Capital Punishment and the Biases Associated with Its Application

Capital Punishment and Racism

Introduction

In today's world, the historical meaning of justice has not changed. Justice is measured in according to a prescribed set of values that are evaluated on the basis of property, rights, racial or ethnic background and power. By applying the concept on the political front the prevailing practice of justice in contemporary times can best be understood. However in past, a number of issues have been found on the topic of criminal injustice. It is shown by the studies that a feeling of injustice motivates the criminal behavior that is experienced by individuals when they become aware that other people are having advantaged in the justice system. Relative deprivation is thus considered to be a social-psychological construct that arises in the justice system from a subjective perception of inequity. For the maintenance of security system and criminal justice in order to create administrative decisions, proper balance seems to be very significant. This guarantees that the government and the justice system are playing vital role in maintaining environment of justice and security (Lawrence, 2002). The constitutional laws and policies are designed and implemented in order to provide guidance to the citizens by allocating equal resources to every individual. In legal environment there are several cumulative concerns which operate security and justice including authority, retributive, fairness and mutual understanding.

Maintenance of law and order and protection of rights in the society are ensured by maintaining a proper balance in the security and justice system. The technological advancements and advancement in mass communication have played an effective role in maintaining a balance between justice and security system. Timely and orderly designing and implementation of law is offered by it. By maintaining proper time management, providing relevant information, storage as well as access of important data, enhancement is observed in justice system (Mower, 2008).

Background

“Capital punishment is considered to be very wrong same as a cure is considered for crime and charity is considered to be significantly wrong as a cure for poverty.” - Henry Ford (Baldus et al, 2000, 198).

Death penalty opponents made one of the strongest criticisms about capital punishment. They claimed that innocent people may be executed in a wrong way. Although since 1887, no legal or public official admitted for a wrong execution. Between 1973 and 2004, abolitionists pointed to 118 individuals who were released from death row and this can be considered as a strong evidence of executions that were conducted in wrong way. Over the past ten years, rapid increase in wrong execution was also observed by abolitionists. Death penalty retentionists strongly argued that mistaken executions were historical anomalies until a decade ago —that were resulted from sufficient safeguards present in the capital punishment process (Baldus et al, 2000).

More recently, the existence of such miscarriages of justice have acknowledged by retentionists, but they justify their continued support of the death penalty by contending those miscarriages as extremely infrequent and that abolitionists have never proven that an innocent person ...