Afterthoughts on "Deadline"

Over the past three days of class, we watched "Deadline," a documentary on the history of Illinois's prohibition of the death penalty.  The film made me ponder about the issues that arise from the death penalty.

Concerning race and class:
Statistically, it is said that people of color and/or low income are more likely to be sentenced to death.  For the low income people out there, it is probably because they cannot afford an attorney.  Without an attorney, these people are much more likely to be sentenced to death.  For blacks, I'm not sure if that is really the case.  According to the Death Penalty Information Center, which was updated October 21, 2011, 713 whites have been executed and only 441 blacks have been executed.  In pie chart form and totalling all deaths, whites take up 56% of the pie and blacks take up 35% of the pie.  Thus, I do not believe that blacks are any more likely to be executed than whites.  Yet people out there are still convinced that race has some part to do with sentencing these criminals, that we have not moved on from discrimination.  These people, in my opinion, are just trying to find an excuse to point out a so-called "flaw" in the death penalty in order to try and get rid of it.  I think that by now, judges are mature enough to set aside physical features and look at the evidence for the crimes themselves.  It's frustrating that virtually every action these days can be called racist.

Concerning law and politics:
There are currently over 3,000 men and women sentenced to death in the United States. Approximately 65 percent of American voters approve of the death penalty in states where capital punishment is legal.  Why is there so much support for the death penalty?  There are several possible answers to this question.  Perhaps people are in support of it because it is not as expensive as having someone rot in prison for life.  A sum of the taxes that people pay go to funding federal prisons, where these convicted men just sit on their asses most of the day for countless years.  There have been statistics stating that the death penalty is actually more expensive than a prison sentence, but it depends on the number of years these people rot in jail.  I'm sure that a year in prison is cheaper than an execution, but thirty years in prison is definitely not.  It's also a nice feeling for people to know that convicted murderers will never do any harm again because they'll be dead.  When they have prison-for-life sentences instead, there is the chance that they will break out or cause even more harm.  These murderers in prison are barely human, and they won't become any more human by just lying around all day.  It is possible that political officials support the death penalty as well which influences the public to follow their opinions.  Politicians are influential figures.


Concerning the bigger picture:
Deadline depicts two inmates who were wrongfully sentenced and later exonerated (David Keaton and Gary Gauger), and other inmates whose guilt was not in question.  I believe that there is one position on the death penalty that is satisfactory in all cases (excluding exceptions like mentally retarded individuals): if you murder, you deserve to die.  For crimes that do not involve homicide, the criminal has an option for restitution.  However, when an individual murders, the only possible restitution towards the victim's family (the only way to somehow give back) is to take his or her own life.  No matter what the murderer does to try to satisfy the victim's family, they won't be.  The only way to truly satisfy a victim's family is if the murderer were eliminated.  Though some families may feel some dissatisfaction, it is definitely a lot less dissatisfaction that would be felt than if the murderer were kept alive and unchanged in a prison.  There is some possible error in the justice system that an innocent individual is executed, but with the procedures for these types of trials are becoming stricter and stricter, this chance of error is very minimal.  I think that eventually the justice system will be able to devise a foolproof system that prevents innocents from being executed, with the way things are going now.