The Status of the Federal Death Penalty in the U.S

First Name, Last Name
Professor's Name
English 0219
04 August 2020
The Status of the Federal Death Penalty in the U.S
Should the federal death penalty (FDP) be abolished, modified, or retained? This debate is an intricate and enduring one. In the past, discussions on capital punishment dwelled on philosophical, religious, and theoretical pros and cons. Nevertheless, the nature of the death penalty arguments has recently changed following the perspectives of scholars through research. For instance, in the book "By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed," Feser and Bessette argue for the retention of the death penalty because it deters crimes and secures justice. Conversely, in the article "The American death penalty and the (in) visibility of race," Steiker and Steiker argue for the abolishment of the death penalty because it brings out racial bias. Also, Professor Thomas Sarver advocates for the abolition of the death penalty in his article "Abolishing the Death Penalty: An Untested Legal Argument." Sarver claims that although capital punishment is legitimate under the law, it is legally untested (Broughton 1616). Although the authors disagree on multiple fronts, they agree that the application of capital punishment with regulation is essential. Various fundamental considerations, including deterrence, racial bias, innocence, and retribution, weigh for and against the federal death penalty to help citizens, legislators, and policymakers in making an informed choice.
Deterrence
Capital punishment deters capital crimes
The authors disagree most widely on whether the form of capital punishment discourages people from committing crimes. Feser and Bessette argue that the death penalty has some deterrent value and can save the lives of prison staff, other inmates, and innocent civilians by executing individuals whom the system cannot prevent from killing again (166). They further posit that the abolitionists' argument that capital punishment has no deterrent effect relies on anecdotal evidence because of the small number of executions in recent years. The decline in executions obscures a quantitative demonstration that capital punishment does not deter crime (161). The authors concluded that death row is legal for punishment for capital crimes, and it saves innocent lives through deterrence (Feser and Bessette 165).
Capital punishment neither deters crime nor prevents future murders
Kort-Butler and Ray, for their part, established that two-thirds of the public in the red state of Nebraska (supporters of the death penalty) did not perceive capital punishment as a crime deterrent (3). Their findings agree with the arguments of Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker. These researchers claimed that the federal death penalty has failed as a crime deterrent because the courts do not employ it consistently and promptly. They also hypothesize that jointly, the current 25 states with a death penalty do not have a lower homicide rate than the 22 states without the punishment. Thus, they conclude that as the Court specified, deterrence should not be the grounds for retaining this form of capital punishment (Steiker and Steiker 272).
Racial Bias
Application of capital punishment unfair especially across racial lines
There is a slight di...