Concerning the death penalty

The recent headlines of the Troy Davis case has brought the issue of the death penalty to the forefront of American debate over crime and punishment.


Brief details of the Troy Davis case
August 18, 1989: off duty police officer Mark MacPhail was working as a security guard at a Burger King in Savannah, Georgia. He responded to a nearby disturbance where a homeless man was being beaten by another man. MacPhail was shot and killed while responding to the incident. No physical evidence from the crime was retrieved, apart from the bullets and shell casings, which were determined to have come from a .38-caliber pistol. Witnesses to the shooting agreed that a man in a white shirt had struck the homeless man and then shot MacPhail.

The following day, Redd Coles went to the police. He told them that he had seen Davis with a .38-caliber gun, and that Davis had pistol whipped the homeless man and shot MacPhail. Davis held a permit for a .38 caliber gun.

In the 1991 trial, nine eye witnesses testified they saw Troy Davis beat the homeless man and shoot MacPhail. In this same trial, it was revealed that Redd Coles also owned a .38 caliber gun, a lead that was never pursued by law enforcement. Davis was convicted for the murder of Mark MacPhail and sentenced to death on August 30, 1991.

During the appeal process, seven of the nine eye witnesses recanted their testimony and complained of police coercion and intimidation during the suspect identification process. Four of the witnesses implicated Redd Coles as the shooter in their revised statements, including Larry Young, the homeless man who had been assaulted the night of the murder.

After 22 years of appeals and pleas Troy Davis was put to death on September 21, 2011.

The problems with eye witness testimony
In the 1970's an experiment was conducted to assess the effect 3rd party suggestions have on people forming "false facts" in their memories. Here is an except from the experiment:
"Subjects were shown a slide of a car at an intersection with either a yield sign or a stop sign. Experimenters asked participants questions, falsely introducing the term "stop sign" into the question instead of referring to the yield sign participants had actually seen. Similarly, experimenters falsely substituted the term "yield sign" in questions directed to participants who had actually seen the stop sign slide. The results indicated that subjects remembered seeing the false image. In the initial part of the experiment, subjects also viewed a slide showing a car accident. Some subjects were later asked how fast the cars were traveling when they "hit" each other, others were asked how fast the cars were traveling when they "smashed" into each other. Those subjects questioned using the word "smashed" were more likely to report having seen broken glass in the original slide. The introduction of false cues altered participants’ memories."
The way an eye witness is questioned can introduce bias to their recollections and also aide in "false facts" In addition, a person under stress and fear at the scene of the crime may not have seen all the details or remembered the event exactly as it happened.

Other evidence that eye witness testimony is unreliable is the fact that 75% of DNA exonerations were cases where the conviction was heavily based on eye witness testimony. " At least 40% of these eyewitness identifications involved a cross racial identification (race data is currently only available on the victim, not for non-victim eyewitnesses). Studies have shown that people are less able to recognize faces of a different race than their own."  You can read more here.

CBS recently aired a story on eyewitness testimony and wrongful convictions.

Considering these studies, the fact that Troy Davis' case was largely based on eyewitness testimony, and the majority of eyewitnesses recanted their testimony - Troy Davis' sentence should have been at least commuted to life in prison.

The concept of the death penalty 
The death penalty as a crime deterrent is an erroneous argument at best. Approximately 54% of murders occur due to alcohol intoxication, most other murders are committed out of extreme emotional incompetency or stress (fear, anger, passion, mental handicap). In these diminished cognitive states, the perpetrator cannot clearly think about the consequences of their actions. They commit the murder within a matter of seconds with no time for reflection and many times without the cognitive ability to do so. At these pivotal moments they are unable to see that the consequence might mean the death penalty.

In the United States, there are 14 states that do not have a death penalty statute and these states have some of the lowest murder rates in the country. In fact, the states that employ the death penalty the most have the highest murder rates in the country. Find statistics here. The largest percentage of executions occur in the southern states. One can draw a correlation between murder rate and poverty level since most of the states with high murder rate also have a high poverty rate. The natural conclusion would be, to deter murders, the states should spend their time and resources on education and social reforms to alleviate poverty ergo causing the murder rate to decrease.

The death penalty as justice. Justice is defined as: the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness and guided by truth, reason, and fairness. Justice does not mean an eye for an eye, or do unto others as they have done to you. The usage of this word in the context of the law and especially as it pertains to the death penalty is largely interchangeable with the word revenge. What many families seek is revenge, they lost someone and the person they think caused their pain should be punished vindictively and put to death.

One cannot cure a disease by treating the symptoms, the root cause must be addressed. There are strong indications that violent crime, including murder, are related to poverty levels and social inequality. If governments and society at large want to solve violent crime problems they must address the conditions that cause it. Building more prisons, and electrocuting and injecting people with lethal drugs does not solve the problem, it only perpetuates it.