Distribution of the Death Penalty - Is it Unjust? The topic of this essay should be obvious from the title. This presentation of the facts on the matter contains many details. On average, about 20,000 murders occur in the United States per year. Fewer than 300 convicted murderers are sentenced to death. But since no more than thirty murderers have been executed in recent years, it is likely that most of those sentenced to death will die of old age (1). Nonetheless, the death penalty occupies an important place in discussions: it raises important moral questions regardless of the number of executions (2). The death penalty is our harshest punishment (3). It is irrevocable: it puts an end to the existence of the punished, instead of temporarily imprisoning them. Furthermore, although not intended to cause physical pain, execution is the only corporal punishment still applied to adults (4). These unique characteristics contribute to the perennial and passionate controversy over capital punishment. Consideration of the justice, morality, or utility of capital punishment is often confused with objections to its supposedly discriminatory or capricious distribution among offenders. Wrongly. If capital punishment is inherently immoral, no amount of distribution can affect the quality of what is distributed, be it punishments or rewards. A discriminatory or capricious distribution could therefore not justify the abolition of the death penalty. Furthermore, maldistribution is no more inherent to capital punishment than to any other punishment. The maldistribution between guilty and innocent is, by definition, unjust. But the injustice does not lie in the nature of the punishment. Because of the finality of the death penalty, the most serious maldistribution occurs when it is imposed on the innocent. However, frequent accusations of discrimination and capriciousness refer to maldistribution among the guilty and not to the punishment of the innocent (5). The maldistribution of any punishment among those who deserve it is irrelevant to its justice or morality. Even if poor or black inmates guilty of capital crimes faced capital punishment, and other inmates equally guilty of the same crimes did not, a more equal distribution, however desirable, would simply be more equitable. It would no longer be fair to those sentenced to death. Punishments are meted out to the person, not the racial or economic group. The fault is personal. The only relevant question is: does the person to be executed deserve the punishment? Whether or not others who deserved the same punishment, whatever their economic or racial group, avoided execution is irrelevant.