Recent columns in The Daily Tar Heel cited two commonly used but flawed arguments against the death penalty -- that it is racist and that is has no deterring effect.
The "racist" argument is an outright lie. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics has stated that between 1976 and 1999, blacks committed 51.5 percent of murders while whites committed 46.5 percent. Despite the fact that blacks have committed more murders, however, the bureau states: "Since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976, white inmates have made up the majority of those under sentence of death." In 2000, whites comprised the majority on death row (1,990 whites compared to 1,535 blacks and 68 others). In the year 2000, 49 of the 85 people put to death were whites. The argument that the death penalty is racist, at least against blacks, thus holds no weight.
As to deterrence, this argument is logically flawed. Deterrence is not the goal of a law; punishing the guilty is. If we saw a rise in rape, burglaries or assault, we could say that laws against such actions have no deterring effect. Would we disqualify those laws on that basis? Also, keep in mind that there is at least one deterring effect -- once executed, the murderer can never again kill.
Kris Wampler
Freshman
Political Science
