Abolishing the Death Penalty

Society is never stagnant. It is forever learning, changing and evolving. As society becomes more advanced, why should the laws that protect it remain anchored in the past? The death penalty is a vivid example of the kind of legislation that society has simply outgrown, a fact that is being recognized by states across the nation, and in nations across the globe. This movement has made it clear that, in Illinois, there is no longer need for arbitrary, discriminatory, and excessively cruel punishments for capital offenses. The death penalty was unjust and uncivilized, and its end could not have come soon enough in Illinois. 

The death penalty has the potential to kill the innocent and is therefore intolerable. In the review of death row cases in Illinois lead by Governor George Ryan, no fewer than seventeen sentences people were exonerated. In his speech on the death penalty moratorium, Ryan called these findings “an absolute embarrassment” and went on to call the capital punishment system “nothing short of a catastrophic failure.” Seventeen innocent lives would have been taken by the State, had the governor not stepped in and examined the situation. In an article presented by Michigan State University and the Death Penalty Information Center, the author highlights the finality of capital punishment, stating that it “imposes an irrevocable sentence. Once an inmate is executed, nothing can be done to make amends if a mistake has been made.” The capital punishment system is by no means perfectly accurate, as is illustrated by the seventeen exonerated inmates, and a mistake would mean that the State killed an innocent person, an infringement of human rights that cannot be tolerated. One case in particular demonstrates how frighteningly close the state of Illinois has come to executing an innocent person. Governor Ryan mentions the case of Anthony Porter, convicted of two murders and sentenced to death by lethal injection, in his speech on the moratorium. In Porter’s case, students at Northwestern University, under the direction of Professor Dave Protess, examined and investigated the events, eventually finding Porter innocent. Porter was freed just 48 hours before the needle would have taken his life. In the article “What Killed Illinois’s Death Penalty,” author Steve Mills mentions Ryan’s reaction to the Porter case. He states that Ryan “wondered how a man could come within 50 hours of being executed, only to be set free by the efforts of a journalism professor, his students, and a private investigator.” The Porter case speaks volumes about the risks of the death penalty in Illinois. For the State to continue to unwittingly kill (or attempt to kill) innocent people is a travesty of justice, and clearly violates citizen’s rights to life as outlined in the Constitution of the United States. Abolishing the death penalty is the only way to protect that right with certainty, and is therefore just. 

Even if there was a way to ensure that only the guilty be executed, the death penalty is still faulty in its arbitrariness and discrimination. In the Furman v. Georgia decision, the Supreme Court concluded that “a punishment would be ‘cruel and unusual’     if it was to severe for the crime, if it was arbitrary, if it offended society’s sense of justice, or if it was not more effective than a less severe penalty” as is stated in the article “Constitutionality of the Death Penalty in America.” It cannot be denied that the death penalty is arbitrary and that it discriminates based on economic factors. The article “Arguments For and Against the Death Penalty,” states that the penalty “selects an arbitrary group based on such irrational factors as the quality of the defense counsel, the county in which the crime was committed, or the race of the defendant or victim.” There are no set standards for applying the death penalty to cases and jurors are no doubt left confused about whether to apply a sentence of life without parole or execution. This decision could be based on anything, including poor counsel. Ryan mentions in his speech that “thirty-three of the death row inmates were represented at trial by an attorney who had later been disbarred or at some point suspended from practicing law.” Good counsel is expensive, and if a defendant cannot afford good counsel, they must use what the State provides them. Ryan describes the state’s defense lawyers as somewhat apathetic when he says “they often didn’t put much effort into fighting a death sentence.” This means that if one cannot afford good counsel, they are more likely to be executed because some lawyers simply do not care to make the effort to save their client’s lives. In the Deadline video, one exonerated man describes this phenomenon as the “rich man’s justice and the poor man’s justice.” Justice ought to be blind to economic status. Justice ought to be evenly applicable, not, as Justice Potter Stewart called it, “as freakish and arbitrary as who gets hit by a bolt of lightening.” The death penalty is arbitrary and distributed randomly, and is therefore unconstitutional. 

The death penalty is barbaric and society has out grown it. The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the use of punishments that are cruel and unusual. The method of execution in Illinois was lethal injection, which may seem like the least cruel of the formerly accepted methods nationwide (methods such as execution by firing squad, hanging, electric chair, and the gas chamber). However, upon further inspection, lethal injection is a vile form of punishment and can be excruciating to the victim. According to the authors of Deathpenaltycurriculum.org, and the article on lethal injection, victims are injected with two needles. These contain anesthetics which put the victim to sleep, then a series of paralytic chemicals that stop breathing and the heart. If all of the procedures go smoothly, the victim will die of simultaneous cardiac and respiratory arrest. However, the procedures do not always work. Doctors cannot, due to ethical obligations, carry out executions, so inexperienced technicians are forced to complete the task. “If a member of the execution team injects the drugs into a muscle instead of a vein, or if the needle becomes clogged, extreme pain can result.” Extreme pain qualifies as cruel and unusual, and instances such as these are not at all uncommon. Capital punishment is cruel and uncivilized, and has been abandoned by, according to Ryan, “Europe, Canada, Mexico, and most of South and Central America.” Whereas the United States clings to it, along with, based on “Constitutionality of the Death Penalty in America,” China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan. . .” The United States has policies in line with several third world countries, an odd circumstance, as the nation is currently a global superpower. Trop v. Dulles lead the Court to decide that “the Eighth Amendment contained an evolving standard of decency that marked the progress of a maturing society.” As the global community aboandons capital punishment, so should the United States. Capital punishment should be banned in Illinois, with the hope that the rest of the nation will soon follow suit. The United states has no place using barbaric methods of punishment, when life without parole is equally deterring to criminals and is far less morally repugnant. 

Illinois’s death penalty system is flawed. It is morally objectionable, arbitrarily given, and runs the risk of committing the very crime it seeks to deter: the murder of innocent persons. It is not the role of the state of Illinois to “tinker with the machinery of death” as stated by Justice Blackmun and later Governor Ryan. It is the state’s role to punish offenders for crimes and protect society. Life without parole does this effectively and economically, leaving money to go to those who need it most: victim’s families. Illinois is correct in following the major developed countries of the world in abolishing the death penalty. It is another step towards national justice and societal progress.