In spite of a number of challenges, capital punishment has been affirmed by the Court and continues to be enforced. There is considerable public support for the death penalty, much of it related to a general trend toward demanding harsher penalties for criminals because of a fear of street crime and violence. The death penalty is held out as a deterrent, and yet there is a relative balance in the evidence supporting and denying that effect. Though proponents and opponents of the death penalty may argue over such data as can be found on issues of this sort, a more basic question is simply whether capital punishment is the right sort of thing for an advanced society to use. If an automatic death penalty were instituted for all cases of first degree murder, this change would not be likely to have the effect that proponents of the death penalty might hope.
One proponent of capital punishment argues that the death penalty can be seen as consistent with the principles of a constitutional democratic society. Berns notes that our criminal justice institutions impose punishments only as a last resort and with the greatest reluctance (McKenna and Feingold 174). He also sees the death penalty as an affirmation of life rather than a denial, since it is directed at those who have taken a life.
Many proponents of the death penalty believe that it would be a deterrent if this punishment were certain and swift, and they find that lengthy appeals and other delays undercut the value of the death penalty. If death were swift and certain, they say, the punishment would have meaning. However, they are ignoring the fact that the public gets used to such a punishment rather quickly, as we have seen since the reimposition of the death penalty over the last decade or so. In Texas, where a number of executions have been carried out in recent years, television reports suggest that what used to draw crowds of both supporters and opponents now takes...