Death Penalty #2: Response to Deadline

Race and Class:

Statistically, people of color and low-income people are more likely to be sentenced to death. Why do you think this is? How might vestiges of legal segregation and historic race-based policies impact the modern U.S. justice system? What measures could be taken to ensure a fairer system of justice?

I believe that the jusice system is far more severe on people with lower incomes or lover status in society. If someone is one trial for murder and can not afford to pay great lawyer to fight for their defence, they will be less capable of proving their innocence or at minimizing the term of their punishment. Without a great lawyer prepresenting the supposed criminal in court, they will be less capable of creating a strong defence to present to the judge and jury and might be unable to do enough work and collect the right evidence neccessary to prevent the death penalty or possibly even prove the suspect to be innocent. Another factor, aside from income or class, is race. It has been proven that about 80% of people on death row are being charged for the murder of a white person. Even people who may claim that they are not racist may still be unconsciously basing their verdict on racist thoughts. For many centuries, whites have been thought of as superior to blacks in the United States of America. Even in modern day society, where racism is far less prevelent than even just a few decades ago, many people around the country still harbor unfair stereotypes about people of race that may sway them to think of the crime committed by a black person against a white person as worse than if it had been against a black person. Additionally, if there are many white people in the jury or making the decision about the punishment of the supposed murderer, they might feel more sympathetic to a white person who was murdered because they can more easily relate to them, and therefore, want vengence brought to the supposed killer. Any of these factors could lead to discrimination in the court room and more severe punishments being given to lower-income making people, people in the lower class, or non-caucasions. I honestly believe that the only way for these unjust biases to be prevented is to eliminate the death penalty. There is no way to ensure that all people on trial will receive the same quality of lawyers or be spared from racism or stereotypes that could potentially sway the decisions of the jury and judge.

Law and Politics:

The film frequently references the 1972 Furman v. Georgia decision that the death penalty was in violation of the 8^th Amendment of the Constitution. The 8^th Amendment states: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” How does this constitutional issue play a role in your opinions for or against the death penalty?

I think that the 8th Amendment is evidence that this nation was built to protect the safty and legal rights of all citizens. The Founding Fathers of the United States of America would not have approved of capital punishment because it could easily be condiered "cruel or unusual punishment." To sentence someone to death, especially when there is a possibility of the accused killer actually being innocent, would be an unfair punishment. Unfortunately, in this day and age in America, it can no longer be claimed that this is an "unusual punishment" in this nation, but if you look worldwide, there are very few countries that still condone capital punishment. Therefore, worldwide, this is actually an unusual punishment for a government to execute its citizens. If someone could explain to me how this form of punishment could not be considered to be going against the 8th Amendment of the Constitution, I would love to hear it because as far as I am concerned, this would be impossible.

The Bigger Picture:

What is your reaction to Stephen Bright’s quote about the exonerated prisoners?

“This was the third person released by the journalism students at Northwestern, and of course it doesn’t say much for our legal system when people spend sixteen years on death row for a crime they… didn’t commit. And that ultimately comes to light not because of the police or the prosecution, or the defense lawyers or the judicial system, but because a journalism class at Northwestern took it on as a class project to see whether or not these people were guilty or not. You know, if those students had taken chemistry that semester, these folks would have been executed.” Stephen Bright, Director, Southern Center for Human Rights.

It is appalling to me how flawed our justice system has been proven to be. The fact that a journalism class at Northwestern was able to uncover enough evidence to prove three men on death row to be innocent, proves how corrupt and biased this system is. At the time of the actual trial, theses accused men must have had very poor and lazy lawyers if they couldn't put together as much evidence to prove their client innocent as a class of college students did. This also forces the question, how many other accused men and women have been put to death despite their innocence, simply because their lawyers were too lazy to dig up enough evidence or because the jury and judge were too biased or discriminatory to believe their plea of innocence. To imagine that these three men would all be dead right now if these students had been given this assignment is horrifying. It only goes to prove how unfair this system of capital punishment is and that it should not be legal for our government to  execute citizens for crime they may or may not have committed. 

The Justice and Injustice of the Death Penalty

I am not convinced that the United States justice system is a completely just system after all. When a case is first introduced, the police or detectives working on interview witnesses or people who knew the victim to find suspects. Sometimes they show pictures of relatively random people in their society who already have a criminal record to see if they resmemble the criminal. In some cases, the witness will wrongly accuse a person who looks similar to the actual murderer or criminal. Once suspects are chosen, however, more steps are set in place to make a more reasonable and accurate decision on whether the person is guilty or not, and if found guilty, what his or her punishment should be. There are many stages to the trial which allow for the jury to recieve a plethera of information about the crime and the people involved, and to take their time coming to a decision. There are many laws set in place to assure that it a fair and proportinate punishment is given to the person convicted, but this is only true if you consider the death treatment to be a fair and reasonable punishment under any circumstance, which I do not. There is also a three week period after the person is convicted, for more evidence to be turned in that might prove them to be innocent. While at first this seemed like a great bonus that the attorneies could still prove their clients to be innocent even after the decision was wrongfully made, I realized that it is incredibly unjust for there to be a three week limit on this opportunity. If solid evidance is uncovered a month after the decision is made, no matter how strong the evidence is, it sounds like it is too late for it to be factored into the case to prove the man or woman on trial to be innocent. I greatly question how accuratly people are found guilty and if execution is a fair punishment.

Of all of these practices of execution, I believe that lethal injection is the most humane. It still has the potential to result in imense pain for the person being exectuioned if they do not have a useable vein or if the person who inserted the neeles did it incorectly. Still, the other forms of exectuion that have  been practiced in the United States, such as hanging, electricution, gas chambers, and firing squads are far more disturbing and really make the man or woman being exectuted suffer. It makes me question this nation completely, if our government will allow its citizens to be treated in such inhumane ways. The way that the executions were described were absolutely brutal and horrifying. They were tortured and died miserable deaths under different forms of execution. I know that some of these criminals committed atrocious acts of their own to their victims, I still can not understand using murder to punish them. I believe a more fitting punishment would be to force them to live lonely, miserable lives in jail, tortured over what the sins they committed and left to spend the rest of their lives in jail.

The number of people executed since 1976 plummeted greatly all across the country. It is clear that the country has under gone some major ethical and moral changes. Of all of the regions in the United States, it seems that the states that have had the highest number of citizens executed since 1976 were states in the deep, middle south, around Texas. Some states in the north have completely outlawed the death penalty (fourteen to be exact) but even some states that still allow the death penalty have very low numbers and rarely go as far as execution. Another point that I find interesting, is the number of people currently on death row in some states. Some places, such as California, have hundreds of people currently on death row, yet in the more than thirty years that the death penalty has been reinstated, these states have only gone through with executing a select few of these people. Only one or sometimes two digit worth of citizens in these states are put to death. The incredible decline in the number of people who have been executed in this country is also largely due to the changes made in the justice system over time. Many restrictions have been added to eliminate executions that would now be considered "cruel and unusual" punishment and found unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment.

The statutes for Illinois's old death penalty seemed fairly reasonable. All of the laws seemed to reasonably fit the punishment of death. They all revolved around murder and severe crimes of extremely violent nature. These laws seemed pretty similar to those of the other states in the US that enforce the death penalty. Laws have become a lot more strict, requiring the punishment to truly fit the crime.

This data shows that there are now 16 states that don't allow the death penalty, not 14 like the last chart said. There is also a chart that says how many people have been killed in the entire country since 1976, showing just over 1200 deaths. What is incredible, is how much this number has decreased. According to some of the previous charts I saw, a couple of states had over 1200 people executed in that one state alone before the year 1976. I find it interesting that while 35% of those tried for the death penalty, only 15% of victims of these cases are black which suggests that cases were a black person is murdered less frequently result in the criminal being put on death row. Overall, I think it is clear that America's reactions towards the death penalty have changed drastically over time and as the laws became increasingly more strict, less and less people condoned the death penalty.

The Difference Between Offensive and Predjudice

This week, we watched a video about school board officials and presidents debating how universities should react to students who try to take advantage of their freedom of speech. The teachers and presidents debated over the rights of students and when they should be allowed to speak freely on campus as well as when this freedom should be restricted. After hearing their arguments for each side of the situation, I came to the conclusion that if the students are not speaking in a way that truly encourages violence or prejudice, then they should be permitted to speak their mind and share their views with others. I do not believe that just because a student's opinion is unpopular or inconstant with that of the school's means that the student should be prevented from taking action and speaking out about his or her views. If the opinion is offensive, that does not mean much because anything can be considered offensive to just about anyone. If the opinion and speech is promoting violent action towards a particular person or group of people, however, then I believe it should be forbidden on campus. There is a fine line between speaking one's mind and targeting innocent people and turing others against them. I am not in agreement with the professors and university presidents who said that any offensive speech should be stopped at a college campus, but I also do not agree with those who said they could not put an end to any form of expression because it would violate the students' freedom of speech protected under the First Amendment in the Constitution of the United States. It is definitely a delicate argument, but I do think that there is a very important difference to notice between expressing an offensive point of view and expressing a prejudice and violent opinion.