Relevance of Capital Punishment

Since federal executions resumed in July 2020, 13 federal death row inmates have been executed.

Since President George Washington signed the Crimes Act of 1790, capital punishment has been written into the US legal code, with centuries of American citizens repeatedly ratifying that decision to this day. President Bill Clinton signed the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, and recent presidents such as G.W. Bush and Barack Obama ordering the execution of capital offenders in recent decades.

The death penalty is an issue with which many struggle to grasp on moral, religious, and policy bases. For some, it is a costly, hypocritical action taken by the state with no proven correlation to reduced crime. For others, it is a justified result that ensures these capital offenders are off the streets for good. Some may question the state's right to carry out executions, especially in light of more than 150 exonerations 1973.

One former Ohio attorney general, Jim Petro, writes about his opinion of the death penalty after overseeing 18 executions and helping to write the state's death penalty law as a legislator. He deems the justifications for capital punishment as "a smoke screen for the profound flaws" that encapsulate this punitive measure. He writes:

"Much has been written in recent years about the decline of the death penalty in America, a decline that has occurred for good reason. Capital punishment is costly, offers no proven deterrent benefit and delays healing for victims’ family members, while also traumatizing correctional officers and risking the execution of innocent people. These flaws are inherent in the system, just as much in the case of the federal death penalty as in the states."

This draws upon the incoherence and inconsistencies marring the legal process behind death penalty sentences. In order for the state to claim this practice as a 'just' form of punishment, it is important that the federal trials leading up to this decision are regulated and fair. This is not the case. In fact, there is a stark difference between federal and state courts. Federal prisoners receive less judicial review of their convictions and death sentences than state death-row prisoners. Further, there are issues of racial bias and geographical disparity in the state penalty systems, with a comprehensive study of the death penalty in North Carolina finding that the odds of receiving a death sentence rose by 3.5 times when the victims were white (supremecourt.gov). This report further states that in 96% of states where there have been reviews of race and the death penalty, there was a pattern of either race-of-victim or race-of-defendent discrimination, or both.

These statistics provide sufficient evidence that the process for sentencing the death penalty is a deeply flawed process, with injustices that cannot guarantee ethical grounds for its occurrence.