community policing would help encourage good interactions among the people and law enforcement agencies, thereby thereby reducing crime.