Poverty and the Death Penalty

The disparities of wealth are common and more deadly in the justice system in the United States. The choice made by judges and the jury about who is convicted to die and who is sentenced to a lifetime prison term without parole is a major challenge in the justice system. Generally, the socio-economic status of an individual influences the decision made by the judge or the jury. As argued by Johnson and Colleen (2001), pity should not be taken on a first-degree murderer due to his or her economic status. The sentence passed should be on an equal platform both for the poor and the rich so that people can have confidence that the criminal was dealt with reasonably in the hand of the law. The failure of the Supreme Court and the society to fairly judge criminals without consideration of the criminal’s economic status has lead to loss of confidence in the justice system.

Racial issues can also be tied to the economic status of a convicted criminal. It is evident that most of those that serve life sentences and those that are awarded the death penalty are blacks. A big percentage of blacks in jail were previously not employed and therefore could have problems in posting their bail. Criminals from African American descent are most probably sentenced for long jail terms and in most cases are less likely to be released on probation. As much as race is a contributor to the socio-economic status of an individual, the judgement passed is mostly based on the economic status whether black or white. The rich are more advantaged for the reason that they can afford a competent attorney and are also capable of posting bail which makes them seem like they are more interested in their freedom unlike the poor who cannot afford to post bail.

It is not in the view of Johnson and Colleen (2001) that the state appointed attorneys are incompetent, unprofessional and incapable of defending those who cannot afford to pay their personal attorneys. These are salaried employees who are given a great load of cases to work on and in most cases they lack the time to fully research on the cases awarded to them. Due to poverty prevailing conditions of those, they are most likely jailed or worse yet sentenced to death. The fear in the society is that innocent people found guilty of first-degree murder could be executed.

The decision of the court whether to take legal action on the defendant and treat the case as a capital punishment case is critical to the state. This is because capital punishments are expensive to prosecute and the reputation of the court in the eyes of the public and in other nations on how the case proceedings are carried out are morally and constitutionally dependent. The decision is therefore dependent on the funding available by the government to prosecute this cases which are bound to take a longer time. In most cases those who are meant to be executed are mostly given a life sentence in a high security maximum prison. This poses a great danger to the public if they broke out of prison because these criminals are very dangerous.

In the views expressed in the article “Poverty and the Death Penalty”, capital punishment and executions should be abandoned until the state can come up with policies ensuring that the decision to deal with a case as one requiring capital punishment is fair to all despite their socio-economic status. The convicts should be condemned to life imprisonment without the chance of parole to ensure that these dangerous criminals do not walk the streets again.

References

Johnson, J. & Colleen, J. (2001). “Poverty and the Death Penalty.” Journal of Economic Issues. USA: Association for Evolutionary Economics Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 517-523.