Executing the Innocent :: capital punishment essays

The risk of executing gratuitous persons is a decisive objection to the institution of capital punishment in the coupled States. Consequentialist arguments for the death punishment are inconclusive at best the strongest justification is a retributive one. However, this argument is seriously undercut if a significant risk of executing the righteous exists. Any criminal justice system carries the risk of punishing innocent persons, but the punishment of death is unique and requires greater precautions. Retributive justifications for the death punishment are grounded in respect for innocent victims of homicide but accepting serious risks of mistaken executions demonstrates disrespect for innocent human life. United States Supreme Court decisions of the 1990s (Coleman v. Thompson and Herrara v. Collins) illustrate the existence of serious risk and suggest some explanations for it. I live in a city (Philadelphia, PA) whose District Attorney seeks the death penalisation more often, and with greater success, than any other D.A. in the United States. In Philadelphia, as elsewhere in the U.S., the majority of defendants in capital trials are poor, and desire on court appointed defense lawyers paid by the local jurisdiction. It is no coincidence that a city which sends large numbers of convicted murderers to death actors line has an unusually impoverished system for representing indigent defendants. According to Tina Rosenberg, where private attorneys routinely charge $50,000 to defend a capital case, Philadelphia pays court-appointed lawyers a $1700 flat fee for education and $400 for each day in court. The executive administrator of Philadelphias courts reckons that this averages $3519 a case.(1)Those numbers help to explain why District Attorney Lynn Abrahams department has much(prenominal) a high percentage of homicide defendants sentenced to death. They also suggest that Philadelphia runs an especially great risk of sending to death row some persons who are innocent of the evil for which they were convicted. But why does Philadelphia ask for the death penalty so oftenin Rosenbergs words, virtually as often as the law will throw in? (320) D.A. Abraham says that she considers herself the representative of the victim and the victims family, and that the death penalty is the right thing to do for them. (321) This is essentially a retributive rationale for capital punishment.The risk of executing innocent human beings is the focus of this paper. I believe that this risk is so significant that it constitutes a decisive reason for the abolition of capital punishment in the United States.