This article examines capital punishment in murder cases, one case in particular. While many people support the death penalty and have good reasons to support such a controversial issue, I will offer deeply personal and compelling evidence to demonstrate why I do not support capital punishment.
A Brutal Murder and the Aftereffects
On January 15, 1982, in his birthplace of Oklahoma City, OK, a 29-year-old man was gunned-down in the parking lot of a popular night club by his roommate, a person who he considered his close friend. The murder victim had a young son, siblings, and one surviving parent. A very talented man, he built and sold wood furniture and played the drums. He worked hard at everything he did, and he had many friends.
His murderer shot him twice, once in the chest, and once in the abdomen, but did not stop with just killing him. He drove the victim’s body 50 miles from the murder scene where he dumped it in a drainage ditch like a sack of garbage. A road crew found the body five days later. The man had been robbed and his clothing partially removed. On January 30, 1982, the Oklahoma City police department notified the victim’s family of his death.
The killer’s trial began in April 1982, and after deliberating for 22 minutes, a seven-woman, five-man jury found 27 year-old Dennis Ray Benton* guilty of first-degree manslaughter and later sentenced him to 70 years in prison.
Every three years when Benton’s parole hearing takes place, the victim’s sister petitions the Oklahoma parole board in an effort to keep him incarcerated. Although she did not want his life taken as he took her brother’s life, she feels that he should serve his total sentence. She reasons that he suffers more for his crime by living his life in prison, whereas he would suffer very briefly if executed. If Benton lives long enough to serve his sentence which got reduced to 46 years, a 73 year-old broken-down man will leave prison with no income, and a lot of worry about survival on the outside.
My older brother, Michael, should not have died in such a gruesome and tragic manner. However, while it seems logical that the state of Oklahoma should have taken Benton’s life, killing him would not have brought Michael back.
Although I still grieve heavily over my brother’s death, I do not believe that the execution of Benton would have provided my family and me with relief or closure. Yes, Benton took Michael from us, but the intentional taking of a human life by any method, including government mandate, still constitutes murder.
Judicial Death
Since 1976, judicial death has claimed the lives of 1,184 Americans with 20 of the executions carried out in 2011. As journalist William Bole questioned, in 1977 countries such as Western Europe and Cambodia stopped using capital punishment, so why does the United States still kill in order to demonstrate that killing is wrong? When other nations view a practice collectively, the United States takes a different position regardless of the consequences.
In America, 34 states practice the “an-eye-for-an-eye, a-tooth-for-a-tooth” method of retribution against people who commit savage and barbaric crimes such as murder. Other than the satisfaction that each stakeholder in an execution feels when the killer realizes that his or her own death has arrived, how can we justify committing the same crime that the offender committed to bring justice and closure to victims’ friends and families? How can the murder of a second person correct the murder of the first person when not one, but two or more lives have been taken?
Bedau’s Fantasy Argument
I’ll give an example of the death penalty offered by professor of philosophy, Gary Colwell, where in 2002, he presents philosopher Hugo Bedau’s fantasy-world argument to establish the morality of the death penalty. What if the execution of each murderer simultaneously restored the murder victim back to life as if no murder had ever happened?