The Death Penalty: Social Revenge Or Criminal Deterrent

Is the death penalty a criminal deterrent or social revenge? When I hear this term there are four questions that pop into my head: what is the death penalty, is it a deterrent or social revenge for victims, and should we have limitations in allowing visitors to watch an execution?

According to US Legal (2016) the death penalty is a “sentence of execution for murder and some other capital crimes, especially murder, which are punishable by death” (para 1). In the State of Florida alone, there are 41 crimes that qualify to receive the death penalty, if convicted. They include most forms of murder, treason, espionage, genocide, kidnapping, and terrorism. Once it is determined that an individual will be tried based upon one of these types, they face two trials if found guilty.

Death penalty cases are different because less severe crimes have one trial in which a jury comes to a verdict of guilty or not guilty and the judge determines the sentence for the committed crime..

However, in death penalty cases they are separated into two separate trials. With the first trial, the jury decides if the evidence presented to them is enough to convict or prove the innocence of the person on trial. If the jury comes back with a guilty verdict, a second trial begins in order to determine the sentence for the defendant.

There are two options for the sentencing aspect of the trial. The first option is life in prison with or without the possibility of parole and the second option is the death penalty. The types of executions are all extremely different. There are five different types of executions across the United States: lethal injection, which 33 states offer, electrocution, which only nine states allow, legal gas, which is allowed in six states, hanging, which is allowed in three states, and firing squad, which three states allow. Florida only offers two, lethal injection and electrocution.

According to the Florida Department of Corrections (2019), Florida alone has executed ninety-seven people. The first individual executed in Florida was Frank Johnson, on October 7, 1924, via the electric chair. Four of the youngest people to be executed in the nation were from Florida and all were the age of 16: Willie Clay (December 29, 1941), James Davis (October 9, 1944), Fortune Ferguson (April 27, 1927), and Edward Powell (December 29, 1941) (Florida Department of Corrections ). The first woman to be executed was also in Florida was Judas “Judy” Buenoano. She was executed by electric chair on March 30, 1998.

Florida has had a total of 97 executions, inmates that are on death row now have the option to choose whether or not they want lethal injection or the electric chair. With all of them using lethal injection since it is a less painful way to go out, the electric chair is on its last leg of being allowed to use in Florida. Florida’s supreme court argued that the electric chair is more inhumane and not the safest way to execute someone, but to me, it should be something we use. These inmates have broken the law to a severe point where they are facing death, so why should they go out in peace?

While the methods vary from state to state on how the death penalty is carried out, is sentencing someone social revenge or a criminal deterrent? According to Pro Con.org (n.d) (Para 4), recent research shows that “each execution carried out is correlated with about seventy-four fewer murders the following year” (Does the Death Penalty Deter Crime, 2019). To some that are just a small number, but in my opinion that is 74 lives that are not victims of a horrific crime, area able to see their family members, reach their goals, set new accomplishments, and what I feel is the most important of all, create more lives to impact the world we live in today.

Studies indicated that within today’s society the death penalty is 88%, not a deterrent in committing crimes.. But back in the early nineteen-hundreds, beheading, hanging, torture, and burning alive people in front of the communities was a huge deterrent for the crimes. I asked my great-grandpa Bill Baker, who is almost 90 years old why crime rates were so low when he was growing up and he said because “People were afraid to commit crimes in regard to what their consequences were going to be. In the states where hanging is still allowed, violent crime rates are significantly lower”.

According to City Rating.org (2019), “Washington crime statistics indicate a total downward trend in crime based on data from 17 years when violent crime was decreasing and property crime was decreasing” (Washington Crime Statistics and Report, 2019). This is one of the three states that still allow hangings. In my opinion, when you show the community that crimes, murder, gangs, drugs, and anything heinous will not be tolerated in any form and there are repercussions for your actions, crime rates will drop tremendously.

I do not personally think that the death penalty is social revenge. After all, the taxpayers are still having to pay to keep inmates alive. Our taxes go toward feeding and clothing them, paying guards and other prison employees, and then eventually, the inmates executed if they were given the death penalty. Revenge to me isn’t something I am going to waste my money on every day to keep this criminal alive. I would want them to be punished in the harshest way possible and feel every ounce of pain during it, just so they know what their victims felt like. I do not believe in allowing them to live a luxurious life in a cell with free meals, clothes, and activities. The death penalty to me should be a deterrent to those committing crimes, no one should be okay with sitting in a jail cell for the rest of their lives, away from family and away from the social world, it should be the worst place they have ever been, not like a vacation from society.

Is the death penalty necessary? With 97 people being executed in Florida, that is more spots we have open in jail to lock up more offenders. If we were to get rid of the death penalty and just give life without the possibility of parole where are we supposed to house all these inmates? Our facilities are already filling up, we would have to hire more staff, we would have to accommodate more facilities, which takes up more land development, and that is more money from the taxpayers. The cost to keep someone alive maybe ten times cheaper rather than execute them but does that number include all the other expenses or just the inmate's personal expenses? That is where I think differently.

I do not think those budget numbers include new buildings, employees, and medical expenses. It would cost anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 dollars just to build a new institution, and that is just the building. To finalize the entire place would take almost 8 million dollars and I do not think that amount has been figured in with the cost. I think food, clothes, meals, personal articles, , bedding, sports activities, medical care, etc. would cost more than simple electrocution, injection, hanging, or whatever method a state uses.

When a criminal is being executed, I believe that outsiders should be allowed to come and watch. This may bring some form of closure to the victims and their families knowing that this person will never be able to commit these crimes again. It may also be a deterrent for others to commit criminal acts. More importantly, the death penalty is the ultimate deterrent for individual criminals because executed criminals can never commit crimes ever again.

Ted Bundy got the satisfaction of making people believe he was an innocent man, who was loving and caring along with being very affectionate and charming. No one suspected that he was a serial murder along with a psychopath, he laughed and thought it was all a joke the entire time, the families of all the victims had to sit in a trial and watch a man smirk at the judge, make jokes, laugh, and act all friendly meanwhile they were there to get answers and find comfort in the justice system. I feel like everyone involved should be entitled to go and watch these criminals face their consequences. When Bundy was executed, there was a room full of victims and families of victims watching him die. My step-grandma’s best friend in college was one of his victims, and the girls' family traveled to watch his execution. They felt as if they finally had an answer for their beloved family member – closure. This also brought a close to any additional crimes that Bundy could commit.

Some people argue that this is a private event and should only be viewed by the execution team but there are families that are still out there with no answers, nobody to bury, no family member to love anymore because they were taken away by the person being put to death. This is the closest thing to closure some families will ever receive. On the Florida Department of Corrections website, there is a fee of $150 dollars that one can pay to receive an anonymous execution. In my opinion, this shouldn’t even be an option. You caused pain and loss to someone and in my opinion, you deserve to die with others watching you. Not only can watching an execution bring closure to family members and friends, it can also bring a sense of justice and knowledge that what happened to their loved one will never happen by this person’s hand to someone else.

Ultimately, the death penalty is the sentence of execution for murder and some other capital crimes, which are punishable by death and I believe that it is a deterrent, not social revenge. When mentally unstable or crazy people commit crimes with heinous acts under which the death penalty falls, everyone is entitled to sit down and watch this person be fully taken accountable for their actions. Without the death penalty, we would have to build more institutions and pay more money to house and feed criminals rather than just making them suffer for what they did.

References

CityRaring.org (2019) Washington Crime Statistics and Rates Report (WA).Retrieved February 20, 2019, from https://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/washington/

Does the Death Penalty Deter Crime? (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2019, from https://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000983

Florida Department of Corrections 'Inspiring Success by Transforming One Life at a Time'. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2019, from http://www.dc.state.fl.us/ci/deathrow.html

Methods of Execution. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2019, from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/methods-execution

USLegal.com (2016). Death Penalty Law Law and Legal Definition | USLegal, Inc.. Retrieved February 20, 2019 from https://definitions.uslegal.com/d/death-penalty-law/