A Mistake Cannot Be Reversed
Bingqi Zhao
Professor Abbas
EAP 6110 10
April 20, 2016
The George Washington University
A Mistake Cannot Be Reversed
Capital Punishment is one of the ancient form of punishment and has a deep root in many people's mind. It reflects our moral standard, religious beliefs and sense of justice in a long time. As our civilization advanced into modern world, however, people are reconsidering this punishment. Death penalty even stirs up fierce debate, numerous studies have been conducted on this topic, focusing on different perspectives, like society, economy and many other aspects. Some proponents for abolishment, like former Wisconsin senator Russell D. Feingold, standing on the side of justice and realities, argue in the article "Capital Punishment" (December 21, 2005), Capital punishment should be end in United State. While opponents may take the stance of victims, religious view appeal to keep the capital punishment. Till now, capital punishment completely abolished in 108 countries, which is more than 50% of all the countries in the world, while 36 countries, including the U.S. and China, still keep the death penalty. As a person who believes in human rights, I would argue that the death penalty should be abolished.
It is important to note that our justice system has its limitations. Every human made system is not perfect, our judicial system either. We cannot guarantee 100 percent correctness. Meanwhile, our ideas and moral standard is changing and improving. Today's belief maybe erroneous in the future. All these limitations will inevitably lead to mistake. If this mistake is to deprive one's life, however, it is impossible to revoke. For instance, technology has not been developed and applied to exclude all the innocent people from conviction. Therefore, there still exist innocent people get convicted of crimes they didn't commit. DNA test is a good instance. In the innocent project, 336 post-conviction people proved to be innocent after going through DNA tests. The average time incarcerating in prison is 14 years. They are the lucky ones, only a small part of the crimes fit for the requirement of the DNA test. For this part, there still a part of the criminal cases left without DNA test. For the part of DNA test did not work on, there are no such advanced alternative technology brought into operation. Therefore, we are not sure how many innocent people are still convicted because technology has not reached the point could answer or did not applied on. An eyewitness may not be the best testimony. Our memory is not reliable; it is easy to effected by outer environments. Even when we wholeheartedly recall the event, as the neuroscientist pointed out, we are just resembling through the traces from our brain and reconstruct the event. The case of Ronald Cotton is a great example. In July 1984, the attacker broke into Jennifer Thompson's apartment and raped her. After deliberately recall and think, Thompson definitely sure Ronald Cotton is the attacker. Thompson's words as one of the important testimony, Cotton finally sentenced to be in prison for 54 years. Eleven year passed, his innocent was proven by DNA test. This is a happy ending, why would we cost innocent people in prison as long as 11 years? At least, this case reminds us how memory is not always reliable. Therefore, the penalty of death or long-term imprisonment is based on something that's not reliable.
A number of innocent people convicted may be more than we expected. In the paper "Rate of false conviction of criminal defendants who are sentenced to death" (March 25, 2014), the author pointed out a great number of people who are sentence to death is wrong. The study focus on the time period from 1973 to 2004. By introducing the survival analysis and sensitivity analysis, the study group estimate that more than 4.1 percent defendants with death sentences are innocent, while 1.6% percent defendants are exonerated. That is definitely a great number of false conviction. According to the data from the research, the number of innocent people will be 202 aside from the exonerated one. However, this percentage of the research is not the actual number of the executed ones who are innocent. At least, we can say, there are numbers of false convictions we should not ignore. It is also important to understand that morals change over time, and therefore death sentences only reflect the morals of the time. From today's viewpoint, it is more or less unbelievable that homosexual lovers will be punished. But it did happen in the past. Our moral standard is improving and changing. Thus, if we standing at the future's standpoint, many death judgements would be wrong, do not let them die before we can take the mistake back.
The case of Alan Turing could be a good instance. Alan Turing is one of the greatest scientist in 20th century. Time Magazine listed him as one of "100 most important people in 20th century". 1952, unfortunately, Turing is charged by government as "Gross indecency" and forced to suffer chemical castration and his homosexual behavior cannot be accepted by the society. In the next years, he undergoes a great torture. 1954, Turing killed himself by cyanide stained apple. Today, we know Turing is innocent, but he has no chance reverse the public opinions and government's judgement at his time. In 2009, English government finally releasing the statement and formally apologize for the treatment for Alan Turing, but the fact of extreme damage on his body by the punishment cannot be revoked. Injustice can be rectified, however, one's life cannot be revived. What we can do is do not let the extreme punishment happen again before it becomes irreversible. Although the death sentence reflects current moral standpoints, we may regret those moral views in the future. Therefore, abolishing capital punishment would reduce potential mistakes based on social norms and practices.
Another reason why we need to abolish death penalty is, death penalty misses our original goals. What people expect from death penalty to achieve are: deterrence effect and punishment for perpetrator. For its deterrence effect, people think death deterrence stops the potential murderer's motivation of killing someone. For the punishment, many people believe execute the murderer is the best remedy for victim. However, the reality goes against our wishes. Execution may not deter crimes as we supposed. People are born different. Different people have different personalities. Some people are impetuous, while others are cautious. Some people are ill-tempered, while others are amiable. Many homicides happen due to impulsive action, obviously, manslaughter is easy to happen on the person who is more impulsive and bad tempered. Manslaughter take up a big part of homicides, however, capital punishment fails on it since deterrence will not work on personalities.
On the other hand, the outcome from statistic data is somewhat a contradiction with our beliefs. From statistics data, there are no direct relations between criminal rates and death penalty. A good example is the data of New Jersey state, which abolished death penalty at 2007.
Table 1
New Jersey Crime Rates 2000-2014, New Jersey Population and Number of Crimes 2000-2014
Year Population Index Violent Property Murder Rape Robbery assault Burglary Theft Theft
2000 8,414,350 265,935 32,298 233,637 289 1,357 13,553 17,099 43,924 155,562 34,151
2001 8,511,116 273,645 33,094 240,551 336 1,278 14,110 17,379 46,812 156,031 37,708
2002 8,575,252 259,967 32,252 227,715 339 1,365 13,955 16,593 43,899 148,061 35,755
2003 8,642,412 251,838 31,488 220,350 406 1,288 13,342 16,452 43,457 142,287 34,606
2004 8,685,166 242,256 30,943 211,313 392 1,331 13,076 16,144 41,030 139,977 30,306
2005 8,703,150 234,310 30,919 203,391 417 1,208 16,079 16,073 38,980 136,728 27,683
2006 8,724,560 230,630 30,672 199,958 428 1,237 13,357 15,650 39,433 135,801 24,724
2007 8,685,920 220,827 28,601 192,226 380 1,050 12,549 14,622 37,482 132,791 21,953
2008 8,663,398 227,478 28,351 199,127 376 1,122 12,701 14,152 40,402 138,545 20,180
2009 8,707,739 207,865 27,113 180,752 319 1,041 11,639 14,114 36,945 128,303 15,504
2010 8,799,593 210,097 27,055 183,042 371 981 11,818 13,885 38,732 128,754 15,556
2011 8,834,773 216,922 27,203 189,719 380 1,006 12,209 13,608 43,238 129,066 17,415
2012 8,867,749 207,208 25,727 181,481 388 1,035 11,385 12,919 42,338 122,662 16,481
2013 8,911,502 193,382 25,748 167,634 404 861 12,084 12,071 35,883 118,005 13,746
2014 8,938,175 178,339 23,346 154,993 349 953 10,498 11,225 31,710 111,578 11,705
Adapted from New Jersey Crime Rates 1960-2014 New Jersey Population and Number of Crimes 1960-2014
Table 1 indicates the number of crimes in New Jersey state from the year 2000 to 2014. The categories listed covered population, crime numbers and further split into different kinds of crimes. From the table, there are 8,685,920 people in the state at 2007, and 8,663,398 in 2008. The population is relatively stable in these two years– only 22,522 people lower than 2007. For the number of murders, there are 380 homicides in 2007, which is 4 cases more than 2008. Compared with the population of the state, the murder rate decreased from 0.004375% to 0.004340%, which is a very small difference. It can be seen that the abolishment of death penalty did not promote more homicides. The difference in numbers between two years' criminal cases also is trivial. Aside from small increase of criminal rates in 2008, a downwards trend of criminal rates is prominent as the time goes from 2000 to 2014. The following line-chart indicate this trend, which is transformed from the table 2.
Chart 1:
Criminal Rates from 2000-2014, New Jersey State
Thus, a surprising outcome that the abolishment of death penalty does not facilitate more crimes, or at least there are no direct correlations between abolishment of death penalty and criminal event.
Chart 2:
Murder Rates in Death Penalty States and Non-Death Penalty States
The data presented in chart 2, illustrate the murder rates of death penalty states and non-death penalty states from 1990 to 2014. It is worthwhile to note that all of the Non-Death Penalty States has a lower murder rates. This discrepancy become the greatest is in 2005, the murder rates of death penalty states is 5.87%, while non-death penalty states is 4.03%. Meanwhile, from the data provided, it can be calculated that 76 percent of the time period, murder rates of non-death penalty states are more than 20 percent lower than death penalty state. Even for other years, the rates of non-death penalty states at least 4 percent lower than death penalty states. Regardless the state abolishes or not the death penalty, non-death penalty does not promote more crimes. Thus, it can be inferred that death penalty has no deterrence affect for potential crime. And, abolishment of death penalty is not a promotion for homicide.
Capital punishment also fail to achieve our goal for punishment. As duff defined punishment in the "Legal Punishment" (2013)., "legal punishment involves the imposition of something that is intended to be burdensome or painful, on a supposed offender for a supposed crime, by a person or body who claims the authority to do so." (2013). There are two purposes of punishment, one is education, the other is to compensate for victims. In practice, however, these two purpose may be deviated beyond our expectation. For the first purpose, punishment is to make someone realize his/her fault, and do the right thing in his/her following lives. Obviously, the prerequisite of the education is perpetrator is still alive. Thus, if someone must be die for the punishment, it is definitely contradicting with our original purpose. For the remedy, many people would agree with the idea "If someone hit you, hit him back." That fulfill our traditional beliefs. When we come back to rationale, this may not be the best way to compensate the victim's family. Victim's family get nothing except letting perpetrator die. Furthermore, when the tragedy happens, it becomes a fact that cannot change. At this special point, depriving another one's life is no doubt make the tragedy happen again on another family.
On the other hand, it will be a loss to our society. Especially for a genius, like Alan Turing, this loss could be much more. Let suppose Alan Turing was sentenced to death based on our laws in his early lives, how would it will be. We will not have Turing machine and Turing test, let alone computers. In fact, Turing died at the peak of his academic career. We can never imagine how great inventions would have been, if he had not died. If this thing happens on Steve Jobs, iPhone may not be created, we may still use Nokia full-keyboard cellphone. It is definitely a great loss for the mankind. As long as death penalty exist, however, these supposed geniuses will not be the exception without death penalty.
Some argue that system improvement could guarantee justice, however, it fails in practice. In the interview of the lawyer Chen, (personal communication, April 18, 2016), Chen presents his own opinions about the abolishment of death penalty. Chen admit that abolishment of death penalty is a global trend, however, he disagrees that the abolishment of death penalty. As he pointed out, although criminal judicial system is not perfect, improve capital punishment procedure is a good solution. Setting mistake tolerance mechanism (additional approach that innocent could overturn the conviction) and amending the possible flaw of laws and procedures would make the judgement flawless.
For one thing, adding redundancy in the system will increase the probability for the correctness of the judgement of the death penalty, however, the risks still exist. As long as the risks of mistakes exist, it is not an easy word to deprive one's life. For another thing, adding redundancy is obviously increasing the complexity of the judicial systems, which means a higher cost for adjudication. Nevertheless, executing a criminal cost is already extremely high, even more than life imprisonment does. In the article "Death Penalty Cost" (n.d.), the author argue the cost for capital punishment is expensive. There is great number of the expense cost before or during trail. Due to its nature, death penalty need more investigation, extra time for jury selection, and many other resources. If it fails to get the conviction, additional money is needed for retrial. Thus make the cost for death penalty still the most expensive one, even without the payment for the post-conviction. Williams hold the similar ideas. As he discussed in the article "The cost of punishment" (2011), the cost of sentencing capital punishment is extremely expensive. For example, New Jersey spent 254 million dollars for conviction without executing one person in 21 years before abolishing the punishment. California have spent 4 billion dollars since 1978, which is more than life imprisonment.
Based on the previous argument, we could yield the conclusion that death penalty should be abolished. Death penalty fails to deter crimes, risky for executing a wrong person. Someone may say improvement for the criminal system may improve the correctness for conviction, however, it is not a way to completely eliminate miscarriages of justice. Furthermore, more redundancy mechanism added, more cost will be generated.
Reference
Amnesty International USA. (n.d.s). Death Penalty Cost. Retrieved from Duff. Antony. (2013). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Z. Edward, Ed. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/legal-punishment/
Capital Punishment. (December 21, 2005). Congressional Record Daily Edition. Vol. 151 No. 167 Pg. S14301.
Duff. Antony. (2013). Legal Punishment. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Z. Edward, Ed. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/legal-punishment/
Deterrence: States Without the Death Penalty Have Had Consistently Lower Murder Rates. (n.d.s). Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates
Gross, S. R., O'Brien, B., Hu, C., & Kennedy, E. H. (2014). Rate of false conviction of criminal defendants who are sentenced to death. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(20), 7230-7235. http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1306417111
New Jersey Crime Rates 1960 – 2014, New Jersey Population and Number of Crimes 1960 – 2014. (n.d.s). The Disaster Center. Retrieved from http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/njcrimn.htm
Radelet, M. L., & Bedau, H. A. (1998). The execution of the innocent. Law & Contemporary Problems, 61(4), 105-124.
Petro, J. Petro, N. (2011). False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent. London: Kaplan Publishing
Williams, R. (2011). The cost of punishment. State Legislatures, 37(7), 55-56.