1. By Saeed Marandi
Humanities 25
November 24, 2012
The Death Penalty
Reconsidered: Purpose and Consequences

2. Questionnaire
• Who is for/against?
• Why do we have the death penalty?
• Proposition 34- success and failure

3. A Matter of Philosophy
• What is justice? How can we understand how a uniform notion of justice could apply to
the death penalty. Can it?
• Are justice and revenge the same thing?
• Civilized or barbaric? A legislative nightmare?
• Does anyone have the right to decide who dies? Should anyone have the privilege to
decide this?
• How do we define “punishment” and “penalty?”

4. Our Constitution.
• 8th Amendment
• William J. Brennan (23:25)
• Furman v. Georgia
• Gregg v. Georgia
• Atkins v. Virginia
• Roper v. Simmons
• Constitutional muster.
• What is the future of the death penalty in regards to The Constitution?

5. Deterrence
• States with the Death Penalty don’t have lower crime rates than states that do not use it
(ACLU).
• Is there hard, empirical evidence suggesting that it does?
• A more honest question.
• Can Capital Punishment fulfill its purpose?

6. Race and The Death Penalty
• Out of 257 instances of murder victims, 19 whites were put on death row.
• In a broad perspective, race is an ambiguous factor.
• Socioeconomics- who’s at risk?
• How much is life worth?
• Appeals process.

7. Guilty until proven innocent?
• Since 1973, over 130 people have been released from convictions due to newly-surfaced
evidence proving their innocence (Amnesty International).
• Factors that influence an outcome wrongly accusing the innocent:
• Inadequate legal representation
• Police and prosecutorial misconduct
• Perjured testimony and mistaken eyewitness testimony
• Racial prejudice (Coretta Scott King)
• Community/political pressure to solve a case
• Can Capital Punishment honor its purpose?

8. Quotes
• "Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders."
-Albert Camus, French philosopher
• "To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice."
-Desmond Tutu
• "I have yet to see a death case among the dozen coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-
execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial... People
who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty."
-Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
• "I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment.... We
cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row
have been exonerated."
-John Paul Stevens, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
• “From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.” –Harry
Blackmun, Supreme Court Justice