On September 24, the state of Missouri executed a potentially innocent man. Marcellus Williams was convicted in 2001 for the crime of murder. Yet over time, with the help of the Innocence Project, doubts had arisen about his guilt and the legitimacy of the legal process used against him. In any case, the merest shred of doubt should have been enough to spare Williams’ life.
Yet the truth of the matter is that Williams’ life should have never been on the line in the first place.
The death penalty in America is a policy past its sell date; it’s time for it to end. It does not solve or prevent crime, or bind up the emotional wounds of victims or families. It is punishment for punishment’s sake; a kind of performative vengeance.
Advocates for the death penalty say it represents justice. But in reality they are simply describing the feelings human beings have when they see pain inflicted on someone they believe deserves it. Hundreds of years ago public torture and executions elicited these same feelings.
Most Americans today would deem public spectacles in which individuals are hanged, drawn, and quartered to be immoral or barbaric. Yet for some reason many draw a moral distinction between the modern method of death by lethal injection, and methods of the past.
Is it really morally righteous for the state to kill someone in a “nicer” way? Is the inherent dignity of a human being protected if they are killed in private rather than public?
Death penalty proponents will say that the worst crimes deserve the strongest punishment. If someone kills or harms a child, or if someone gets drunk and crashes their car into an innocent family—how could one argue they don’t deserve to die?
These are hard arguments to answer. Yet when we take emotion out of it, an uncomfortable truth emerges. The fact is that as human beings, we do not have as much free will as we like to think. We do not choose the circumstances we are born into, or those that we are raised in. We have little control over the external factors that influence our brains as they develop, and shape our behavior.
WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 02: Activists with the Abolitionist Action Committee stand outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Building on July 02, 2024 in Washington, DC. Since June 29th, activists with Abolitionist Action Committee have been outside of the Supreme Court protesting against the death penalty and marking the anniversary of the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia decision which allowed executions in the United States to continue following a four year pause.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
This is not to say that those who commit crimes bear no responsibility for their actions. Or that they shouldn’t face punishment, or be separated from the rest of society. It does mean, however, that the circumstances around crime and punishment are more complicated than simply a person acting of their own free will.
Conservative political thought, using terms like “personal responsibility,” is keen to advance an idea of free will in which actions have no context and no mitigating circumstances. This again sets up the formulation of “you do the crime, you take the punishment.” Yet a true conservative, one who is wary of state power, should find the death penalty problematic.
It seems odd that a conservative wouldn’t, for instance, want the state to have the power to mandate a vaccine, yet would be okay with the state holding the power to take a citizen’s life. For conservatives, the state is a bloated bureaucracy that can’t do much of anything right. If this is the case, why shouldn’t it include executions?
And this brings up probably the greatest reason the death penalty needs to go. The American justice system is flawed, and gets things wrong. It favors those with wealth, and is biased against poor and minority populations. Whether an urban center or a rural town, anyone with experience in the justice system knows it ravages the poor and the underclass.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973, at least 200 people in the United States have been exonerated after being sentenced to death. This fallibility in death penalty policy renders the policy a failure, not to mention immoral.
If a measure that is supposed to prevent crimes—such as the murder of innocent people—ends in the murder of innocent people, then that measure should be done away with.
We will never truly know whether Marcellus Williams was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. Yet we do know the state of Missouri couldn’t be sure of Williams’ guilt and killed him anyway.
Despite the murkiness of Williams’ case, it did make one thing clear: It’s time for the death penalty to be abolished nationwide, once and for all.
Andrew V. Kennedy is an artist and writer whose work can be viewed at www.andrewvkennedy.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
