Last Friday, the state of South Carolina executed someone for the first time in 13 years. Freddie Owens was killed a quarter of a century after his initial sentencing — and days after a key witness retracted the testimony that helped to incriminate him. This Tuesday, the state of Missouri did the same, killing Marcellus Williams despite a lack of conclusive evidence in his case. Our federal and state governments are unacceptably unbothered by the prospect of murdering conceivably innocent citizens. And despite a stronger-than-ever majority of the Democratic Party opposing capital punishment, the Democratic National Committee’s 2024 platform was the first in over a decade not to propose the abolition of the barbaric practice. Capital punishment is ineffective, inhumane, and rooted in injustice — and we must pressure our governments to do better.
First and foremost, capital punishment has been unjust from its roots. The majority of Americans agree that the death penalty has unfairly been used against Americans of color more than white Americans — even in cases when the crimes in question are the same. Moreover, there is no proof of wrongdoing conclusive enough for the government to take the risk of killing an innocent citizen. Time and time again, supposedly airtight murder cases have revealed more complex truths — in some cases, too late to save the lives of those murdered by their governments. In fact, a staggering 4 percent of Americans currently on death row are likely innocent. No government should have the power to murder those it is sworn to protect without sufficient evidence, and history has shown us that no amount of evidence is sufficient enough to ensure no innocent person loses their life. One might argue that a strong burden of proof could prevent innocent people from losing their lives — but that burden of proof is already in place, and it clearly is not working. Additionally, imprisoning a murderer for life saves just as many innocent Americans as putting them to death might — as a matter of fact, life imprisonment has the unique ability to save more innocent lives than capital punishment: that of the wrongly convicted. Thus, the death penalty is rooted in bias and, by its very nature, cannot eliminate the possibility of injustice that costs a human life.
The death penalty is also an ineffective means of criminal justice. If a government wants to achieve the maximum amount of justice for the greatest number of its citizens, it must first go about reducing the number of them affected by crime to begin with — and thus, preventing crime. However, the idea that capital punishment will reduce violent crime more than life imprisonment relies on the rather precarious assumption that violent criminals are in a state to evaluate their actions logically. Furthermore, studies have shown that states where the death penalty is enforced are not more successful at deterring violent crime. Capital punishment is also inefficient; relatively “humane” executions in the United States of America are so prohibitively expensive that it is cheaper to keep death row inmates alive. Executing Americans — even those who are guilty of heinous crimes — does not make us any safer than life imprisonment, and it inevitably comes with an immeasurable cost to human life. The death penalty does not create more justice. Incarceration might, but it has a long way to go before preventing enough crime to create the maximum justice — but it is indisputably superior to the potential for state-sanctioned murder. Effective, forward-looking solutions — real justice — must entail confronting the social and environmental root causes of crime. We know how to reduce violent crime (after all, the nation has been doing it consistently over the last few decades), and it is not through capital punishment.
Finally, the death penalty is simply inhumane. Lethal injection, the only form of execution legal in all death-penalty states, has been found to cause fluid buildup in executed inmates’ lungs, suggesting they experienced a drowning sensation. Other methods of execution — which inmates are sometimes forced to opt for when states are unable to obtain lethal injections — have been criticized as even less humane. In recent years as well as in the past, botched executions and substandard lethal chemicals have led to unnecessarily cruel exercises of the law. Many have criticized these methods of punishment for violating the Bill of Rights, which is supposed to protect Americans from cruel and unusual punishments — and the methods used to execute prisoners are clear examples of this. Even in scenarios where the convicted are guilty of murder or a similarly heinous act, it is wrong for governments to employ unnecessary cruelty, because eye-for-an-eye barbarity is not the point of the justice system. That is not how you create the most justice for the most people.
The death penalty is an unjust, ineffective, and inhumane form of punishment born out of the archaic notion that punitive justice is the most moral choice, and therefore preferable to its alternatives. But capital punishment is not making our communities any safer. The best evidence we have indicates that it ends more innocent lives than it saves. Though many states have made strides in ending the death penalty, the fight is far from over. It is past time that this nation’s political forces — and the everyday voters behind them — leave the barbaric ideas informing today’s justice system and work towards a fairer, more effective, and kinder vision for justice.
