The Irony of the South: The History and Prevalence of the Death Penalty

By Paul Tran ‘22

Capital punishment continues to be on a steady decline in the United States, and here's why the stubborn South needs to hop on this bandwagon.

In the landmark case Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty did not infringe upon the rights protected within the Eighth (disallows cruel and unusual punishment) and Fourteenth Amendments (guarantees due process during a trial). The Court made this 7-2 decision after “addressing” the problems found in another case four years prior: Furman v. Georgia (1972), which placed a moratorium on the death penalty. The problems dealt with whether or not the death penalty is a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and in 1972, it was. However, the Court decided to change its mind and deemed the death penalty constitutional after setting up defined guidelines for capital punishment, which included a bifurcated trial as well as the emphasis on mitigating and aggravating evidence. This essentially split the process into two trials: the first trial determines guilt or innocence. If found guilty, the second trial commences and determines the sentencing. It is within the second trial where mitigating and aggravating evidence come into play; these types of evidence are used to assess the motives and individual background— socioeconomic upbringing, mental illnesses, race, etc. Basically, the death penalty has become a holistic review. All of this summarizes the revisions implemented by Gregg v. Georgia, but the question still remains: is the death penalty now “fair?”

Perhaps it’s not a matter of fairness but effectiveness. Does the death penalty deter crimes making the world a better place? Research, or lack thereof, states that this is not the case. Experts have not found any statistical evidence that the death penalty deters crime. As a matter of fact, a recent study led by Professor Michael Radelet and Traci Lacock of the University of Colorado states that 88% of the most renowned criminologists in America believe the death penalty does not act as a deterrent to murder. Additionally, one may believe that capital punishment can cause murder rates to decrease when in fact the opposite occurs for states that have abolished the death penalty. Northeastern states that have repealed the death penalty, such as New York and Connecticut, are experiencing decreasing murder rates, yet pro-death penalty states, such as Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma, still possess steady murder rates.

None of what has been stated even addresses the lengthy accounts and psychological implications that come with capital punishment. If one were sentenced to death, he/she doesn’t get executed the next day but could instead stay on death row for over 20 years. The prisoners are put into solitary confinement, which has been shown to drive prisoners insane. The Supreme Court actually ruled the execution of a mentally ill/incompetent individual unconstitutional in Atkins v. Virginia (2002). With that being said, one can see how counterintuitive the entire process still is despite the problems that were supposedly resolved in Gregg v. Georgia. To add more gas to the fire, Texas, the state with the second most executions behind Oklahoma, has not even established defined means of evaluating intellectual disability. Their “top criminologists” used decades-old medical standards that allows inmates to easily fake their mental disability. This prompted the Supreme Court to strike down their methods in 2017. Not only is evaluating mental health difficult, but it is an extremely lengthy process that could set hearings after hearings which would ultimately increase the legal costs by a large margin.

Methods of evaluation are not the only faulty processes that come with capital punishment, for the means of execution has been controversial since the death penalty was reintegrated into our legal system in 1976. Recently, Scott Dozier, a convicted murderer, had been on death row for several years even after waiving his rights to appeal and telling judges to expedite his execution. The reason why the state of Nevada held off his execution for so long is that they did not even have a “humane” way of killing inmates. The current FDA-approved lethal injection has been linked to many cases of botched executions where numerous inmates were alive for over 20 minutes after the drug had been injected. One man who had to endure 25 minutes of intense torture before being fully executed is Dennis McGuire of Ohio. One witness described him as “a fish lying along the shore puffing for that one gasp of air that would allow it to breathe.” Dozier, a drug dealer himself, was elated when discovering that the State of Nevada would be utilizing fentanyl in his execution. He describes the choice of drug as “awesome” because it would be quick and painless. Despite having a set date, the state of Nevada postponed his execution for reasons unknown. On January 5, 2019, Scott Dozier, at the age of 48, was found dead in his cell after hanging himself. Could Dozier’s persistent desire to be executed be a sign of a possible mental illness? Perhaps, could his blatant suicide be exemplary of Dozier’s incompetence? The fact that these questions must be asked shows how complex the issuing of the death penalty is.

The death penalty is a complicated process that can come with various errors, to the extent that there have been 164 exonerations on death row, which raises the question: “Has the United States executed someone that was innocent?” Although there hasn’t been an execution that has explicitly admitted fault, there are some cases with strong evidence pointing to innocence. These cases have been studied extensively by scholars such as Professor James Liebman of Columbia Law School, who spent years, with the aid of his students, researching the case of Carlos DeLuna. The study eventually found the case of DeLuna, a Texas resident, to contain faulty eyewitnesses as well as the failure to investigate Carlos Hernandez, who they believe is the real culprit. Again, Carlos DeLuna is only one of many cases where an executed individual is presumed innocent.W

It is unfortunate that the region that is considered the most “pro-life” is also hellbent on the death penalty. As a person born and raised in Texas, I have witnessed great efforts in the outlawing of abortion (which is a separate topic of discussion in it of itself) but little to no support for the abolishment of the death penalty. In Texas alone, taxpayers pay about $2.3 million for each death penalty case which is three times more expensive than placing someone in a single cell at a maximum security prison for 40 years. The hypocrisy of Southern lawmakers needs to be called out. If you’re going to try to “preserve all life,” then you better include those on death row — no matter how “heinous” the crimes are. I’m not saying that I do not condemn murder. I do believe in forms of punishment that do not require taking someone’s life. A better & cheaper alternative that prison reformers have already considered is an emphasis on rehabilitation which can still be achieved given life without parole. As long as we allow this barbaric method of punishment to remain prevalent in the US Justice System, then who is to say that we’re any better than murderers?

“Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be compared.”

- Albert Camus

Works Cited

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/6905

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1975/74-6257

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-not-believe-death-penalty-effective-deterrent

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/02/01/texas-legislature-death-penalty-intellectual-disability/

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executed-possibly-innocent

https://www.dailysignal.com/2015/01/15/pro-life-state-map-holds-answer/

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-most-premeditated-murders