Death by Popular Vote: Why America should Abolish the Death Penalty

Add caption

In 2011, German pharmaceutical companies single handedly prevented the execution of Allen Nicklasson. Nicklasson was on death row for a murder he committed in 1994 and in 2011 was set to die by lethal injection. In his proposed case they would use a cocktail of drugs to kill him, including Propofol. Propofol is used up to 50 million times a year in American hospitals and is used to sedate patients. However when the German Company put their feet down, saying if Propofol was stay in American markets, it was not to be used to kill anyone. This left American executioners scrambling to find alternatives. (Woolson, Web.) The withdrawal of medications involved in lethal injections,( like midazolam or sodium thiopental,) American executioners are left with this ultimatum: come up with more creative ways to put prisoners to death or put the death penalty to rest; This debate highlights flaws with the practice including the unresolved ethical, cost, and effectiveness problems. 

Lethal injections are the number one choice in the executions of today. It is used because it supposed to be more effective in providing an easier and quicker death to the inmate that is to be executed. While Lethal injection does it job most cases there are cases where executions go very wrong: 7.1% of lethal injection cases are botched. (Siegelbaum, Web.)

In an execution there can be between 1-3 lethal drug cocktails, drugs of choice include sodium thiopental and Midazolam. However the rates of botched executions have gone up since 2011 when sodium /thiopental was pulled off the market because the drug makers did not feel it was ethical to profit from executions. (Hospira Statement Regarding Pentothal, Web. ) There is no regulation on which or how many drugs are used in executions. This means the Americans in charge of executions cannot kill inmates effectively. 

The United States Constitution's Eighth Amendment states that, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted." (Eighth Amendment, Web) While the supreme court ruled the effective death penalties to not necessarily be in violation of the eighth amendment, what about the ones that go very wrong? According to the Associated Press, the average time of an execution by lethal injection is 10 minutes. (Midazolam is common thread, Web.) However in the case of Clayton D. Lockett it took him almost an hour to die:

“ Lockett was administered an untested mixture of drugs that had not previously been used for executions in the United States. He writhed, groaned, convulsed, and spoke during the process and attempted to rise from the execution table fourteen minutes into the procedure, despite having been declared unconscious. And after 15 minutes witnesses’ were no longer allowed to witness his execution. The Execution was eventually stopped, and Lockett died from a heart attack 43 minutes after being sedated.” (Fretland, Web.)

To say that Lockett’s death was horrific is a gross understatement and could very well be considered as torture. Clayton D. Lockett’s constitutional rights were violated because he died from torture at the government’s hand.

While some death penalty supporters would argue that Lockett deserved his death because he guilty of his crime, (“deserved what was coming to him,”) what about the death row inmates who are innocent of their crimes? Many death penalty supporters claim that there are no innocent people on death row because forensics today is a “Perfect Science.” According to an article in Nature, a study done from 2002-2004, retested forensic evidence from random samples of death row cases and found that out of every 300 cases, up to 20-30 cases are found innocent or exonerate. This means up to 10% of prisoners on death row could be put to death for crimes that they did not commit. 

This unacceptable rate of innocent death row inmates, can come from cross contamination of evidence or even crime laboratory corruption or incompetence. In 2002 the Houston Police Department’s crime laboratory was closed because of consistent mis-procedures, lack of funding, inept management, contamination and misinterpretation of evidence. Nearly 95% of United States Police crime laboratories are accredited, (held up to high standards, reviewed, and consistently managed,) but the 5% of laboratories could be enough leeway to put another innocent US citizen on death row. ( DNA tests put death penalty under fire, Web.)

Many argue that keeping a prisoner in jail for the rest of their life costs more than killing them. This is not true. In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (Executions cost Texas Millions, web.). This is because when the death penalty is sought they have to be proven guilty, so many times and they have to be given lots of appeal, these appeals take lots of time and time inherently costs money. If the court cases were swift it would cost a lot less, however this is not the case. Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole. Based on the 44 executions Florida had carried out since 1976, that amounts to a cost of $24 million for each execution. (High price of Killing, Web.). These costs only skyrocket if the execution was botched.

Why do we have the death penalty? The US embassy states that execution is reserved is for the most heinous case of aggravated murder. (David Garland, Web.) Capital Punishment in the United States is used as a preventative for murder in order to scare the people from killing others. While this logic seems intact, a report by the National Research Council, titled Deterrence and the Death Penalty, stated that studies claiming that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on murder rates are “fundamentally flawed” and should not be used when making policy decisions (2012) and 2013 FBI Uniform Crime Report showed that the South had the highest murder rate. The South accounts for over 80% of executions. The Northeast, which has less than 1% of all Murder Rates per 100,000 (2013) executions, had the lowest murder rate (Deathpenaltyinfo.org, Web.) This statistic nullifies the theory that executions lowers homicide rate since the places with the highest execution rates had the highest murder rate and the states that did not enforce the death penalty had a significantly lower murder rate.

Amnesty International says “The death penalty is the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights. Abolition of the death penalty would solve previously unresolved ethical, cost, and effectiveness problems. The only reason that Americans should get keep the death penalty would be to avenge murder victims. However the practice of “murdering for murdering” seems too barbaric for a society that prides itself on humanity, rights of an individual, and mercy. Instead of perfecting the death penalty, the penitentiary systems should focus more on therapy, education, and the curtailing of the system altogether. One can only hope that America, can soon lay the practice of the death penalty to rest.

Banner, Stuart. Death Penalty : An American History. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 10 July 2015.

David W. Garland “You Asked: Why Does the U.S. Have Capital Punishment?” U.S. Embassy,  May 28, 2011. U.S. Department of State. Web. July 13, 2015. http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/pamphlet/2012/03/201203303047.html#ixzz3fsSQMFoe

Deathpenaltyinfo.org. 2015 death penalty information center. Web. July 13 2015.http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/5623/4

“End Capital Punishment” Amnestyusa.org. 2015 Amnesty International USA. Web. July 13 2015. http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/campaigns/abolish-the-death-penalty

“Executions cost Texas Millions” The Dallas Morning News. Dallas Morning News 

Marris, Emma. "DNA Tests Put Death Penalty Under Fire." Nature 439.7073 (2006): 126-7. ProQuest. Web. 24 Sep. 2015.

Woolston, C. (2013). Death row incurs drug penalty. Nature, 502(7472), 417-8.