Bedau's Argument Against Capital Punishment

In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a declaration claiming that the obligation of carrying out capital punishment was a form of barbaric and abnormal punishment in direct violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. To exemplify the significance of their declaration to the American people, the Supreme Court began to reverse death sentence cases that were brought before them. This ruling by the Supreme Court is known as Furman v. George. Over the span of four years, lawmakers scrambled to create more civilized statutes in order to reinstate capital punishment. In 1976, the Supreme Court walked away from eliminating the death penalty in general. They decided that capital punishment did not unvaryingly infringe on the United States
Although he uses many examples to expose Capital Punishment’s unethicality, this critique focuses on three; discriminatory sentencing, barbaric application, and the irrevocability of a death sentence. Bedau reasons that one of the motives of the Supreme Court’s ruling that the death penalty was unconstitutional in Furman was due to apparent racial discrimination. Between 1930 and 1976, 455 men were executed for rape. Of those executed, 405 were African American. That is a nearly 90 percent of the executions that took place. As America has become more tolerant, many claim that racial discrimination in death penalty cases is outdated. Bedau thinks it strange then how more than fifty percent of inmates sitting on death row are African American. In addition, Bedau claims that “the application of the death penalty is inhumane.”(Bedau) Hanging, firing squad, electrocution, and gassing are still options available to state executioners when executing an inmate. In recent years, lethal injection has been the method most commonly used in the majority of executions because it is deemed to be painless. However, there is no evidence of this being the case and there have been many instances where injections were botched by breaches in protocol. Bedau lists as most disturbing is the fact that death penalty cases are irrevocable. There have been cases where evidence has emerged, exonerating an inmate
How can decent Americans stand by and allow African Americans to be grossly discriminated against, especially when concerning something as grave as capital punishment. According to capitalpunishmentincontext.org, seventy percent of Texas inmates on death row are African American and sixty-nine percent of Pennsylvanian inmates on death row are African American. In a study conducted by the United States General Accounting Office, it was found that suspects of African descent were eighty-two percent more likely to be sentenced to Capital Punishment than suspects of Caucasian descent. How can Americans condone a civil ordinance that applies abusive tactics in its completion? America is supposed to be a beacon of hope to the nations of the World. How can she exemplify that when she is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that invokes the death penalty? Finally, how can American idly sit by and witness their own nation murder its inhabitants in the name of justice. Acknowledged in the United States Declaration of Independence, the American people have the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” How then can an individual live a productive life, utilize civil liberties, and pursue personal happiness when his or her life is extinguished by an unjust