Should Michigan adopt the death penalty

Death Penalty

Thirty-eight states in the United States currently have the ability to execute prisoners. Michigan does not, but the suggestion that the death penalty be reenacted has been discussed from time to time in the state legislature. Historically, the state has been primarily against the use of capital punishment. In fact, Michigan was the first government in the English-speaking world that abolished the death penalty. The ban on capital punishment in Michigan stemmed from the hanging of an innocent man in 1837. The fear that this would ever happen again led to an incorporation of a ban on the death penalty since 1846.

The legal issues, which can be used to argue against the death penalty, can generally be divided up into two separate headings. That is, that the provision of the death penalty is arbitrary in its application and generally only applies to people who are poor, or minorities or both. Another is that the death penalty is not useful - executions are expensive and appear to do little to reduce rates of crime. Proponents of the death penalty would argue that the rate of recidivism -of those who kill again - after the death penalty has been applied - is essentially zero. This would seem to reduce the amount of crime possible in the world. To many capital punishment foes, all that the death penalty seems to provide is an extraction of vengeance or revenge upon the perpetrator.

Most recently, the news has been full of stories surrounding the nature of capital punishment itself, and the belief by opponents that the practice is too extreme. The Eighth Amendment states that all persons shall be protected from cruel and unusual punishment. In her book, Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean, a well-known death penalty abolitionist, describes in full the vision of a man being executed using the electric chair. But not only does Sister Prejean and other like her, think that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. The application of the penalty, and the time leading up to the execution, is seen by death penalty opponents as cruel and unusual itself. Individuals on death row may wait years and actually have executions scheduled and cancelled several times over before their sentences are commuted to life in prison or the executions are carried out. Some death penalty advocates feel this is as it should be, since their victims suffered in their deaths. With most states moving away from the electric chair and towards lethal injection, death penalty, the arguments of torture in the application of the death penalty through either the gas chamber or the electric chair have somewhat diminished. New York has the unique distinction of being the latest to re-enact death penalty legislation, effective September 1, 1995. Michigan may soon be number 39. These re-enactments may be considered to be somewhat capricious, when one considers the fact that Illinois Governor George Ryan actually called a moratorium on all death penalty cases in the state of Illinois in January, 2000 when it was found that at least 13 individuals on death row in that state were wrongly convicted. It would appear that the most important legal argument against the death penalty is the all too real fact that innocent people will be executed if the system remains intact.

Before we can consider re-enacting the death penalty here in Michigan, we must consider that beyond the frightening fact that innocents may be executed is the fact that the death penalty is mostly applied to those who cannot afford a satisfactory or competent legal defense. In a case analysis of individuals on death row, it would appear that in the United States today, Scott Peterson case notwithstanding, the likelihood the death penalty will be given is based on the socioeconomic factors of the defendant. It is also a common fact that the state in which the defendant is tried, the victim's race or sex, and the training of the attorneys who defend the case all serve to effect whether or not an individual will receive the death penalty. This does not appear to be a rational process, and to many death penalty opponents serves to underscore how the death penalty should not be allowed.

A study done in support of McCleskey v. Kemp, in 1987, found that the black murderer of a white victim was 4.3 times as likely to be executed as any other perpetrator-victim racial combination (Oyez, 2005). Despite this finding, the United States Supreme Court upheld the imposition of the death penalty by a polarizing five-to-four vote. Because no procedure is perfect, the Court states that the public must simply be "willing to accept some mistakes." Of the 3000 people on death row today, half are white and the other half are mostly African-American with about 10% Hispanic or Native American. Are we as Michiganders willing to "simply make some mistakes"? Our history seems to point in the other direction.

The kinds of crimes which will draw the death penalty for an individual vary from state to state as well as from jurisdiction. While all use capital punishment for the crime of murder, other may use it for treason, aggravated kidnapping, perjury, which leads to a victim's death, aircraft hijacking, aggravated rape of a minor child and narcotics crimes. There are currently 14 crimes within the military that qualify for capital punishment, although some are only applicable during a declared war. To date, no one has been executed for a crime other than murder since 1964, when a man was executed in Alabama for robbery.

Questions regarding Biblical teachings surrounding the death penalty seem to depend on whom you ask. The Old Testament has many references to execution and commanded the death penalty for murder, kidnapping, bestiality, homosexuality, being a false prophet and rape. The overriding theme of the Bible, however, tends to point to the fact that God shows mercy to the criminal even when the death penalty was required. Jesus himself was subjected to capital punishment in the New Testament even though God did not call for David's life when he performed acts of adultery. It would appear that God did plan for the death penalty, but also made much of showing high degrees of mercy. As Pope John Paul II stated in the Evangelicum Vitae "let us continue to bear in mind that no one is beyond the redemptive power of God, that the innocent are being executed, and that the paradigm victim of capital punishment was Himself the Prince of Peace."

Those foes of the death penalty who state there is no empirical evidence which shows it deters others from murdering also have no empirical evidence which shows that it does not. There is no way to read the mind of man, and while it is true that in some states in which the death penalty is legal and frequently used, such as Florida and Louisiana, there is a higher murder rate, there is no direct cause and effect association. Supreme Court Justice Stewart seemed to speak to this in Gregg v. Georgia (1976) when he stated "Although some studies suggest that the death penalty may not function as a significantly greater deterrent than lesser penalties, there is no convincing empirical evidence supporting or refuting this view. We may nevertheless assume safely there are murders, such as those who act in passion, for whom the threat of death has little or no deterrent effect. But for many others, the death penalty undoubtedly, is a significant deterrent. There are carefully contemplated murders, such as murder for hire, where the possible penalty of death may well enter the cold calculus that precedes the decision to act.