Primer: Death Penalty
National news in the past two weeks has been dominated by the botched execution of Christa Pike, a Tennessee woman who was convicted of murder and survived two doses of a lethal injection. A few days after this incident, Pentagon officials announced that Nidal Hasan, the perpetrator of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, would be executed in public via livestream. President Trump canceled the livestream—would have been the first public execution in the United States since World War II—due to public criticism. Together, these events have brought the issue of capital punishment to the fore of American public discourse.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 145 countries have abolished the death penalty while 54 continue to practice it. Within the United States, the death penalty is authorized in 27 states and by the federal government and military. Lethal injection is the primary means of execution in most of these jurisdictions. However, the past 20 years have seen 11 states abolish capital punishment. Numerous states have also enacted laws addressing this issue through a variety of tactics, such as modifying execution procedures, changing trial and appellate processes, and repealing the death penalty altogether.
An August 2026 poll by Pew Research Center found that two-thirds of Americans support the death penalty for those convicted of murder, and a third oppose it. Less than 60 percent say capital punishment is ineffective for deterring crime. Notably, 73 percent of Americans believe there is some risk that an innocent person would be put to death, though 25 percent say there are adequate precautions to prevent this. Moreover, support largely falls along party lines; 84 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents are in favor, while Democrats are split 51–49 on the issue.
Proponents of the resolution do not believe that capital punishment effectively prevents murder, citing deterrence studies which have found that, at best, the death penalty is no more effective than a life sentence. This is attributed to the fact that people who commit murder often do so in a fit of passion or under the influence of alcohol or drugs, which clouds their ability to weigh the difference between execution and life in prison. Some criminologists have even claimed that the death penalty desensitizes citizens to brutality, which could lead to more murder. A popular alternative is a life sentence without parole, which could protect society from future murders by the same individuals while giving them the ability to remake their lives in prison. Proponents also note that states without the death penalty have lower crime rates than states that do, such as Europe and Canada compared to the United States. Additionally, in the United States, the death penalty since 1977 has disproportionately punished the murderers of white victims compared to those of Black victims.
On the other hand, those in favor of the death penalty believe that retribution—an eye for an eye—is the only way to truly achieve justice. Given that murder is the greatest crime a human can commit, it should be punished to the greatest extent possible. And studies show that this punishment works—notably, the 1973 Erlich study found that for every inmate who was executed, 7 lives were spared because the death penalty deterred others from committing murder. Although some studies about deterrence are inconclusive, those in favor of the death penalty believe that this is because the death penalty is very rarely used, hence it is difficult to measure their effect. The fact that states that do not have the death penalty have lower murder rates than states that do is not sufficient proof that the punishment is an ineffective deterrent; in fact, opponents say, states with high murder rates would have even higher rates if they abolished the death penalty.
Come join our debate this Monday at 7pm in Scott Hall!
“Interior of Cellblock Housing Death Row - Eastern State Penitentiary - Philadelphia - Pennsylvania” by Adam Jones, Ph.D. is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.
