Difference between revisions of "Capital punishment"

Revision as of 05:59, November 11, 2007

Capital Punishment, also known as the death penalty, refers to the custom of executing prisoners who are convicted of certain crimes. Such crimes are known as capital crimes, and tend to be grave crimes against persons (such as premeditated murder, rape or treason).

In the world today

Of the main developed countries, only the United States and Japan use capital punishment. Several European countries (including all those in the European Union) and Canada have ceased the practice. For emerging countries, China uses the death penalty and in the non-developed world it is practiced in most Shari'a states (those whose legal systems are based on Muslim legal philosophy), as well as many others.^[1][2]

According to officially released governmental figures, the liberal human rights organization Amnesty International estimates that Singapore has the highest execution rate in the world, at 13.65 hangings per 1,000,000 residents. Saudi Arabia has the second-highest rate, at 4.65 per 1,000,000. Human Rights Watch, another prominent liberal organization, does not have any recent figures.

In the United States

Capital punishment in the United States is handled on a state-by-state basis; twelve states' laws do not allow for executions at all.

Pennsylvania has hundreds of people on death row, though only three inmates have been executed since the reinstatement of capital punishment laws, and all three essentially "volunteered" by dropping their appeals. In Texas, one man has been on death row for 31 years.^[3] Appeals and stays of execution can create a backlog on death rows in many states.

Though the United States suspended the death penalty in 1973, it was reinstated in 1977. 65% of Americans believe putting someone to death for a crime is acceptable, according to a recent poll. But respondents were close to evenly split on whether they would prefer the death penalty (50%) to mandatory life in prison (46%). The death penalty is most favored by age 30+ males who are Caucasian and Republican.^[4]

Some studies conducted since the start of the new millennium have consistently shown a deterrence factor in the United States based on use of the death penalty. It has been calculated that each person executed saves the lives of anywhere from 3 to 18 innocent people.^[5] However - other studies have shown as a whole, "death-penalty states" typically have higher murder rates than states that have outlawed capital punishment.^[6]

Methods in the United States

Lethal injection is the official method of capital punishment in almost all of the 38 states that have the death penalty. A few states allow for other methods in some circumstances. Nebraska is the only state of these that does not have lethal injection. Electrocution is the official method of execution there. Several botched electrocutions in Florida in the 1990s have effectively put an end to the era of the electric chair, which was the most common means of execution in the United States before 1972. In addition to these two methods of execution, lethal gas, hanging, and shooting have all been used at least twice since 1977. Both firing squads were conducted in Utah, most recently in 1996. The three hangings took place in Washington and Delaware, most recently Billy Bailey's 1996 hanging in Delaware. The gas chamber, which has been abandoned because it has been found to normally lead to slow, gruesome deaths, has been used in California, Arizona, Nevada, Mississippi, and North Carolina since 1977. Walter LeGrand's 1999 execution in Arizona's gas chamber will almost certainly be the last of this type.^{[Citation Needed]} The United States has never used the guillotine, which was very popular in France. The last use of the guillotine in France was in 1977. Thereafter, capital punishment in France was abolished.

In Canada

Canada does not employ capital punishment, and it has not been a possible sentence in Canadian civilian courts since 1976.

Canada long employed capital punishment as a punishment for murder or treason, typically executing prisoners by long drop hanging in the case of civilians, and by firing squad in the case of soldiers or other military. (In particular, 25 soldiers were executed for various crimes during World War I.) Canada had several notorious executioners, particularly Arthur B. English, also known as "Arthur Ellis", after whom a Canadian literary award for mystery writing is named.

While Canada's use of capital punishment was inherited from the legal system of the United Kingdom, opposition to capital punishment began to arise in the late 1950s, and came to a head in 1959, when Steven Truscott, a 14-year-old boy, was convicted of murder, with a recommendation from the jury for mercy. The judge passed down a sentence of execution by hanging, then the only legal punishment for murder in Canada.

While Truscott's death sentence would later be commuted in 1960, his case galvanized public opinion, and in 1961 Canada reclassified capital murder, defining it as a murder that involved premeditation, murder during the commission of a violent crime, or the murder of a police officer or prison guard. This marked the beginning of the decline of capital punishment in Canada, as the last executions would be in December, 1962. The government of Canada routinely commuted any death sentence passed thereafter (indeed, the Liberal Party made opposition to capital punishment a part of their platform).

In 1976, this de facto state of affairs became law, when the Canadian Parliament abolished the use of capital punishment under the Criminal Code. Executions were still permitted under the National Defense Act until 1998, when they were similarly abolished.

Currently, Canada's Supreme Court does not allow the extradition of criminals who may be executed for their crimes.

Religious views of capital punishment

Christianity

Biblical View

The Old Testament of the Bible has several passages that recommend the death penalty for different offenses.

According to the Old Testament, these are the offenses which merit the death penalty:

1. Murder (Exodus 21:12, 21:15)
2. Kidnapping to sell into slavery (Exodus 21:16)
3. Cursing Parents (Exodus 21:17)
4. Bestiality (Leviticus 20:15)
5. Desecrating the Sabbath (Exodus 31:15)
6. Adultery (Leviticus 20:10, Leviticus 19:20)
7. Sacrificing children to Molech (Leviticus 20:2)
8. Blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16)
9. Incest (Leviticus 20:11, but see Genesis 19:33, 19:35, 4:17)
10. Homosexual intercourse (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13)
11. Witchcraft (Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 20:27)
12. False Prophecy (Deuteronomy 13:5)
13. Worshiping a false god (Deuteronomy 13:6-10)
14. Sex with a woman betrothed to another (Deuteronomy 22:25)
15. False witness in a capital crime (Deuteronomy 19:16-20)
16. Daughter of a priest becoming a prostitute (Leviticus 21:9)
17. Juvenile delinquency (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
18. Sacrificing to false gods (Exodus 22:20)
19. Unchastity (Deuteronomy 22:21-24)

Few people support capital punishment for non-murder offenses, and a number of Christians oppose the death penalty in all cases. Apologist JP Holding argues that the Bible including the New Testament nowhere repudiates the use of capital punishment, but that it does not necessarily mandate its use, either. ^[7]

Catechism of the Catholic Church

While not specifically saying it should be banned in all cases, the Catholic Church favors life over capital punishment as it gives the chance for redemption.

The State's effort to contain the spread of behaviors injurious to human rights and the fundamental rules of civil coexistence corresponds to the requirement of watching over the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime. the primary scope of the penalty is to redress the disorder caused by the offense. When his punishment is voluntarily accepted by the offender, it takes on the value of expiation. Moreover, punishment, in addition to preserving public order and the safety of persons, has a medicinal scope: as far as possible it should contribute to the correction of the offender.

The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor. "If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. "Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent.'^[8]

See also

• Culture of life
• Guillotine
• Hanging
• Lethal injection

Further reading

• Christian sentenced to death for blasphemy, By Michael Ireland, WorldNetDaily,com, June 2, 2007.

References