In order for the death penalty to serve as a deterrent for murder, it must therefore be applied in a system of law that is moral, consistent, equitable and fair. If that system is pervaded by other unjust laws, is inconsistently applied with regard to fairness and equitability, or is riddled with corruption (“the law’s delay” and the “insolence of office” as Shakespeare put it in Hamlet), the application of the death penalty as a deterrent cannot be justified simply because the law itself is ineptly executed and justice is unfairly served. In order for capital punishment to deter, law and order must already exist. In a society where neither can be said to exist, capital punishment serves no purpose other than to excuse a system of tyranny in a social system that has abandoned the need for moral justifications.
The law itself must be in accordance with morality or moral law. If it is judged to be opposed to the moral order that is innate in mankind, the social law will be rejected and spurned and the consequences of breaking it will also be despised (Bazelon, 1975). In other words, if the law is immoral, no so-called deterrent will effectively act as such because the law itself will not support a moral justification for such repercussions. Pretending as though they do is the perfect way to introduce the concept of martyrdom into the public arena once more. For instance, a martyr is one who is unjustly made to suffer (usually by way of execution) for violating a law (the consequence of which is death) that is unjustifiable in a moral society. Criminal justice and social justice must be in accordance, as Bazelon (1975) asserts, in order for a system of law to work, to be fair, to be equitable, and to be effective. In a society where social justice is at odds with criminal justice, the death penalty may not be prescribed as a deterrent to murder because the two systems—social justice and criminal justice—are out of alignment. To propose a negative solution to a minor problem without actually addressing the real major problem would be like attempting to fix an engine whose rod bearing is disintegrating by changing the oil. The effect will be innocuous at best, dangerous at worst (especially if it is assumed that the deterrent will satisfactorily address the problem of murder). In such an environment where social justice and criminal justice are out of alignment, where the moral order is not supported by the legal order or framework, deterrents are more tyrannical than they are morally enforceable. This is why it is imperative that criminal justice and social justice be united within a system of law and order. Failure to unite makes the practice of justice impracticable.
In the American system of justice, there is a clear controversy as to the extent to which social justice and criminal justice are in harmony. In the speeches of Angela Y. Davis (2012), it can be seen that the African American community is deeply distrustful of the criminal justice system specifically and precisely because it has such a long history in the U.S. of being at odds with social justice where fairness and equitability are practiced without respect for race, creed or ethnicity. Unnever and Cullen (2007) support this perspective, noting that there are clear racial disparities in terms of the distribution of capital punishment. National statistics on the race of defendants executed in the U.S. since 1976 show that 34.5% of those executed were black (“National Statistics on the Death Penalty and Race,” 2018). Yet according to the 2010 Census, blacks only make up 12.6% of the U.S. population. This is nearly a 300% increase in representation—a shocking figure when one considers that whites make up 72.4% of the population according to the same Census, yet only account for 55.6% of all persons executed in the U.S. since 1976 under the death penalty—nearly a 20% decrease. If the ratio of whites executed under the death penalty to whites in the U.S. population is lower, why is exponentially higher for blacks? The answer is supplied by social justice activists like Davis (2012) who says that the criminal justice system in America represents the US Organization—a violently racist system of oppression designed to marginalize blacks and install them in a new system of slavery manifested in the rise of the prison-industrial complex. From her position, the criminal justice system is an “ideological campaign to persuade us once again…that race is a marker of criminality” (Davis, 2012, p. 38). So if criminal justice in America is blocked by racist ideology implementing a system of law and order that is in harmony with actual social justice, when is it appropriate to use the death penalty as a deterrent for murder?
Death Penalty as Retribution The Retributive Nature of the Death Penalty The peaceful fabric of society is torn whenever a crime is committed. In the case of murder, the suffering of the victim's loved ones can be unbearable and last for a lifetime. The destructive ripple effect of these tragedies cannot be compensated for in any way, not even by the capture, conviction, and execution of the killer. However, many states still
The death penalty may exact a high cost but so does remaining behind bars for life imprisonment (Haag 1986). But righting wrongs in a society has a higher option than entailing the costs. Penalties are also acts of social retribution to restrain personal or private vengeance aimed at vindicating the law and social order, which has been injured or violated by a crime. Proponents or advocates of the death penalty
However, the reasons why people commit crime are as different as the individuals themselves. Intentional murder comes in two different flavors. The first is the carefully plotted, well thought out, planned act. In this scenario, motivational theory takes over. The person must feel that they will gain some type of value from the action. It may be that they gain something, such as money, or they may feel that
Death Penalty for Juvenile Offenders Supreme Court by a majority decision on March 1, 2005 in Roper v. Simmons held that death penalty for juveniles was "cruel and unusual" and as such the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution forbid the execution of offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed. The action reversed the death sentences of 72 convicted murderers in the U.S.
It would seem that many criminals would find this more amusing than frightening. They do not take their chances of being caught and subjected to capital punishment seriously enough to be frightened by the penalty like many assume they will be (van den Haag, 2001). According to some who believe in God and feel that capital punishment is acceptable under the scriptures, there is one main point, which is that
[DPIC] Similarly, many other researches were conducted but failed to offer any conclusive evidence as to the effectiveness of capital punishment in deterring crimes. The lack of consistency in these results presents a complex problem before us in evaluating the utilitarian value of death penalty. One more aspect to be considered under the utilitarian thought is the cost of executions. It is well-known that the legal cost of executions in