Death Row Dilemma: How Gender Really Plays Out

Capital punishment and whether or not the death sentence should be used in the American legal system remains a highly controversial topic, still widely debated as to whether or not it is an ethical means of penance for convicted criminals. While 1,369 individuals have been executed under this law since the reinstating of the death penalty in 1976, only 14 women are included among these figures. The disproportionate statistic of women executed in the United States compared to their men executed brings to light whether or not the U.S. legal system imposes gender discrimination in making their decision on convicting criminals to the death sentence, favoring and giving more mercy to women over men.
The eighth law that can cause a crime to be viewed as a capital crime is “the person murders an individual under six years of age.” (Pilgrim 06) Prolonged media attention reflecting cases on capital crimes committed by women, causes cases to have extreme bias, and causes the judge or jury to neglect the actual case. This is mirrored by the circumstances of the case involving the 2008 disappearance and murder of Caylee Anthony the suspected killer which was the child’s own mother, Casey Marie Anthony. Casey Anthony, the mother of then three-year old daughter Caylee Anthony, was believed to have murdered her daughter in order to avoid parental responsibilities. Although an overwhelming amount of evidence backing up claims and beliefs that Casey Anthony was in fact the perpetrator of the murder, including forensic data connecting decomposition remains of the child to Anthony’s car during the time of the child’s disappearance, and FBI attained data comprising of Google search terms including methods involved in the murder of Caylee from a comp...

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... these findings. Addressing whether or not there is discrimination, in this instance particularly the case of gender equality, in the sentencing of execution to convicted criminals surfaces the question as to whether or not capital punishment should still be enforced as a viable means of penance in the nation’s correctional and justice system at all. While some may disagree on the validity of these claims, one must contemplate and address if there is a problem that the United States legal system faces and how it should be handled. This is where checks and balances should come into play. To eliminate the sexism in the death penalty, we have to try and destroy all gender bias. Having a committee sign off on whether or not a criminal should receive the death penalty outside of the judge and jury, may be the way to stop this apparent gender discrimination all together.