The Ethics of Capital Punishment

North Carolina Man Exonerated after Fifteen Years on Death Row
Glen Edward Chapman, who was given the death penalty for two 1992 murders, was released from death row after fifteen years of awaiting execution. In 2007 he was given a new trial, and in April 2008 prosecutors dropped all charges against him. He was granted a new trial on the basis of evidence that had been withheld, key documents that had been lost or destroyed, and false testimony by one of the investigators. New evidence came to light after the trial that suggested that one of the victim’s deaths may have been due to a drug overdose, not homicide. The trial court judge also cited Chapman’s inadequate legal representation—one of his attorneys had been disciplined by the North Carolina Bar Association for drinking during another capital trial. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Chapman was the 128th death row inmate to be exonerated since 1973.*

A further procedural concern is the way in which the death penalty is administered. The majority of convicted murderers who receive death sentences are minority men, particularly blacks and Hispanics, who come from the lower socioeconomic classes. Rarely do whites or middle-or upper-class individuals receive the death penalty, and even more rarely are women executed. It is true that minorit

Significantly, the cry for “justice” is most often made by surviving family members of the slain victim. In many of these cases, the family members have clearly confused justice with revenge, having little compassion for the person condemned to die. Putting someone to death cannot bring the victim back to life or compensate the family in any significant way. In reality this emphasis on “justice” is an expression of the primitive and uncivilized desire for revenge, which is inconsi

Abolitionists use the argument that death sentences are usually accompanied by long and expensive appeals. The reason for the appeals proce

Paul Crump was convicted of murder in 1955 and given the death penalty. While he was in prison awaiting execution, the prison received a new warden who instituted a series of reforms aimed at the possibility of rehabilitation. It created an environment in which Crump began to change. He learned to read and write and eventually began to write material for publication. He started taking interest in his fellow prisoners and was entrusted with progressively more responsibility over them. Over a period of seven years, his change was so dramatic that the warden testified that he had no qualms about putting Crump back on the streets again, and to execute him would be wasting a changed and productive life. In 1962 the governor of Illinois commuted Crump’s death sentence to life imprisonment without parole.11

The Transformation of Karla Faye Tucker Brown
Karla Faye Tucker died by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas, after spending fourteen years on death row. She was convicted for a brutal double murder and sentenced to death. While on death row, she turned her life around as a result of her conversion to Christianity, and she and those close to her claimed she had become an entirely new person. She never denied her guilt and never asked for a different sentence than what she received. She married the prison chaplain while on death row, and virtually everyone close to her testified to her changed life—that it was genuine and a result of her faith. Although she had no qualms about facing her date with execution, numerous observers suggested that her case illustrated that something was very wrong with the death penalty, that it would preclude someone like her, who has been transformed, from being a contributing member of society. They argued that the death penalty was a waste of her new life. Proponents of the death penalty insisted that her ch

The death penalty removes the prospect of rehabilitation that could lead to an individual again becoming a productive member of society. In some cases, with the process of appealing a death sentence taking as long as it does, a convicted murderer could be a very different person at the execution date than at the date of sentencing. A person could be put to death despite being rehabilitated during the period of time spent on death row. While many criminals do not change while in prison, some clearly do, even some who are awaiting a death sentence.

In fact, retentionists argue that it can be essentially a painless death. There is no reason the death penalty cannot be administered by lethal injection of drugs in the same way euthanasia is performed. Euthanasia is sometimes referred to as “mercy killing,” in which a patient is painlessly put out of misery. If that can be done medically for a terminally ill patient as an act of mercy, then proponents suggest that the death penalty can be administered in the same way. Thus, in response to the ar

The Cost of a Life Term Is Not Something Society Should Have to Bear.

practically nonexistent in Singapore and Malaysia, where the death penalty is mandated for dealing drugs. The reason why the crime rate is much lower in societies under Islamic law than it is in the West may be because in many cases Islamic law proscribes much harsher punishment than imprisonment. Of course, that is not to say that Islamic law is preferable, only that its severe punishment does act as a deterrent to crime.