Justice Focus: US Capital Punishment
What does justice for murder and other heinously violent crimes look like? In America, it looks like the death penalty—a punishment that has somehow not been deemed cruel and unusual, even as practices like fatal electrocution and death by firing squad seem inhumane and brutal in any other context.
Currently, the US one of only 54 countries (out of 197 total) that still uses the death penalty actively, which is legal in 26 states and at the federal level. Until 2005, the US was one of only two countries in the world (along with Somalia) that used the death penalty as a punishment for crimes committed by juveniles. While lethal injection is now the primary form of capital punishment used throughout the United States, the electric chair was invented in the US and took the place of hangings for a supposedly more humane death. However, studies in the UK found it ultimately had no advantage, and many opponents of the method point out that it sometimes requires multiple electrocutions to result in death. As of this writing, seven US states are the only places in the world that still use the electric chair.
Somehow, 60% of Americans still approve of the death penalty—even though 78% of them believe there is a risk that an innocent person will be put to death, and 63% believe that the death penalty does not deter serious crime. The question of potential innocence brings up a lot of issues. Since 1976, 186 people have been exonerated from death row. It’s impossible to know how many people have been executed that were actually innocent, but there is strong evidence to now indicate that many executed inmates were not guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted.
Even setting aside these major questions of innocence, there are clear issues with racial inequalities. Black people are four times more likely to be sentenced to death than white people for similar crimes. And a Black person who murders a white person is seven times more likely to be sentenced to death than a white person who murders a Black person.
Seven times more likely.
And that does not even begin to scratch the surface of how the pre-1976 capital punishment laws were implemented against Black people and Native Americans as a tool of white supremacy and colonialism. In fact, the first legally sanctioned death sentence of a Native American occurred as early as 1639, before the United States was even officially established as a country. In addition to the thousands of Native Americans killed through extrajudicial murders, 464 were executed through the formal legal system in early American history, when even crimes such as stealing a loaf of bread or pickpocketing were punishable by death. Even now, a disproportionate number of Black people, Native Americans, and Hispanics sit on death row—for the same crimes which cause white people to receive a life sentence… or less.
These themes—brutality, false convictions, and racial disparities—are just three of many reasons why the death penalty is a corruption of our justice system. And we haven’t even mentioned the fact that victims involved in these cases often do not want to pursue a death sentence for the perpetrator.
But beyond all these factors there is the question of why Christians are so quick to justify the killing of people? (The fact that white Christians, specifically, are more often in favor of the death penalty suggests further components of racial oppression and injustice.) Many Christians use the Bible to argue in favor of the death penalty, believing that a government run by humans is somehow capable of carrying out God’s version of justice.
I think we can see several places in the Bible that would severely contradict the way justice has been carried out through capital punishment in our country, which include oppression of marginalized groups, the killing of innocent people, and even the actual killing of children. In the poignant words of the Equal Justice Initiative, “The question we need to ask about the death penalty in America is not whether someone deserves to die for a crime. The question is whether we deserve to kill.”
The death penalty is anything but just.
Further reading
If you want to learn more about the recent Pew Research study, check out these links:
Most Americans Favor the Death Penalty Despite Concerns About Its Administration
Unlike other U.S. religious groups, most atheists and agnostics oppose the death penalty
Learn more about the death penalty from one of the most comprehensive, critical but non-partisan, sources:
Learn more about criminal justice reform, including exoneration and racial justice:
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