Pojman Death Penalty

Capital Punishment in the United States is something that people in our country have never agreed on. For instance the death penalty is not even used in many of the states. The two stances that people take are that the death penalty should be eliminated completely or that it should be used often nationwide with no state exception. My stance on the issue is that the death penalty is wrong and that the United States needs to get rid of it like most civilized countries of this era have. Even though polls show a strong support for the death penalty most people do not realize the flaws with the system and therefore may not have the same opinion if they did. The first reason that the death penalty must be abolished is because innocent people
have been killed. In this great country killing is wrong and this is no different, the innocent person has no reason to be punished but because of the death penalty they are punished severely. If we had a perfect legal system then maybe the death penalty would be okay because we would be positive that we got our man every case. Unfortunately this is not the case and many times innocent people are sentenced the death penalty because of things like false confessions, eyewitness confessions, or another prisoner testifying to get their own charges dismissed. The justice system is flawed in many death penalty cases because of certain lawyers and the race of the victim and the race of the accused are factors numerous times. When someone is put on trail for murder it starts with the law enforcement officers, they are human and they make mistakes. Although everyone makes mistakes sometimes these mistakes lead to the killing of innocent people. There are many circumstances where the indicted cannot afford their own lawyer and as a result they are given one by the government. While many of these defense attorneys are good at their job some are not and that is unfair to the person on trail. The constitution states the right to a fair trail, but if you have an incompetent lawyer is it really fair? It seems unfair to accuse lawyers of being inept there are examples of poor defending like that of Ron Mock. “Had so many clients sentenced to death that some refer to the ‘Mock Wing’ of death row” (Bright 217). There is an observation by Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg that shows the unfairness of criminal representation she has: “yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to Supreme Court…in which the defendant was well represented at trial. People who are well represented at trail do not get the death penalty.” (Bright 220) What this says is that a poor person is more likely to be sentenced to death than a rich person, so much for all men created equal. In many states there are no public defense offices so there for private practice lawyers are appointed the cases where the person cannot afford proper representation. These lawyers are paid below the market rates to do this. Like in any profession money talks, and in many states these lawyers are paid little to defend the accused. What kind of motivation will a lawyer have if it was a job that he was assigned and didn’t want to take at all due to low pay? Another issue that Stephen Bright brings up in his argument against capital punishment is that courts believe that any lawyer is capable of handling capital cases. He argues that this is wrong by comparing it to saying that every doctor is able to perform brain surgery, which is clearly not true. It is no different with lawyers. Capital cases are some of the most difficult cases and experienced criminal defense lawyers should be put on the case rather than a lawyer one year removed for law school. Bright sums up this whole argument by saying; “As a result the death penalty will continue to be imposed not upon those who commit the worst crimes, but upon those who have the misfortune to be assigned the worst lawyers”. Sometimes even with good lawyers some innocent people still get accused for crimes that they didn’t commit. There are many circumstances where after the person is sentenced to death then evidence later reveals that they are in fact innocent. There have been one hundred people sentenced to death in the last 30 years that have been cleared of charges and released because new evidence found them non-guilty. Those are one hundred innocent people that were supposed to be killed for no reason! This just shows how many mistakes are made by our justice system; there was even a time where a Northwestern class proved three people non-guilty to a crime that the justice system had sentenced the death penalty. The other major problem with how the accused are put to trail is that races are not always treated the same way. The first appalling statistic is that 97.5 percent of prosecutors are white, so if they are apposing a person of color there is always a chance of bias. Even though most of the people committing the crimes are people of color, according to the people in prison, most judges, lawyers, jurors, etc are white. One of the more shocking stats is that black people are victims of half of the murders in the United States, but for whatever reason eighty percent of the people on death row are there for killing a white person. If half the murders are against the black population and there was no racial bias in the courts then there would be 50 percent of the people on death row there for killing an African American and 50 percent there for the rest of the people murdered. The numbers seem to show that blacks are treated unfairly in the justice system and may have a greater chance of being killed than a white person. So I guess if someone in the United States is going to commit a murder they are much better off being a rich white man and to make their victim a black man because they will less likely be put onto death row and be killed for their crime. Race has always been a factor of who has been sentenced to death in this country and it doesn’t seem to be changing even after the times of slavery and civil rights. Overall the point is that the justice system makes many mistakes and people are unfairly treated and many times innocent people are put on death row and killed for a crime that they don’t commit. The justice system isn’t perfect, and it will never be, and is sometimes effected by bias as well. I don’t care what the circumstances are; an innocent person should never have their lives taken away from them. The ultimate punishment is death, but with a chance that an innocent person may meet this fate I don’t know think that the death penalty is something that should still be in place today. Bright summed it up best. “Courts will always be fallible and reversible, while death will always me final and irreversible. The main argument in favor of the death penalty is “that the fitting punishment for murder is the execution of murder”. (Pojman 203) Many people in defense believe that a human forfeits his right to life when he kills and deserves to die. Humans are moral creatures and are aware of right and wrong, and taking the life of another is in fact evil. The retribution view believe in three propositions as stated by Pojman: that all guilty deserve punishment, only guilty deserve punishment, and that the guilty should be punished according to how severe the crime they committed was. It is agreed that someone who commits a capital crime deserves this capital punishment. Another important reason that the death penalty should be used all across the nation is because of deterrence.
It is the idea that by killing convicted murderers it would stop possible murderers from killing innocent people, therefore saving innocent lives. Even though there is no evidence to show deterrence it is pretty obvious that deterrence would happen with capital punishment. In his argument for capital punishment Pojman brings up the lightening scenario. Which is a scenario where every time a person commits murder there are then struck and killed by a bolt of lightening. If fellow future murderers see every murderer being struck by lightening then it would most likely deter them from committing that offense. It is clear that that situation would lower the number of United States murders drastically. This shows that if there are more executions that are known to the public then it will be clear that murder is never worth it. Again common sense would seem to show that dying because of the death penalty would be more of a deterrent than regular prison time. If a criminal is expecting to only be put in jail rather than being put to death he may be more likely to commit a horrible crime. Pojman also shows a quote from Judge Hyman Barshay which paraphrased was that the death penalty is like a lighthouse, we know about the shipwrecks but we don’t know how many ships were saved. We will never know how many people don’t commit murders because of the threat of the
death penalty but we can assume like the lighthouse that it would save many lives. If the death penalty is used and deterrence is a correct claim then there are many innocent lives saved, but if it was wrong then we kill some murders, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Pojman brings up two objections that most people against the death penalty have and that is the death f innocent people and the discrimination against blacks. The response he gives for the first objection is “Mr Maxon (anti-death penalty) is incorrect in saying that mistaken judicial executions is morally the same as or worse than murder, for a deliberate intention to kill the innocent occurs in a murder, whereas no such intention occurs in wrongful capital punishment.” (Pojman 208) While his response to the discrimination claims is that a rule or law should necessarily be abolished because treatment is completely equal for all people. Overall the biggest claim of people in support of capital punishment is the belief that it saves lives through deterrence. I agree with many of the claims that people in support of the death penalty have.
I agree that the people who kill should be punished severely and depending on the case sometimes be put to death. I also agree that it is possible that the death penalty may deter people from killing because of their fear of death, but I don’t think it would deter as many people as Pojman may think it will. I am confident enough to believe that while someone is committing a cold-blooded crime like killing someone what is going through his or her head is not the possible consequence. They are usually acting out of passion or out of fear, not thinking about how this may put them in the electric chair. You can also look at the situation of criminals that get out of jail but when they get out they keep committing crimes because they are so into what they are doing they forget that they are going to be punished. That is the main argument against the idea of deterrence, along with the fact that here is absolutely no evidence in the states with the death penalty that there are fewer murders. Actually many states in the south have the death penalty and at the same time have higher murder rates than states in the northeast without the death
penalty. Again I will state that I believe that some murderers are probably deserving of death, but I am more concerned with the innocent lives that are lost. Pojman states that only the guilty should be punished. Well, there are plenty examples of non-guilty people on death row, which is truly tragic. The defense of capital punishment argument looks past killing innocent people through capital punishment because there is no intention. In my option it is still an innocent person dyeing and that is an absolutely horrific thing. An innocent person has more of a right to life than a criminal so why should we risk killing them. With the evidence and reasoning that show innocent people have been killed there is no question in my mind that killing innocent people is an awful thing. We still have these murderers locked up for life so our nation is not in danger of them striking again. With those two things happening there is no doubt that it is clear that the United States should join the rest of civilized society and get rid of the death penalty all together.