Death penalty debate: Morality and pragmatism

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Americans seem to accept the death penalty as a fact of life, as polls show a steady 2-1 majority favor keeping capital punishment on the books. Yet that consistency can mask a simmering national debate about the efficacy, morality and even legitimacy of the death penalty.

Electric chairAs a number of death row prisoners are freed in light of new evidence, the capital punishment debate is raising questions about the relationship between pragmatism and moral principle.

Many death penalty opponents base their views on research that indicates the death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent to crime or is racially biased against minorities. Others point to the huge financial burden death penalty cases put on the government, a burden that often limits the quality of lawyers appointed to defend the accused. Yet those who oppose capital punishment on moral reasoning say such considerations should not be foremost and could backfire if subsequent research undermines those arguments.

Proponents of the death penalty say that executing the guilty is a matter of justice, and many cite scripture and religious tradition to bolster their position. They also say citizens have a right to use capital punishment if it protects them against criminals, especially terrorists.

Still, the United States is increasingly seen as a global anomaly. It is one of few industrialized nations that still sanction the death penalty. Some argue that this stance erodes the moral authority of the United States, especially at a time when Washington’s credibility has ebbed in the community of nations.

WHY IT MATTERS

The death penalty debate epitomizes the impact of religion in the public square, encompassing issues of religious belief, interpretation of scripture and justice.

JUMP TO:

What’s new

  • Gallup publishes an annual survey each October on attitudes toward the death penalty. The October 2009 survey shows the consistency of general support for capital punishment, 65-31 percent. The poll also shows Republicans and Independents are much more likely to support the death penalty than Democrats. But when given the choice of life without parole over the death penalty, support and opposition on capital punishment even out.
  • The case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed by Texas in 2004 for setting a fire that killed his three daughters, is being re-examined in light of assertions that Willingham may have been innocent and that evidence was overlooked by the authorities. If true, it would be the first time investigators could prove that authorities executed an innocent man. The case was highlighted in an investigative piece in the Sept. 7, 2009, New Yorker, “Trial by Fire.”
  • New Mexico this year joined the list of states no longer using capital punishment. Gov. Bill Richardson signed legislation in March repealing the state’s death penalty and replacing it with a maximum sentence of life without parole. This CNN story gives the details.
  • Other states, meanwhile, are seeking to reinstate or expand the death penalty. Nebraska, for example, is aiming to institute a program of lethal injection this fall, according to an Aug. 10, 2009, Associated Press story. The state had been the last to use electrocution as its sole means of executing prisoners, but in February 2008 Nebraska’s Supreme Court deemed that “cruel and unusual punishment.”
  • The number of judges dissenting — often strongly — from death penalty rulings is increasing, according to this Aug. 13, 2009, story in The New York Times.
  • On Dec. 31, 2008, the Death Penalty Information Center, a leading advocacy group against capital punishment, released its annual study, which showed that executions declined to 37 from 42 in 2007. It was the lowest number since 1994, when there were 31. The report also said that in 2008, the number of death sentences handed down was 111, the fewest since executions resumed in 1976.

Background

LEGAL

  • CBS News keeps a timeline of significant death penalty events updated.
  • In 1972, in the culmination of a series of rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively barred capital punishment, which was on the books in 40 states.
  • In 1976, the court ruled that several new statutes were constitutional and that the death penalty itself was constitutional under the Eighth Amendment. That effectively reinstated the use of capital punishment.
  • From 2002 to 2008, the high court made three significant death penalty rulings. In 2008 it struck down a law that allowed people convicted of raping a child to be executed. In 2005 the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, abolished capital punishment for juvenile offenders. The majority ruled that the death penalty for minors is cruel and unusual punishment, and in the decision cited a “national consensus” against the practice. The decision overturned a 1989 ruling that had upheld the death penalty for offenders as young as 16 and 17 years old. In 2002, the high court banned capital punishment for the moderately mentally retarded.
  • The Legal Information Institute allows you to search for Supreme Court decisions on the death penalty.
  • For more detailed information on legal developments in the death penalty in America, see a timeline by the Clark County, Ind., prosecuting attorney’s office.

RELIGIOUS

Read a roundup of the positions of various religious groups and denominations on capital punishment, posted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. See also an entry in Wikipedia on “Religion and capital punishment.” The entry seems to offer an accurate overview, but as with any open-source site, it can change regularly and journalists should double-check any information before citing it.

American religious attitudes toward the death penalty are largely formed by the Judeo-Christian ethic, which is based on citations from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, as well as rabbinic and Christian tradition. But religious leaders and adherents can cite Scripture and tradition to back different views. Here are some of the salient references often cited in the debates:

  • The so-called lex talionis, the “eye for an eye” law of ancient Judaism, is cited by those who support capital punishment.
  • The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is cited by opponents of the death penalty.
  • In Genesis 9:6, God says to Noah: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.” This is seen as a justification for the death penalty.
  • The episode in the Gospel of John (Chapter Eight) in which Jesus defends the woman caught in adultery is cited by some Christians as showing that Jesus set aside the death penalty as a justifiable punishment.
  • Christian supporters of capital punishment also cite the words of the Apostle Paul in Chapter 13 of the New Testament Epistle to the Romans, in which he states that the Christians must be subject to secular authorities because “those that exist have been instituted by God.” He also says that authorities justly “bear the sword.”

OPINION POLLS

  • Pollingreport.com posts opinion polls about the death penalty.
  • Read a Dec. 19, 2007, summary by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life about American public opinion on the death penalty during the last 50 years. The analysis shows large differences in opinions, with blacks and Latinos expressing greater opposition than other Americans.

RESOURCES

ARTICLES

Organizations

RELIGIOUS

Read a roundup of the positions of various religious groups and denominations on capital punishment, posted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

CHRISTIAN

Supporting the death penalty

  • The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, supports capital punishment. Read a 2000 statement and a Baptist Press report on the SBC’s endorsement of the death penalty. Hayes Wicker is senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Naples, Fla., and chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention committee that authored a resolution in support of the death penalty. Contact 239-596-8600, FBCN@FBCN.org.
  • The National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 52 denominations, parachurch ministries and others, supports the death penalty. Galen Carey is director of government affairs for the NAE. Contact 202-789-1011, govaffairs@nae.net.
  • The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that capital punishment can be an appropriate penalty for murder, but only after a civil trial. Read a church statement. Contact the LDS public affairs department in Salt Lake City, 801-240-2205.
  • The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod supports the death penalty. Read a statement. Contact Vicki Biggs at media relations, 800-248-1930 ext. 1236, vicki.biggs@lcms.org.

Opposing the death penalty

JEWISH

Jewish tradition generally holds that the death penalty is allowed in principle, but in practice its use is almost never condoned. A famous observation of the 12th-century Jewish sage Maimonides is often invoked in this regard: “It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.” The main branches of Judaism do differ to some degree in their emphases.

  • Reform Judaism opposes the death penalty. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism posts a page with a link to its position statement and other resources. Contact 202-387-2800, news@rac.org.
  • The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations called for a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000 so the fairness of the way it is applied could be reviewed, though it noted that traditional Judaism generally condones the death penalty. Contact Nathan J. Diament, director of the Institute for Public Affairs, 202-513-6494.
  • Conservative Judaism has taken a position that the death penalty should be abolished, for all practical purposes. The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism is the synagogue organization for the movement. Contact Richard Lederman, director of the USCJ Committee on Public Policy and Social Action, 301-230-0801, lederman@uscj.org. The Rabbinical Assembly is the international association of Conservative rabbis. For information on the RA’s social action committee and policies, contact Rabbi Jan Caryl Kaufman, 212-280-6056, jkaufman@rabbinicalassembly.org. The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City is the flagship educational institution of Conservative Judaism. Contact Sherry S. Kirschenbaum in media relations, 212-678-8953, shkirschenbaum@jtsa.edu.

MUSLIM

The Quran, and Islamic teaching generally, are seen as allowing the death penalty under certain circumstances. But as in most religious communities, there is some variance on when and whether capital punishment should be used. The variance in views is not, however, considered as diverse as it is in Christianity, for example.

SECULAR

Supporting the death penalty

  • Justice For All is a victims’ rights organization based in Houston. The organization maintains Pro-Death Penalty, a resource site that lists information about victims, and MurderVictims.com. Dianne Clements is president. Contact 713-935-9300 or 713-508-6979 (pager) or 281-435-7348 (cell), info@jfa.net.
  • The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, based in Sacramento, Calif., is a nonprofit organization whose purpose is “to assure that people who are guilty of committing crimes receive swift and certain punishment in an orderly and constitutional manner.” It supports the death penalty for juveniles over age 16. Michael Rushford is president, and Kent Scheidegger is legal director/general counsel. Contact 916-446-0345 or email through the Web site.

Opposing the death penalty

National sources

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  • Harold W. Attridge is dean of Yale University Divinity School and a professor of New Testament. He is the author of The Bible and the Death Penalty and can speak about scriptural citations and traditions invoked by both sides of the debate over capital punishment. Contact 203-432-5304, harold.attridge@yale.edu.
  • Davison Douglas is a law professor at the College of William & Mary’s Marshall-Wythe School of Law. He wrote “God and the Executioner: The Influence of Western Religion on the Death Penalty” for the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal in 2000. He noted the difference in attitudes between the pulpit and the pew and suggested that the fate of the death penalty in America will probably be decided in the realm of the secular, not the sacred. Contact 757-221-3853, dmdoug@wm.edu.
  • Jeffrey Fagan is a professor of law and public health at Columbia University in New York. He says judges and juries have shown a declining willingness in recent years to sentence teenage criminals to death. Contact 212-854-2624, jfagan@law.columbia.edu.
  • Herbert H. Haines is a sociology professor at the State University of New York, College at Cortland. He studies social movements for criminal justice reform and is the author of Against Capital Punishment: The Anti-Death Penalty Movement in America, 1972-1994. Contact 607-753-2472, haines@cortland.edu.
  • James J. Megivern is an emeritus professor of religion at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. He is an expert on Christian ethics and capital punishment and is author of The Death Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey. Contact 828-883-4280, Jimmeg2@AOL.com.
  • Lloyd Steffen is a professor of religion studies and university chaplain at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Executing Justice: The Moral Meaning of the Death Penalty. Contact 610-758-3353 or 610-758-3877, lhs1@lehigh.edu.
  • Mark Lewis Taylor is a professor of theology and culture at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America. He is also a Presbyterian minister and he opposes the death penalty. Contact 609-497-7918, mark.taylor@ptsem.edu.

Regional sources

IN THE NORTHEAST

  • Hugo Adam Bedau is a professor emeritus at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. He edited the book The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies. Contact 617-627-3230, habedau@aol.com.
  • Erik C. Owens is associate director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Mass. Owens has written widely on religious arguments about the death penalty, including a 2007 article, “The Death Penalty: Legal Aspects,” for The Encyclopedia of Theology and Religion. Contact 617-552-1861, erik.owens@bc.edu.
  • Carol Steiker is a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on the death penalty. Contact 617-496-5457, steiker@law.harvard.edu.

IN THE EAST

  • Robert Blecker is a professor at New York Law School and an expert on capital punishment. He prefers abolition but allows for the death penalty in the “worst of the worst.” Read a Dec. 3, 2000, Washington Post column he wrote, posted by Deathpenaltyinfo.org. Contact 212-431-2873, rblecker@nyls.edu.
  • Joseph Bottum, editor of the conservative-leaning interfaith journal First Things, argued against the use of capital punishment in an essay titled “Christians and the Death Penalty,” in the August/September 2005 edition. First Things is based in New York City. Contact 212-627-1985, ft@firstthings.com.
  • Stephen P. Garvey is a professor at Cornell Law School in New York. He has written numerous articles on the death penalty and represented death row inmates. Contact 607-255-8589, spg3@cornell.edu.
  • James S. Liebman is a Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Law at Columbia Law School in New York. Liebman co-wrote the landmark study “A Broken System, Error Rates in Capital Cases 1973-1995.” The report found that 68 percent of all death verdicts imposed and fully reviewed during the 1973-95 study period were reversed by the courts due to serious error. The study was released in 2000. Contact 212-854-3423, jliebman@law.columbia.edu.
  • David Masci is a senior research fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in Washington, D.C., and author of a December 2007 analysis of issues regarding the death penalty in the United States. Masci previously worked for 14 years as a journalist for Congressional Quarterly. Contact 202-419-4550, dmasci@pewforum.org.

IN THE SOUTHEAST

  • John K. Cochran is a professor of criminology at the University of South Florida in Tampa. A death penalty expert, he wrote the article “Religion, Punitive Justice and Support for the Death Penalty” for Justice Quarterly. Contact 813-974-9569, cochran@chuma1.cas.usf.edu.
  • Stephen Dear is executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, a nonprofit, interfaith organization based in North Carolina whose mission is to educate and mobilize faith communities, particularly in the South, to act to abolish the death penalty in the United States. Contact 919-933-7567.
  • Mark Essig is business editor for The Asheville Citizen-Times in North Carolina and the author of Edison and the Electric Chair. He wrote a Nov. 4, 2007, op-ed in The New York Times, “This Is Going to Hurt,” arguing that the debate over lethal injection is unlikely to affect the use of the death penalty, only the way the punishment is carried out. Contact 828-232-5919, messig@citizen-times.com.
  • Timothy J. Floyd is director of the Law & Public Service Program at Mercer University School of Law in Macon, Ga. He is an expert on the death penalty and served as defense counsel in the first case in the nation under the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994. His primary research interest is legal ethics, especially how moral theology applies to the practice of law. He wrote “What’s Going On? Christian Ethics and the Modern American Death Penalty” for the Texas Tech Law Review in 2001. Contact 478-301-2631, floyd_tw@mercer.edu.
  • Joanna M. Shepherd is an assistant professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta. She co-wrote the article “Does Capital Punishment Have a Deterrent Effect? New Evidence from Postmoratorium Panel Data” for the fall 2003 American Law and Economics Review. Contact 404-727-8957, jshepherd@law.emory.edu. 

IN THE SOUTH

  • Sister Helen Prejean is a Roman Catholic nun and author of Dead Man Walking, an account of her ministry with death row inmates in Louisiana’s Angola State Prison that was turned into an Oscar-winning film in 1996. Her most recent book is The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions. Prejean, whose office is in New Orleans, is one of the most popular and outspoken opponents of the death penalty. Contact 504-948-6557, hprejean@dpdiscourse.org.
  • Bill Quigley is the Janet Mary Riley Distinguished Professor of Law at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law and director of the Law Clinic and Gillis Long Poverty Law Center. Quigley is a public interest lawyer who has represented defendants or convicts in death penalty cases. In 2003 he wrote an open letter to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia responding to Scalia’s criticism of Catholic social justice teaching against the death penalty. Contact 504-861-5590, quigley@loyno.edu.
  • Ted A. Smith is an assistant professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tenn. Smith focuses on questions of ethics and justice, such as the death penalty, in a democratic society where the majority may support ethically problematic measures. Contact 615-322-7311, ted.smith@vanderbilt.edu.

IN THE MIDWEST

IN THE SOUTHWEST

  • E. Christian Brugger is associate professor of moral theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver. He wrote the book Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition. Contact 303-282-3442, christian.brugger@archden.org.
  • John D. Carlson is an assistant professor of religious studies at Arizona State University and editor of the 2004 collection from a Pew Forum, Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning. Contact 480-727-0694, john.carlson@asu.edu.
  • Defense lawyer Gregory J. Kuykendall specializes in capital cases and wrote about the politics of death sentencing in Arizona. Contact 520-792-8033, Greg.Kuykendall@azbar.org.
  • Rob Owen is co-director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Capital Punishment Clinic. The clinic gives students the opportunity to help represent indigent criminal defendants in capital cases. Contact 512-232-9391, robowen@earthlink.net.
  • Dudley Sharp of Houston is a death penalty activist who formerly opposed capital punishment but now supports it. He  has been interviewed on major television and radio news and opinion programs and included in newspaper articles. Contact 713-622-5491, sharpjfa@aol.com.

IN THE WEST/NORTHWEST

  • Mark A. Costanzo is a professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif. He wrote Just Revenge: Costs and Consequences of the Death Penalty. Contact 909-607-2339, mark.costanzo@cmc.edu.
  • Lawrence C. Marshall is a law professor at Stanford Law School and a well-known advocate for reform of the justice system. Before joining the Stanford faculty in 2005, Marshall was legal director and co-founder of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. Contact 650-723-7572, lmarshall@stanford.edu.
  • Glen H. Stassen is a professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. He edited the 1998 collection of essays Capital Punishment: A Reader and wrote an article titled “Biblical Teaching on Capital Punishment.” Contact 626-304-3733, gstassen@fuller.edu.
  • Franklin E. Zimring is William G. Simon Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written books on capital punishment and juvenile violence. Contact 510-642-0854, fzimring@law.berkeley.edu.


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