Justice and the Death Penalty

By Sarah Kuras
Binghamton University

August 18, 2009. This date may be insignificant to you, but to Mark Clements, this date means the world. On that day, Mr. Clements was released from prison after 28 years for a crime he did not commit. At the age of 16, Mark Clements was tortured by the police until he confessed to this crime he did not commit, and was sentenced to life without parole. The police detectives who tortured him are now well known for their brutality in the Chicago area. Fortunately, Mr. Clements was sentenced as a juvenile when he was put in prison. If he had been older when he was arrested, he would have been sentenced to death.

Mr. Clements is now out of prison and is working to right the wrongs that were done to him and others like him, while also working to get his life on track. He is only now getting to spend time with his daughter, who spent her childhood, adolescence and early adulthood without a father.

There are too many mistakes which can be made in a system which privileges the already privileged in order to justify the state having the right to take the life of convicts. When someone is convicted of a crime, that does not guarantee that they actually committed the crime. For people like Mr. Clements, the criminal justice system does not provide justice at all.

The death penalty disproportionately affects minorities and those in lower economic classes. Those who cannot afford legal assistance or do not understand the workings of our justice system are more likely to be convicted and put on death row.

The Torah says thou shalt not kill. We all understand that it is wrong to take a life; we must find a better way to deal with those who have committed a heinous crime. Some may say that murder warrants the death penalty, but we cannot continue to implement a system that takes the lives of the innocent, even one innocent life. What is the golden number of innocent people put to death by the death penalty that surpasses an acceptable limit? Let us consider treatment for mental illness and rehabilitation back into society rather than removal from the world. Is it morally acceptable to give the state the power to kill those who we have convicted of crimes? How much power can we abdicate before we have killed too many innocent convicts?

To those unconcerned with morality, I present some figures. According to a New York Times article from 2009, in Florida it costs $51 million more to keep inmates on death row than it does to imprison them for life without parole. In North Carolina, 43 people have been put to death at $2.16 million per execution since 1976. These are not trivial amounts. This money could be used to rehabilitate criminals rather than execute them.

In conclusion, we need to take the words "thou shalt not kill" seriously. We cannot justify the eye for an eye policy when this policy has led to the deaths of innocents at the hands of an unjust system of capital punishment.

Sarah Kuras is pursuing her MBA at Binghamton University, where she also studied Philosophy, Politics and Law, and Music as an undergraduate. An aspiring photographer and musician and avid collector of ticket stubs and vegetarian recipes, Sarah hopes to travel the world and become a performing arts administrator.

[Posted 11/6/10]