The Death Penalty

The Purpose and History of Capital Punishment

Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is the most severe form of criminal punishment: the legal and justified termination of a convicted offender's life as punishment for his or her crime(s). Historically, this has been accomplished by various forms of execution. Offenders have been stoned, bludgeoned, beaten, broken on the wheel, drawn and quartered, eviscerated while alive, buried alive, burned alive, drowned, garroted, beheaded, hanged, shot by firing squad, electrocuted, poisoned by lethal gas, and most currently, poisoned by lethal injection. Executions [Page 121]were carried out in public settings until the 1830s, when they also began to be carried out inside prison boundaries. The last public execution in the United States was conducted on August 14, 1936, in Kentucky. An estimated 20,000 people witnessed that execution.

The purpose and/or goals of capital punishment are threefold. The first goal is to provide retribution, the principle that demands that convicted offenders be made to pay for their crimes; if an individual murders another, the offender must pay for the crime with his or her own life. The second goal of capital punishment is to incapacitate the offender. Incapacitation is the principle that demands that convicted offenders be prevented from committing additional crimes against innocent persons in the community. Imprisonment is the most common form of incapacitation; however, many offenders continue to commit crimes within prison, for example, physical and/or sexual assault and murder of other inmates and prison staff. Some also continue to commit drug offenses and direct gangrelated activities on the streets from inside prison. The death penalty is the only punishment that affords true incapacitation against additional crimes from a given offender.

The third goal of capital punishment is deterrence. The principle of deterrence has two levels, general and specific. Specific deterrence discourages a specific offender from committing a crime. General deterrence discourages other would-be offenders from engaging in crimes. The death penalty posits that by executing those guilty of capital offenses, other potential criminals will choose not to commit crimes because of the extreme cost of the punishment. If a law is to have a deterrent effect, it must be common knowledge that a particular offense will result in a specific punishment and that punishment must be carried out. Thus, if punishment is delivered in a swift and certain manner, potential offenders are more likely to desist from their criminal impulses, fantasies, or plans before the commission of the acts. The death penalty does not, of course, satisfy the goals of rehabilitation and restorative justice, the reasoning being that capital crimes are considered so heinous that those purposes would appear moot.

If the murder is to be considered a capital offense and eligible for the death sentence, the murder must be committed willfully, deliberately, and with premeditation, along with special circumstances. Special circumstances vary from state to state but usually involve criteria such as a prior murder by the offender; murder with multiple victims; murder of a peace officer, witness, prosecutor, or judge; lying in wait; torture with the intent to kill; murders that involve mutilation and/or dismemberment of the victim or their remains; murders committed due to the race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion of the victim; murder committed during the commission of another felony; murder by poisoning; and conspiracy or solicitation to commit murder.

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