5 Death Penalty Essays Everyone Should Know
Capital punishment is an ancient practice. It’s one that human rights defenders strongly oppose and consider as inhumane and cruel. In 2019, Amnesty International reported the lowest number of executions in about a decade. Most executions occurred in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt . The United States is the only developed western country still using capital punishment. What does this say about the US? Here are five essays about the death penalty everyone should read:
“When We Kill”
By: Nicholas Kristof | From: The New York Times 2019
In this excellent essay, Pulitizer-winner Nicholas Kristof explains how he first became interested in the death penalty. He failed to write about a man on death row in Texas. The man, Cameron Todd Willingham, was executed in 2004. Later evidence showed that the crime he supposedly committed – lighting his house on fire and killing his three kids – was more likely an accident. In “When We Kill,” Kristof puts preconceived notions about the death penalty under the microscope. These include opinions such as only guilty people are executed, that those guilty people “deserve” to die, and the death penalty deters crime and saves money. Based on his investigations, Kristof concludes that they are all wrong.
Nicholas Kristof has been a Times columnist since 2001. He’s the winner of two Pulitizer Prices for his coverage of China and the Darfur genocide.
“An Inhumane Way of Death”
By: Willie Jasper Darden, Jr.
Willie Jasper Darden, Jr. was on death row for 14 years. In his essay, he opens with the line, “Ironically, there is probably more hope on death row than would be found in most other places.” He states that everyone is capable of murder, questioning if people who support capital punishment are just as guilty as the people they execute. Darden goes on to say that if every murderer was executed, there would be 20,000 killed per day. Instead, a person is put on death row for something like flawed wording in an appeal. Darden feels like he was picked at random, like someone who gets a terminal illness. This essay is important to read as it gives readers a deeper, more personal insight into death row.
Willie Jasper Darden, Jr. was sentenced to death in 1974 for murder. During his time on death row, he advocated for his innocence and pointed out problems with his trial, such as the jury pool that excluded black people. Despite worldwide support for Darden from public figures like the Pope, Darden was executed in 1988.
“We Need To Talk About An Injustice”
By: Bryan Stevenson | From: TED 2012
This piece is a transcript of Bryan Stevenson’s 2012 TED talk, but we feel it’s important to include because of Stevenson’s contributions to criminal justice. In the talk, Stevenson discusses the death penalty at several points. He points out that for years, we’ve been taught to ask the question, “Do people deserve to die for their crimes?” Stevenson brings up another question we should ask: “Do we deserve to kill?” He also describes the American death penalty system as defined by “error.” Somehow, society has been able to disconnect itself from this problem even as minorities are disproportionately executed in a country with a history of slavery.
Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, and author. He’s argued in courts, including the Supreme Court, on behalf of the poor, minorities, and children. A film based on his book Just Mercy was released in 2019 starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx.
“I Know What It’s Like To Carry Out Executions”
By: S. Frank Thompson | From: The Atlantic 2019
In the death penalty debate, we often hear from the family of the victims and sometimes from those on death row. What about those responsible for facilitating an execution? In this opinion piece, a former superintendent from the Oregon State Penitentiary outlines his background. He carried out the only two executions in Oregon in the past 55 years, describing it as having a “profound and traumatic effect” on him. In his decades working as a correctional officer, he concluded that the death penalty is not working . The United States should not enact federal capital punishment.
Frank Thompson served as the superintendent of OSP from 1994-1998. Before that, he served in the military and law enforcement. When he first started at OSP, he supported the death penalty. He changed his mind when he observed the protocols firsthand and then had to conduct an execution.
“There Is No Such Thing As Closure on Death Row”
By: Paul Brown | From: The Marshall Project 2019
This essay is from Paul Brown, a death row inmate in Raleigh, North Carolina. He recalls the moment of his sentencing in a cold courtroom in August. The prosecutor used the term “closure” when justifying a death sentence. Who is this closure for? Brown theorizes that the prosecutors are getting closure as they end another case, but even then, the cases are just a way to further their careers. Is it for victims’ families? Brown is doubtful, as the death sentence is pursued even when the families don’t support it. There is no closure for Brown or his family as they wait for his execution. Vivid and deeply-personal, this essay is a must-read for anyone who wonders what it’s like inside the mind of a death row inmate.
Paul Brown has been on death row since 2000 for a double murder. He is a contributing writer to Prison Writers and shares essays on topics such as his childhood, his life as a prisoner, and more.
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Is Use of the Death Penalty Ever Moral?
Readers point to flaws in the justice and mental health systems, and one calls it “barbaric.”
To the Editor:
Re “ If Not the Parkland Shooter, Who Is the Death Penalty For? ,” by Robert Blecker (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 29):
I agree with much of what Mr. Blecker writes, and would summarize it by saying that some acts, like the Parkland, Uvalde or Sandy Hook shootings, are so heinous that people who commit them have forfeited their right to live. And the state, on behalf of society, has the right to take that life.
And yet, I’m against the death penalty other than in a perfect legal system that allows for no unfairness in administering what is, essentially, the ultimate penalty, which can never be undone.
Our legal system, though, permits such unfairness when, for example, it executes people who were accomplices while the actual killer gets life. But worst of all, innocent people are sometimes, if rarely, sentenced to death and executed — which is morally wrong and a stain on the soul of the justice system.
Unless and until we can ensure that these serious miscarriages of justice are eliminated, we will sadly have to allow some killers who deserve death to spend the rest of their lives in prison. A just society demands no less.
Joseph C. Kaplan Teaneck, N.J.
It is astonishing that Robert Blecker, a law professor who says he has spent “three decades documenting daily life on death rows and inside maximum security prisons,” could actually understand so little about prison life. Only a dedicated fantasist could believe that the men and women imprisoned there “are enjoying” their “new normal of daily life.”
A study of the men on U.S. death rows found that in the period 1976 to 1999, the rate of suicide was about five times the rate of suicide in the U.S. as a whole. And state prisoners were more likely to die of cancer and liver disease “and more than twice as likely to die from homicide” than the outside U.S. population, according to a Department of Justice report . Does Mr. Blecker suggest that conditions for the condemned have improved?
His use of the term “worst of the worst,” a concept invented to masquerade the reality of the abused, neglected and mentally ill women and men who populate our death rows, has to be left behind if there is ever going to be a meaningful discussion of the death penalty.
Thoughtful people understand that it was not “free will” that produced Nikolas Cruz’s monstrous crimes but a severely damaged mind. To argue that retribution will “restore a moral balance” is ethical bankruptcy. State killing is immoral. Two immoral acts do not create a moral balance.
Mike Farrell Sacramento The writer is president of Death Penalty Focus.
Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing , deserved the death penalty and got it.
Nancy Keenan-Rich Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
In endorsing capital punishment for the “worst of the worst criminals,” and in suggesting that “retributive justice” is a means of acknowledging the full humanity and free will of a person convicted of aggravated murder, Robert Blecker fails to understand that an essential part of Nikolas Cruz’s humanity was destroyed before he was born.
Mr. Cruz suffers from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which has profound consequences on brain development, impulse control, cognitive capacity and behavior.
Mr. Blecker’s method requires him to put himself in the shoes of the victims, but he fails in his effort at creating a framework for true sentencing justice because he appears incapable of putting himself in the shoes of the brain-damaged Mr. Cruz, whose full humanity was broken in a way that made his will much less than free.
Mercy is part of the human condition and is the ultimate acknowledgment of human dignity.
Michael Iaria Bainbridge Island, Wash. The writer is a criminal defense attorney who handles capital cases and has represented clients with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
The headline asks, “If Not the Parkland Shooter, Who Is the Death Penalty For?” How about … nobody?
The death penalty has been convincingly shown to not be a deterrent to future criminals, nor does it do anything to bring a killer’s victims back to life. All it does is exact revenge while sometimes resulting in the execution of innocent people.
It’s understandable that a victim’s family might be so overcome by emotion that it favors the death penalty, but the banning of this barbaric practice is long overdue.
Jeff Burger Ridgewood, N.J.
Prof. Robert Blecker seems as incapable of feeling pity for Nikolas Cruz as Mr. Cruz was of feeling pity for his victims. Just as I cannot imagine the terror and pain these victims felt in the long moments before their deaths, I cannot imagine the horror of Mr. Cruz’s life. In no way does that horrific childhood justify his crimes. But it does make me feel sorrow for him along with his victims.
It seems his life’s potential ended long before he picked up that gun and walked into a school to commit mass murder. That’s at least partly the fault of the culture and country we all as Americans share.
Cheryl Alison Worcester, Mass.
I understand Robert Blecker’s point of view, and it’s a compelling one. Emotionally, it feels right to exact this punishment, especially on a person so coldhearted, calculated and genuinely remorseless. This does not mean it is right.
The prison system is corrupt, and Nikolas Cruz may very well live out his life in relative comfort (though we cannot know this). My reaction to this is to argue for a better, more just prison system.
Mr. Blecker states at the end of his article that our collective failure to impose the death penalty equates to a failure to denounce the horrific crimes this man committed. But I don’t think it’s a reflection of him or our opinions of him at all, and I think saying it gives the shooter too much power.
Our refusal to implement the death penalty reflects who we are, and what we value. Because even in the face of a man whose main goal was to make us afraid, we have chosen never to stoop to his level.
Amaya Gonzalez-Mollmann Brooklyn
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