essay about the death penalty should be abolished

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Essay: Should The Death Penalty Be Abolished?

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Should The Death Penalty Be Abolished?

History of Death Penalty The first established death penalty laws date as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes. The death penalty was also part of the Fourteenth Century B.C.’s Hittite Code; in the Seventh Century B.C.’s Draconian Code of Athens, which made death the only punishment for all crimes; and in the Fifth Century B.C.’s Roman law of the Twelve Tablets.

Death sentences were carried out by such means as crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement. In the Tenth Century A.D., hanging became the usual method of execution in Britain. This report will give argument against death penalty while supporting the abolishment movements of death penalty, David (2010)

Should the death penalty be abolished? Death penalty is a severe and irreversible punishment that raises controversy around the world. In order to discuss the valuable existence of the death penalty, it is might make sense to bring two questions must; whether there is strong reason to implement the death penalty; and whether the death penalty is a suitable method to solve the problem. There are many arguments for and against the death penalty, Sanger and Unah (2012).

First and foremost, death sentence does not make sense it is more of barbaric to deal with murder morally nothing make us better when we kill those who kill. It insincere. Also it is an easy way out for the criminals. It would rather have then suffer in jail for the rest of their life without parole. More so, murders do not fear death so this kind of penalty is not a restrictive. In fact it is cheaper to keep an inmate in prison for life without parole than it is to kill. It does not make sense to spend millions of money on a morally questionable act that has shown no signs of determent, Martin and Michael ( 2013 )

Secondly, death penalty should be abolished. Every year, thousands of people are put on death row for a crime they didn’t even commit. There’s no way of knowing if they actually did or not. Is it worth the risk? It can be seen as a cruel and unusual punishment, which goes against one of our amendments in the Constitution. Crime will always be a part of the world and there will be better ways to handle it. In the United States only it is estimated that total prosecution and defense costs to the state and counties equal $9 million per year. (Gross, Samuel, 2006)

Death penalty is a human rights violation. With the death penalty, you are deliberately deciding punishment by death for a criminal. This is the same concept as eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. It violates human rights by the government forcing the death of a human. Death by capital punishment is not justice meaning not giving them what is rightfully theirs. I fully support imprisonment instead. God says that we shall not decide the length of another human’s life according to the 10 Commandments. In conclusion, the death penalty is killing. (Stephen and Bright, 2010)

Furthermore, it is barbaric, over expensive and innocents often die If you trade an eye for an eye the whole world will be blind – literally, what gives the justice system the right to take the priceless human life? Thousands of people in the world history have been acquitted after death. The death sentence is incredibly expensive and a waste of information on killers and how they operate as well. Advocates of the death sentence seem to tend to appeal to the emotions but at the end of the day this biblical type of revenge that seems so popular is never satisfying, it is just another death among thousands. Poor quality defense leaves many to death sentence, a study at Columbia University found that 68% of all death penalty cases were reversed on appeal, with inadequate defense as one of the main reasons requiring reversal.

Moreover, it is cruel and unusual punishment. We cannot justify killing someone if we are punctuating it by saying killing is wrong. From a young age we teach our children that two wrongs do not make a right, yet the death penalty is trying to do exactly that. Costs are also prohibitive. It costs more to have someone go through the death penalty process than to keep him in jail for the rest of his life. For there is a better way to help the families of murder victims, families of murder victims undergo severe trauma and loss which no one should minimize. However, executions do not help these people heal nor do they end their pain; the extended process prior to executions prolongs the agony of the family. Families of murder victims would benefit far more if the funds now being used for the costly process of executions were diverted to counseling and other assistance. (Baldus, David. 2008)

Mentally ill people are executed, one out of every ten who has been executed in the United States since 1977 is mentally ill, according to Amnesty International and the National Association on Mental Illness. Many mentally ill defendants are unable to participate in their trials in any meaningful way and appear unengaged, cold, and unfeeling before the jury. Some have been forcibly medicated in order to make them competent to be executed. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has decreed that people with ‘mental retardation’ may not be executed, many countries has not yet passed a law banning the execution of the mentally ill.

Suppose death sentence should only really be used for crimes such as 9/11 and people like Bin Laden or the Yorkshire Ripper. But otherwise it should not be brought back and it should be banned in the world for an indefinite time. Police should use guns if needed, if they were dealing with a gun crime. Or in other words, suppose that we should get rid of them altogether. (Martin and Michael, 2009)

Lastly basing with biblical facts, the Bible does not allow people to be killed when we read through the Bible, killing people is a sin. In Old Testament times, it is mentioned that anyone who commits adultery should be stoned to death, as religious societies we disagree with death sentence. We have witnessed so many people have been killed wrongly. The real criminal is not killed though.

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essay about the death penalty should be abolished

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Is the Death Penalty Justified or Should It Be Abolished?

is the death penalty justified or should it be abolished?

*Updated 2022

Throughout history, societies around the world have used the death penalty as a way to punish the most heinous crimes. while capital punishment is still practiced today, many countries have since abolished it. in fact, in 2019, california’s governor put a moratorium on the death penalty , stopping it indefinitely. in early 2022, he took further steps and ordered the dismantling of the state’s death row. given the moral complexities and depth of emotions involved, the death penalty remains a controversial debate the world over., the following are three arguments in support of the death penalty and three against it., arguments supporting the death penalty.

Prevents convicted killers from killing again

The death penalty guarantees that convicted murderers will never kill again. There have been countless cases where convicts sentenced to life in prison have murdered other inmates and/or prison guards. Convicts have also been known to successfully arrange murders from within prison, the most famous case being mobster Whitey Bulger , who apparently was killed by fellow inmates while incarcerated. There are also cases where convicts who have been released for parole after serving only part of their sentences – even life sentences – have murdered again after returning to society. A death sentence is the only irrevocable penalty that protects innocent lives.

Maintains justice

For most people, life is sacred, and innocent lives should be valued over the lives of killers. Innocent victims who have been murdered – and in some cases, tortured beforehand – had no choice in their untimely and cruel death or any opportunity to say goodbye to friends and family, prepare wills, or enjoy their last moments of life. Meanwhile, convicted murderers sentenced to life in prison – and even those on death row – are still able to learn, read, write , paint, find religion, watch TV, listen to music, maintain relationships, and even appeal their sentences.

To many, capital punishment symbolizes justice and is the only way to adequately express society’s revulsion of the murder of innocent lives. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center Poll, the majority of US adults ( 60% ) think that legal executions fit the crime of what convicted killers deserve. The death penalty is a way to restore society’s balance of justice – by showing that the most severe crimes are intolerable and will be punished in kind

Historically recognized

Historians and constitutional lawyers seem to agree that by the time the Founding Fathers wrote and signed the U.S. Constitution in 1787, and when the Bill of Rights were ratified and added in 1791, the death penalty was an acceptable and permissible form of punishment for premeditated murder. The Constitution’s 8 th and 14 th Amendments recognize the death penalty BUT under due process of the law. This means that certain legal requirements must first be fulfilled before any state executions can be legally carried out – even when pertaining to the cruelest, most cold-blooded murderer . While interpretations of the amendments pertaining to the death penalty have changed over the years, the Founding Fathers intended to allow for the death penalty from the very beginning and put in place a legal system to ensure due process.

Arguments against the Death Penalty

Not proven to deter crime

There’s no concrete evidence showing that the death penalty actually deters crime. Various studies comparing crime and murder rates in U.S. states that have the death penalty versus those that don’t found that the murder rate in non-death-penalty states has actually remained consistently lower over the years than in those states that have the death penalty. These findings suggest that capital punishment may not actually be a deterrent for crime.

The winds may be shifting regarding the public’s opinion about the death penalty. This is evident by the recent decision of a non-unanimous Florida jury to sentence the Parkland High School shooter to life in prison without parole instead of the death penalty . While the verdict shocked many, it also revealed mixed feelings about the death penalty, including among the families of the 17 Parkland victims and families of victims from other mass shootings.

More expensive than imprisonment

Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty is actually more expensive than keeping an inmate in prison, even for life. While the cost of the actual execution may be minimal, the overall costs surrounding a capital case (where the death penalty is a potential punishment) are enormously high. Sources say that defending a death penalty case can cost around four times higher than defending a case not seeking death. Even in cases where a guilty plea cancels out the need for a trial, seeking the death penalty costs almost twice as much as cases that don’t. And this is before factoring in appeals, which are more time-consuming and therefore cost more than life-sentence appeals, as well as higher prison costs for death-row inmates.

Does not bring closure

It seems logical that punishing a murderer, especially a mass murderer, or terrorist with the most severe punishment would bring closure and relief to victims’ families. However, the opposite may be true. Studies show that capital punishment does not bring comfort to those affected by violent and fatal crimes. In fact, punishing the perpetrator has been shown to make victims feel worse , as it forces them to think about the offender and the incident even more. Also, as capital cases can drag on for years due to endless court appeals, it can be difficult for victims’ families to heal, thus delaying closure.

The Bottom Line: The death penalty has been used to maintain the balance of justice throughout history, punishing violent criminals in the severest way to ensure they won’t kill again. On the other hand, with inconclusive evidence as to its deterrence of crime, the higher costs involved in pursuing capital cases, and the lack of relief and closure it brings to victims’ families, the death penalty is not justified. Where do you stand on this controversial issue?

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the death penalty debate

The Case Against the Death Penalty

The American Civil Liberties Union believes the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantees of due process of law and of equal protection under the law. Furthermore, we believe that the state should not give itself the right to kill human beings – especially when it kills with premeditation and ceremony, in the name of the law or in the name of its people, and when it does so in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion.

Capital punishment is an intolerable denial of civil liberties and is inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system. The death penalty is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice. Through litigation, legislation, and advocacy against this barbaric and brutal institution, we strive to prevent executions and seek the abolition of capital punishment.

The ACLU’s opposition to capital punishment incorporates the following fundamental concerns:

The death penalty system in the US is applied in an unfair and unjust manner against people, largely dependent on how much money they have, the skill of their attorneys, race of the victim and where the crime took place . People of color are far more likely to be executed than white people, especially if thevictim is white

The death penalty is a waste of taxpayer funds and has no public safety benefit. The vast majority of law enforcement professionals surveyed agree that capital punishment does not deter violent crime; a survey of police chiefs nationwide found they rank the death penalty lowest among ways to reduce violent crime. They ranked increasing the number of police officers, reducing drug abuse, and creating a better economy with more jobs higher than the death penalty as the best ways to reduce violence. The FBI has found the states with the death penalty have the highest murder rates.

Innocent people are too often sentenced to death. Since 1973, over 156 people have been released from death rows in 26 states because of innocence. Nationally, at least one person is exonerated for every 10 that are executed.

INTRODUCTION TO THE “MODERN ERA” OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED STATES

In 1972, the Supreme Court declared that under then-existing laws "the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty… constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." ( Furman v. Georgia , 408 U.S. 238). The Court, concentrating its objections on the manner in which death penalty laws had been applied, found the result so "harsh, freakish, and arbitrary" as to be constitutionally unacceptable. Making the nationwide impact of its decision unmistakable, the Court summarily reversed death sentences in the many cases then before it, which involved a wide range of state statutes, crimes and factual situations.

But within four years after the Furman decision, several hundred persons had been sentenced to death under new state capital punishment statutes written to provide guidance to juries in sentencing. These statutes require a two-stage trial procedure, in which the jury first determines guilt or innocence and then chooses imprisonment or death in the light of aggravating or mitigating circumstances.

In 1976, the Supreme Court moved away from abolition, holding that "the punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution." The Court ruled that the new death penalty statutes contained "objective standards to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing the sentence of death." ( Gregg v. Georgia , 428 U.S. 153). Subsequently 38 state legislatures and the Federal government enacted death penalty statutes patterned after those the Court upheld in Gregg. Congress also enacted and expanded federal death penalty statutes for peacetime espionage by military personnel and for a vast range of categories of murder.

Executions resumed in 1977. In 2002, the Supreme Court held executions of mentally retarded criminals are “cruel and unusual punishments” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. Since then, states have developed a range of processes to ensure that mentally retarded individuals are not executed. Many have elected to hold proceedings prior to the merits trial, many with juries, to determine whether an accused is mentally retarded. In 2005, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed, resulting in commutation of death sentences to life for dozens of individuals across the country. As of August 2012, over 3,200 men and women are under a death sentence and more than 1,300 men, women and children (at the time of the crime) have been executed since 1976 .

ACLU OBJECTIONS TO THE DEATH PENALTY

Despite the Supreme Court's 1976 ruling in Gregg v. Georgia , et al, the ACLU continues to oppose capital punishment on moral, practical, and constitutional grounds:

Capital punishment is cruel and unusual . It is cruel because it is a relic of the earliest days of penology, when slavery, branding, and other corporal punishments were commonplace. Like those barbaric practices, executions have no place in a civilized society. It is unusual because only the United States of all the western industrialized nations engages in this punishment. It is also unusual because only a random sampling of convicted murderers in the United States receive a sentence of death.

Capital punishment denies due process of law. Its imposition is often arbitrary, and always irrevocable – forever depriving an individual of the opportunity to benefit from new evidence or new laws that might warrant the reversal of a conviction, or the setting aside of a death sentence.

The death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection . It is applied randomly – and discriminatorily. It is imposed disproportionately upon those whose victims are white, offenders who are people of color, and on those who are poor and uneducated and concentrated in certain geographic regions of the country.

The death penalty is not a viable form of crime control. When police chiefs were asked to rank the factors that, in their judgment, reduce the rate of violent crime, they mentioned curbing drug use and putting more officers on the street, longer sentences and gun control. They ranked the death penalty as least effective . Politicians who preach the desirability of executions as a method of crime control deceive the public and mask their own failure to identify and confront the true causes of crime.

Capital punishment wastes limited resources . It squanders the time and energy of courts, prosecuting attorneys, defense counsel, juries, and courtroom and law enforcement personnel. It unduly burdens the criminal justice system, and it is thus counterproductive as an instrument for society's control of violent crime. Limited funds that could be used to prevent and solve crime (and provide education and jobs) are spent on capital punishment.

Opposing the death penalty does not indicate a lack of sympathy for murder victims . On the contrary, murder demonstrates a lack of respect for human life. Because life is precious and death irrevocable, murder is abhorrent, and a policy of state-authorized killings is immoral. It epitomizes the tragic inefficacy and brutality of violence, rather than reason, as the solution to difficult social problems. Many murder victims do not support state-sponsored violence to avenge the death of their loved one. Sadly, these victims have often been marginalized by politicians and prosecutors, who would rather publicize the opinions of pro-death penalty family members.

Changes in death sentencing have proved to be largely cosmetic. The defects in death-penalty laws, conceded by the Supreme Court in the early 1970s, have not been appreciably altered by the shift from unrestrained discretion to "guided discretion." Such so-called “reforms” in death sentencing merely mask the impermissible randomness of a process that results in an execution.

A society that respects life does not deliberately kill human beings . An execution is a violent public spectacle of official homicide, and one that endorses killing to solve social problems – the worst possible example to set for the citizenry, and especially children. Governments worldwide have often attempted to justify their lethal fury by extolling the purported benefits that such killing would bring to the rest of society. The benefits of capital punishment are illusory, but the bloodshed and the resulting destruction of community decency are real.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS NOT A DETERRENT TO CAPITAL CRIMES

Deterrence is a function not only of a punishment's severity, but also of its certainty and frequency. The argument most often cited in support of capital punishment is that the threat of execution influences criminal behavior more effectively than imprisonment does. As plausible as this claim may sound, in actuality the death penalty fails as a deterrent for several reasons.

A punishment can be an effective deterrent only if it is consistently and promptly employed. Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet these conditions .

The proportion of first-degree murderers who are sentenced to death is small, and of this group, an even smaller proportion of people are executed. Although death sentences in the mid-1990s increased to about 300 per year , this is still only about one percent of all homicides known to the police . Of all those convicted on a charge of criminal homicide, only 3 percent – about 1 in 33 – are eventually sentenced to death. Between 2001-2009, the average number of death sentences per year dropped to 137 , reducing the percentage even more. This tiny fraction of convicted murderers do not represent the “worst of the worst”.

Mandatory death sentencing is unconstitutional. The possibility of increasing the number of convicted murderers sentenced to death and executed by enacting mandatory death penalty laws was ruled unconstitutional in 1976 ( Woodson v. North Carolina , 428 U.S. 280).

A considerable time between the imposition of the death sentence and the actual execution is unavoidable, given the procedural safeguards required by the courts in capital cases. Starting with selecting the trial jury, murder trials take far longer when the ultimate penalty is involved. Furthermore, post-conviction appeals in death-penalty cases are far more frequent than in other cases. These factors increase the time and cost of administering criminal justice.

We can reduce delay and costs only by abandoning the procedural safeguards and constitutional rights of suspects, defendants, and convicts – with the attendant high risk of convicting the wrong person and executing the innocent. This is not a realistic prospect: our legal system will never reverse itself to deny defendants the right to counsel, or the right to an appeal.

Persons who commit murder and other crimes of personal violence often do not premeditate their crimes.

Most capital crimes are committed in the heat of the moment. Most capital crimes are committed during moments of great emotional stress or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, when logical thinking has been suspended. Many capital crimes are committed by the badly emotionally-damaged or mentally ill. In such cases, violence is inflicted by persons unable to appreciate the consequences to themselves as well as to others.

Even when crime is planned, the criminal ordinarily concentrates on escaping detection, arrest, and conviction. The threat of even the severest punishment will not discourage those who expect to escape detection and arrest. It is impossible to imagine how the threat of any punishment could prevent a crime that is not premeditated. Furthermore, the death penalty is a futile threat for political terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh, because they usually act in the name of an ideology that honors its martyrs.

Capital punishment doesn't solve our society's crime problem. Threatening capital punishment leaves the underlying causes of crime unaddressed, and ignores the many political and diplomatic sanctions (such as treaties against asylum for international terrorists) that could appreciably lower the incidence of terrorism.

Capital punishment has been a useless weapon in the so-called "war on drugs." The attempt to reduce murders in the drug trade by threat of severe punishment ignores the fact that anyone trafficking in illegal drugs is already risking his life in violent competition with other dealers. It is irrational to think that the death penalty – a remote threat at best – will avert murders committed in drug turf wars or by street-level dealers.

If, however, severe punishment can deter crime, then permanent imprisonment is severe enough to deter any rational person from committing a violent crime.

The vast preponderance of the evidence shows that the death penalty is no more effective than imprisonment in deterring murder and that it may even be an incitement to criminal violence. Death-penalty states as a group do not have lower rates of criminal homicide than non-death-penalty states. Use of the death penalty in a given state may actually increase the subsequent rate of criminal homicide. Why? Perhaps because "a return to the exercise of the death penalty weakens socially based inhibitions against the use of lethal force to settle disputes…. "

In adjacent states – one with the death penalty and the other without it – the state that practices the death penalty does not always show a consistently lower rate of criminal homicide. For example, between l990 and l994, the homicide rates in Wisconsin and Iowa (non-death-penalty states) were half the rates of their neighbor, Illinois – which restored the death penalty in l973, and by 1994 had sentenced 223 persons to death and carried out two executions . Between 2000-2010, the murder rate in states with capital punishment was 25-46% higher than states without the death penalty.

On-duty police officers do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide in abolitionist states than they do in death-penalty states. Between 1976 and 1989, for example, lethal assaults against police were not significantly more or less frequent in abolitionist states than in death-penalty states. Capital punishment did not appear to provide officers added protection during that time frame. In fact, the three leading states in law enforcement homicide in 1996 were also very active death penalty states : California (highest death row population), Texas (most executions since 1976), and Florida (third highest in executions and death row population). The South, which accounts for more than 80% of the country’s executions, also has the highest murder rate of any region in the country. If anything, the death penalty incited violence rather than curbed it.

Prisoners and prison personnel do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide from life-term prisoners in abolition states than they do in death-penalty states. Between 1992 and 1995, 176 inmates were murdered by other prisoners. The vast majority of those inmates (84%) were killed in death penalty jurisdictions. During the same period, about 2% of all inmate assaults on prison staff were committed in abolition jurisdictions . Evidently, the threat of the death penalty "does not even exert an incremental deterrent effect over the threat of a lesser punishment in the abolitionist states." Furthermore, multiple studies have shown that prisoners sentenced to life without parole have equivalent rates of prison violence as compared to other inmates.

Actual experience thus establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty does not deter murder. No comparable body of evidence contradicts that conclusion.

Furthermore, there are documented cases in which the death penalty actually incited the capital crimes it was supposed to deter. These include instances of the so-called suicide-by-execution syndrome – persons who wanted to die but feared taking their own lives, and committed murder so that the state would kill them. For example, in 1996, Daniel Colwell , who suffered from mental illness, claimed that he killed a randomly-selected couple in a Georgia parking lot so that the state would kill him – he was sentenced to death and ultimately took his own life while on death row.

Although inflicting the death penalty guarantees that the condemned person will commit no further crimes, it does not have a demonstrable deterrent effect on other individuals. Further, it is a high price to pay when studies show that few convicted murderers commit further crimes of violence. Researchers examined the prison and post-release records of 533 prisoners on death row in 1972 whose sentences were reduced to incarceration for life by the Supreme Court's ruling in Furman. This research showed that seven had committed another murder. But the same study showed that in four other cases, an innocent man had been sentenced to death. (Marquart and Sorensen, in Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 1989)

Recidivism among murderers does occasionally happen, but it occurs less frequently than most people believe; the media rarely distinguish between a convicted offender who murders while on parole, and a paroled murderer who murders again. Government data show that about one in 12 death row prisoners had a prior homicide conviction . But as there is no way to predict reliably which convicted murderers will try to kill again, the only way to prevent all such recidivism is to execute every convicted murderer – a policy no one seriously advocates. Equally effective but far less inhumane is a policy of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS UNFAIR

Constitutional due process and elementary justice both require that the judicial functions of trial and sentencing be conducted with fundamental fairness, especially where the irreversible sanction of the death penalty is involved. In murder cases (since 1930, 88 percent of all executions have been for this crime), there has been substantial evidence to show that courts have sentenced some persons to prison while putting others to death in a manner that has been arbitrary, racially biased, and unfair.

Racial Bias in Death Sentencing

Racial discrimination was one of the grounds on which the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in Furman . Half a century ago, in his classic American Dilemma (1944), Gunnar Myrdal reported that "the South makes the widest application of the death penalty, and Negro criminals come in for much more than their share of the executions." A study of the death penalty in Texas shows that the current capital punishment system is an outgrowth of the racist "legacy of slavery." Between 1930 and the end of 1996, 4,220 prisoners were executed in the United States; more than half (53%) were black .

Our nation's death rows have always held a disproportionately large population of African Americans, relative to their percentage of the total population. Comparing black and white offenders over the past century, the former were often executed for what were considered less-than-capital offenses for whites, such as rape and burglary. (Between 1930 and 1976, 455 men were executed for rape, of whom 405 – 90 percent – were black.) A higher percentage of the blacks who were executed were juveniles; and the rate of execution without having one's conviction reviewed by any higher court was higher for blacks. (Bowers, Legal Homicide 1984; Streib, Death Penalty for Juveniles 1987)

In recent years, it has been argued that such flagrant racial discrimination is a thing of the past. However, since the revival of the death penalty in the mid-1970s, about half of those on death row at any given time have been black . More striking is the racial comparison of victims . Although approximately 49% of all homicide victims are white, 77% of capital homicide cases since 1976 have involved a white victim.

Between 1976 and 2005 , 86% of white victims were killed by whites (14% by other races) while 94% of black victims were killed by blacks (6% by other races). Blacks and whites are murder victims in almost equal numbers of crimes – which is a very high percentage given that the general US population is 13% black. African-Americans are six times as likely as white Americans to die at the hands of a murderer, and roughly seven times as likely to murder someone. Young black men are fifteen times as likely to be murdered as young white men.

So given this information, when those under death sentence are examined more closely, it turns out that race is a decisive factor after all.

Further, studies like that commissioned by the Governor of Maryland found that “black offenders who kill white victims are at greater risk of a death sentence than others, primarily because they are substantially more likely to be charged by the state’s attorney with a capital offense.”

The classic statistical study of racial discrimination in capital cases in Georgia presented in the McCleskey case showed that "the average odds of receiving a death sentence among all indicted cases were 4.3 times higher in cases with white victims." (David C. Baldus et al., Equal Justice and the Death Penalty 1990) In 1987 these data were placed before the Supreme Court in McCleskey v. Kemp and while the Court did not dispute the statistical evidence, it held that evidence of an overall pattern of racial bias was not sufficient. Mr. McCleskey would have to prove racial bias in his own case – a virtually impossible task. The Court also held that the evidence failed to show that there was "a constitutionally significant risk of racial bias...." (481 U.S. 279) Although the Supreme Court declared that the remedy sought by the plaintiff was "best presented to the legislative bodies," subsequent efforts to persuade Congress to remedy the problem by enacting the Racial Justice Act were not successful. (Don Edwards & John Conyers, Jr., The Racial Justice Act – A Simple Matter of Justice, in University of Dayton Law Review 1995)

In 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office reported to the Congress the results of its review of empirical studies on racism and the death penalty. The GAO concluded : "Our synthesis of the 28 studies shows a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty after the Furman decision" and that "race of victim influence was found at all stages of the criminal justice system process..."

Texas was prepared to execute Duane Buck on September 15, 2011. Mr. Buck was condemned to death by a jury that had been told by an expert psychologist that he was more likely to be dangerous because he was African American. The Supreme Court stayed the case, but Mr. Buck has not yet received the new sentencing hearing justice requires.

These results cannot be explained away by relevant non-racial factors, such as prior criminal record or type of crime, as these were factored for in the Baldus and GAO studies referred to above. They lead to a very unsavory conclusion: In the trial courts of this nation, even at the present time, the killing of a white person is treated much more severely than the killing of a black person . Of the 313 persons executed between January 1977 and the end of 1995, 36 had been convicted of killing a black person while 249 (80%) had killed a white person. Of the 178 white defendants executed, only three had been convicted of murdering people of color . Our criminal justice system essentially reserves the death penalty for murderers (regardless of their race) who kill white victims.

Another recent Louisiana study found that defendants with white victims were 97% more likely to receive death sentences than defendants with black victims. [1]

Both gender and socio-economic class also determine who receives a death sentence and who is executed. Women account for only two percent of all people sentenced to death , even though females commit about 11 percent of all criminal homicides. Many of the women under death sentence were guilty of killing men who had victimized them with years of violent abuse . Since 1900, only 51 women have been executed in the United States (15 of them black).

Discrimination against the poor (and in our society, racial minorities are disproportionately poor) is also well established. It is a prominent factor in the availability of counsel.

Fairness in capital cases requires, above all, competent counsel for the defendant. Yet "approximately 90 percent of those on death row could not afford to hire a lawyer when they were tried.") Common characteristics of death-row defendants are poverty, the lack of firm social roots in the community, and inadequate legal representation at trial or on appeal. As Justice William O. Douglas noted in Furman , "One searches our chronicles in vain for the execution of any member of the affluent strata in this society"(408 US 238).

Failure of Safeguards

The demonstrated inequities in the actual administration of capital punishment should tip the balance against it in the judgment of fair-minded and impartial observers. "Whatever else might be said for the use of death as a punishment, one lesson is clear from experience: this is a power that we cannot exercise fairly and without discrimination."(Gross and Mauro, Death and Discrimination 1989)

Justice John Marshall Harlan, writing for the Court in Furman , noted "… the history of capital punishment for homicides … reveals continual efforts, uniformly unsuccessful, to identify before the fact those homicides for which the slayer should die…. Those who have come to grips with the hard task of actually attempting to draft means of channeling capital sentencing discretion have confirmed the lesson taught by history…. To identify before the fact those characteristics of criminal homicides and their perpetrators which call for the death penalty, and to express these characteristics in language which can be fairly understood and applied by the sentencing authority, appear to be tasks which are beyond present human ability." (402 U.S. 183 (1971))

Yet in the Gregg decision, the majority of the Supreme Court abandoned the wisdom of Justice Harlan and ruled as though the new guided-discretion statutes could accomplish the impossible. The truth is that death statutes approved by the Court "do not effectively restrict the discretion of juries by any real standards, and they never will. No society is going to kill everybody who meets certain preset verbal requirements, put on the statute books without awareness of coverage of the infinity of special factors the real world can produce."

Evidence obtained by the Capital Jury Project has shown that jurors in capital trials generally do not understand the judge's instructions about the laws that govern the choice between imposing the death penalty and a life sentence. Even when they do comprehend, jurors often refuse to be guided by the law. "Juror comprehension of the law… is mediocre. The effect [of this relative lack of comprehension of the law]… is to reduce the likelihood that capital defendants will benefit from the safeguards against arbitrariness built into the… law."

Even if the jury's sentencing decision were strictly governed by the relevant legal criteria, there remains a vast reservoir of unfettered discretion: the prosecutor's decision to prosecute for a capital or lesser crime, the court's willingness to accept or reject a guilty plea, the jury's decision to convict for second-degree murder or manslaughter rather than capital murder, the determination of the defendant's sanity, and the governor's final clemency decision, among others.

Discretion in the criminal justice system is unavoidable. The history of capital punishment in America clearly demonstrates the social desire to mitigate the harshness of the death penalty by narrowing the scope of its application. Whether or not explicitly authorized by statutes, sentencing discretion has been the main vehicle to this end. But when sentencing discretion is used – as it too often has been – to doom the poor, the friendless, the uneducated, racial minorities, and the despised, it becomes injustice.

Mindful of such facts, the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association (including 20 out of 24 former presidents of the ABA) called for a moratorium on all executions by a vote of 280 to 119 in February 1997 . The House judged the current system to be "a haphazard maze of unfair practices."

In its 1996 survey of the death penalty in the United States, the International Commission of Jurists reinforced this point. Despite the efforts made over the past two decades since Gregg to protect the administration of the death penalty from abuses, the actual "constitutional errors committed in state courts have gravely undermined the legitimacy of the death penalty as a punishment for crime." (International Commission of Jurists, Administration of the Death Penalty in the United States 1996)

In 2009, the American Law Institute (ALI), the leading independent organization in the U.S. producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize and improve the law, removed capital punishment from its Model Penal Code. The ALI, which created the modern legal framework for the death penalty in 1962, indicated that the punishment is so arbitrary, fraught with racial and economic disparities, and unable to assure quality legal representation for indigent capital defendants, that it can never be administered fairly.

Thoughtful citizens, who might possibly support the abstract notion of capital punishment, are obliged to condemn it in actual practice.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS IRREVERSIBLE

Unlike any other criminal punishments, the death penalty is irrevocable. Speaking to the French Chamber of Deputies in 1830, years after having witnessed the excesses of the French Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette said, "I shall ask for the abolition of the punishment of death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me." Although some proponents of capital punishment would argue that its merits are worth the occasional execution of innocent people, most would hasten to insist that there is little likelihood of the innocent being executed.

Since 1900, in this country, there have been on the average more than four cases each year in which an entirely innocent person was convicted of murder. Scores of these individuals were sentenced to death. In many cases, a reprieve or commutation arrived just hours, or even minutes, before the scheduled execution. These erroneous convictions have occurred in virtually every jurisdiction from one end of the nation to the other. Nor have they declined in recent years, despite the new death penalty statutes approved by the Supreme Court.

Disturbingly, and increasingly, a large body of evidence from the modern era shows that innocent people are often convicted of crimes – including capital crimes – and that some have been executed.

In 2012, a new report in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review chronicled the horrifying case of Carlos DeLuna, a man executed in Texas in 1989 for a murder that it was “common knowledge” had been committed by another man. [2] DeLuna’s story demonstrates so many of the factors that can go wrong in a capital case: faulty eyewitness identification, prosecutorial misconduct, police misconduct, a botched crime scene, destroyed DNA evidence, a poor person represented by ineffective by an ineffective inexperienced defense attorney overmatched by a professional prosecutor, and insufficient oversight from the bench. [3] In its case against DeLuna, the State presented no blood or DNA evidence, no crime scene fingerprints, and no proof of hair or fibers from the victim having been found on the defendant. He was convicted largely based on eyewitness testimony made from the back of a police car in a dimly lit lot near the crime scene. Meanwhile, a violent criminal named Carlos Hernandez—a man who not only shared DeLuna’s name, but also looked like him—repeatedly boasted about how he had committed the murder and gotten away with it. [4] These disturbing facts about DeLuna’s case, brought to light more than two decades after his execution, refute the claim, made by some proponents of capital punishment, that the United States has never executed an innocent person. [5]

Consider this additional handful of cases of innocent people sentenced to die – some executed and some spared:

In 2011, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis, a Black man who was almost certainly innocent of the murder of a white off-duty police officer. The circumstances of his execution raised an international outcry, for good reason. Davis was convicted based on eyewitness testimony, since there was no murder weapon or physical evidence presented by the prosecution. Seven of the nine eyewitnesses recanted or contradicted their trial testimony, many of them saying they were pressured or threatened by police at the time. Troy Davis came close to execution three previous times, because of the difficulty of getting any court to listen to new evidence casting doubt on his conviction. After passage of a federal law in 1996, petitioners are very limited in their ability to appeal death sentences, and courts routinely refuse to hear new testimony, even evidence of innocence. When Troy Davis finally did get a hearing on his evidence, the judge required “proof of innocence” – an impossibly high standard which he ruled that Mr. Davis did not meet. Despite the overwhelming call for clemency, supposed to be the “fail-safe” of the death penalty system, the Georgia Board of Pardons refused to commute the sentence to life and Mr. Davis was executed. Only one day after Troy Davis was executed, two men were freed by the special Innocence Commission of North Carolina after a decade apiece in prison. The two men had actually pled guilty to a crime they did not commit, because they were threatened with the death penalty.
In Texas in 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed for the arson-murder of his three children. Independent investigations by a newspaper, a nonprofit organization using top experts in the field of fire science, and an independent expert hired by the State of Texas all found that accident, not arson was the cause of the fire. There simply was no reliable evidence that the children were murdered. Yet even with these reports in hand, the state of Texas executed Mr. Willingham. Earlier this year, the Texas Forensic Science Commission was poised to issue a report officially confirming these conclusions until Texas Governor Rick Perry replaced the Commission’s chair and some of its members. Cameron Todd Willingham, who claimed innocence all along, was executed for a crime he almost certainly did not commit. As an example of the arbitrariness of the death penalty, another man, Ernest Willis, also convicted of arson-murder on the same sort of flimsy and unscientific testimony, was freed from Texas death row six months after Willingham was executed.
In 1985, in Maryland, Kirk Bloodsworth was sentenced to death for rape and murder, despite the testimony of alibi witnesses. In 1986 his conviction was reversed on grounds of withheld evidence pointing to another suspect; he was retried, re-convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. In 1993, newly available DNA evidence proved he was not the rapist-killer, and he was released after the prosecution dismissed the case. A year later he was awarded $300,000 for wrongful punishment. Years later the DNA was matched to the real killer.
In Mississippi, in 1990, Sabrina Butler was sentenced to death for killing her baby boy. She claimed the child died after attempts at resuscitation failed. On technical grounds her conviction was reversed in 1992. At retrial, she was acquitted when a neighbor corroborated Butler's explanation of the child's cause of death and the physician who performed the autopsy admitted his work had not been thorough.
In 1990, Jesse Tafero was executed in Florida. He had been convicted in 1976 along with his wife, Sonia Jacobs, for murdering a state trooper. In 1981 Jacobs' death sentence was reduced on appeal to life imprisonment, and 11 years later her conviction was vacated by a federal court. The evidence on which Tafero and Jacobs had been convicted and sentenced was identical; it consisted mainly of the perjured testimony of an ex-convict who turned state's witness in order to avoid a death sentence. Had Tafero been alive in 1992, he no doubt would have been released along with Jacobs. Tafero’s execution went horribly wrong, and his head caught on fire during the electrocution.
In Alabama, Walter McMillian was convicted of murdering a white woman in 1988. Despite the jury's recommendation of a life sentence, the judge sentenced him to death. The sole evidence leading the police to arrest McMillian was testimony of an ex-convict seeking favor with the prosecution. A dozen alibi witnesses (all African Americans, like McMillian) testified on McMillian's behalf that they were together at a neighborhood gathering, to no avail. On appeal, after tireless efforts by his attorney Bryan Stevenson, McMillian's conviction was reversed by the Alabama Court of Appeals. Stevenson uncovered prosecutorial suppression of exculpatory evidence and perjury by prosecution witnesses, and the new district attorney joined the defense in seeking dismissal of the charges.
In 1985, in Illinois, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez were convicted of abduction, rape, and murder of a young girl and were sentenced to death. Shortly after, another man serving a life term in prison for similar crimes confessed that he alone was guilty; but his confession was inadmissible because he refused to repeat it in court unless the state waived the death penalty against him. Awarded a new trial in 1988, Cruz was again convicted and sentenced to death; Hernandez was also re-convicted, and sentenced to 80 years in prison. In 1992 the assistant attorney general assigned to prosecute the case on appeal resigned after becoming convinced of the defendants' innocence. The convictions were again overturned on appeal after DNA tests exonerated Cruz and implicated the prisoner who had earlier confessed. In 1995 the court ordered a directed verdict of acquittal, and sharply criticized the police for their unprofessional handling of the case. Hernandez was released on bail and the prosecution dropped all charges.
In 1980 in Texas a black high school janitor, Clarence Brandley, and his white co-worker found the body of a missing 16-year-old white schoolgirl. Interrogated by the police, they were told, "One of you two is going to hang for this." Looking at Brandley, the officer said, "Since you're the nigger, you're elected." In a classic case of rush to judgment, Brandley was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The circumstantial evidence against him was thin, other leads were ignored by the police, and the courtroom atmosphere reeked of racism. In 1986, Centurion Ministries – a volunteer group devoted to freeing wrongly convicted prisoners – came to Brandley's aid. Evidence had meanwhile emerged that another man had committed the murder for which Brandley was awaiting execution. Brandley was not released until 1990. (Davies, White Lies 1991)

This sample of freakish and arbitrary innocence determinations also speaks directly to the unceasing concern that there are many more innocent people on death rows across the country – as well as who have been executed. Several factors seen in the above sample of cases help explain why the judicial system cannot guarantee that justice will never miscarry: overzealous prosecution, mistaken or perjured testimony, race, faulty police work, coerced confessions, the defendant's previous criminal record, inept and under-resourced defense counsel, seemingly conclusive circumstantial evidence, and community pressure for a conviction, among others. And when the system does go wrong, it is often volunteers from outside the criminal justice system – journalists, for example – who rectify the errors, not the police or prosecutors. To retain the death penalty in the face of the demonstrable failures of the system is unacceptable, especially since there are no strong overriding reasons to favor the death penalty.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS BARBARIC

Prisoners are executed in the United States by any one of five methods; in a few jurisdictions the prisoner is allowed to choose which one he or she prefers:

The traditional mode of execution, hanging , is an option still available in Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington. Death on the gallows is easily bungled: If the drop is too short, there will be a slow and agonizing death by strangulation. If the drop is too long, the head will be torn off.

Two states, Idaho and Utah, still authorize the firing squad . The prisoner is strapped into a chair and hooded. A target is pinned to the chest. Five marksmen, one with blanks, take aim and fire.

Throughout the twentieth century, electrocution has been the most widely used form of execution in this country, and is still utilized in eleven states, although lethal injection is the primary method of execution. The condemned prisoner is led – or dragged – into the death chamber, strapped into the chair, and electrodes are fastened to head and legs. When the switch is thrown the body strains, jolting as the voltage is raised and lowered. Often smoke rises from the head. There is the awful odor of burning flesh. No one knows how long electrocuted individuals retain consciousness. In 1983, the electrocution of John Evans in Alabama was described by an eyewitness as follows:

"At 8:30 p.m. the first jolt of 1900 volts of electricity passed through Mr. Evans' body. It lasted thirty seconds. Sparks and flames erupted … from the electrode tied to Mr. Evans' left leg. His body slammed against the straps holding him in the electric chair and his fist clenched permanently. The electrode apparently burst from the strap holding it in place. A large puff of grayish smoke and sparks poured out from under the hood that covered Mr. Evans' face. An overpowering stench of burnt flesh and clothing began pervading the witness room. Two doctors examined Mr. Evans and declared that he was not dead.

"The electrode on the left leg was re-fastened. …Mr. Evans was administered a second thirty second jolt of electricity. The stench of burning flesh was nauseating. More smoke emanated from his leg and head. Again, the doctors examined Mr. Evans. [They] reported that his heart was still beating, and that he was still alive. At that time, I asked the prison commissioner, who was communicating on an open telephone line to Governor George Wallace, to grant clemency on the grounds that Mr. Evans was being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. The request …was denied.

"At 8:40 p.m., a third charge of electricity, thirty seconds in duration, was passed through Mr. Evans' body. At 8:44, the doctors pronounced him dead. The execution of John Evans took fourteen minutes." Afterwards, officials were embarrassed by what one observer called the "barbaric ritual." The prison spokesman remarked, "This was supposed to be a very clean manner of administering death."

The introduction of the gas chamber was an attempt to improve on electrocution. In this method of execution the prisoner is strapped into a chair with a container of sulfuric acid underneath. The chamber is sealed, and cyanide is dropped into the acid to form a lethal gas. Execution by suffocation in the lethal gas chamber has not been abolished but lethal injection serves as the primary method in states which still authorize it. In 1996 a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California (where the gas chamber has been used since 1933) ruled that this method is a "cruel and unusual punishment." Here is an account of the 1992 execution in Arizona of Don Harding, as reported in the dissent by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens:

"When the fumes enveloped Don's head he took a quick breath. A few seconds later he again looked in my direction. His face was red and contorted as if he were attempting to fight through tremendous pain. His mouth was pursed shut and his jaw was clenched tight. Don then took several more quick gulps of the fumes.

"At this point Don's body started convulsing violently.... His face and body turned a deep red and the veins in his temple and neck began to bulge until I thought they might explode. After about a minute Don's face leaned partially forward, but he was still conscious. Every few seconds he continued to gulp in. He was shuddering uncontrollably and his body was racked with spasms. His head continued to snap back. His hands were clenched.

"After several more minutes, the most violent of the convulsions subsided. At this time the muscles along Don's left arm and back began twitching in a wavelike motion under his skin. Spittle drooled from his mouth.

"Don did not stop moving for approximately eight minutes, and after that he continued to twitch and jerk for another minute. Approximately two minutes later, we were told by a prison official that the execution was complete.

“Don Harding took ten minutes and thirty one seconds to die." ( Gomez v. U.S. District Court , 112 S.Ct. 1652)

The latest mode of inflicting the death penalty, enacted into law by more than 30 states, is lethal injection , first used in 1982 in Texas. It is easy to overstate the humaneness and efficacy of this method; one cannot know whether lethal injection is really painless and there is evidence that it is not. As the U.S. Court of Appeals observed, there is "substantial and uncontroverted evidence… that execution by lethal injection poses a serious risk of cruel, protracted death…. Even a slight error in dosage or administration can leave a prisoner conscious but paralyzed while dying, a sentient witness of his or her own asphyxiation." ( Chaney v. Heckler , 718 F.2d 1174, 1983).

Its veneer of decency and subtle analogy with life-saving medical practice no doubt makes killing by lethal injection more acceptable to the public. Journalist Susan Blaustein, reacting to having witnessed an execution in Texas, comments:

"The lethal injection method … has turned dying into a still life, thereby enabling the state to kill without anyone involved feeling anything…. Any remaining glimmers of doubt – about whether the man received due process, about his guilt, about our right to take life – cause us to rationalize these deaths with such catchwords as ‘heinous,’ ‘deserved,’ ‘deterrent,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘painless.’ We have perfected the art of institutional killing to the degree that it has deadened our natural, quintessentially human response to death."

Botched Lethal Injections

Nor does execution by lethal injection always proceed smoothly as planned. In 1985 "the authorities repeatedly jabbed needles into … Stephen Morin, when they had trouble finding a usable vein because he had been a drug abuser." In 1988, during the execution of Raymond Landry, "a tube attached to a needle inside the inmate's right arm began leaking, sending the lethal mixture shooting across the death chamber toward witnesses."

Although the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the current method of lethal injection used is constitutional, several people have suffered because of this form of execution. In Ohio, Rommel Broom was subjected to 18 attempts at finding a vein so that he could be killed by lethal injection. The process to try to execute him took over two hours. Finally, the governor had to stop the execution and grant the inmate a one week reprieve. Mr. Broom has not been executed because he is challenging the state’s right to hold a second execution attempt. Nor was he the only Ohio inmate so maltreated. During his 2006 execution Joseph Clark screamed, “it don’t work” and requested to take something by mouth so the torture would end when his executioners took thirty minutes to find a vein. Christopher Newton’s execution took over two hours – so long that he had to be given a bathroom break.

Lethal Injection Protocol Issues

Most lethal injections in the United States use a “cocktail” consisting of three drugs that sequentially render an inmate unconscious, cause paralysis and cease breathing, and stop an inmate’s heart. [6] But in 2011, the sole American manufacturer of sodium thiopental, a vital part of the three-drug cocktail, decided to discontinue production, forcing states to adapt their lethal injection methodology. [7] Some states have replaced the three-drug cocktail with a single substance, [8] while others have replaced thiopental in the three-drug sequence with another anesthetic. [9] Both three-drug and single-drug executions raise vital concerns: the three-drug cocktail’s paralyzing sedative may mask the inmate’s pain and suffering, while the single-drug method takes about 25 minutes to end a life (if there are no complications), compared with the ten-minute three-drug process. [10]

Although the Supreme Court held in 2008 that Kentucky’s three-drug lethal injection procedure did not violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, [11] it is unclear whether states’ adapted procedures pass muster. Indeed, in February 2012, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals admonished the Arizona Department of Corrections, stating that its approach to execution “cannot continue” and questioning the “regularity and reliability” of protocols that give complete discretion to the corrections director to determine which and how many drugs will be used for each execution. [12] In Georgia, the state Supreme Court stayed the execution of Warren Hill hours before he was scheduled to die in July 2012 in order to review the Department of Corrections’ new single-drug lethal injection procedure. [13] The Missouri Supreme Court imposed a temporary moratorium on executions in August 2012, declaring that it would be “premature” to set execution dates for death row inmates given a pending lawsuit about whether the state’s lethal injection procedures are humane. The state had amended its injection protocol to use a single drug, propofol, which advocates say causes severe pain upon injection. [14]

Although similar suits are pending in other states, [15] not all protocol-based challenges have succeeded; in Texas and Oklahoma, executions have continued despite questions about the potential cruelty of lethal injection and the type or number of chemicals used. [16]

Regardless of whether states use one or three drugs for an execution, all of the major lethal injection drugs are in short supply due to manufacturers’ efforts to prevent the use of their products for executions [17] and European Union restrictions on the exportation of drugs that may be used to kill. [18] As a result, some state executioners have pursued questionable means of obtaining the deadly chemicals from other states and foreign companies, including a pharmaceutical wholesaler operating out of the back of a London driving school. [19] These backroom deals—which, astoundingly, have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—are now the subject of federal litigation that could impact the legitimacy of the American death penalty system. In March 2012, six death row inmates argued that the FDA had shirked its duty to regulate lethal substances and raised concerns about the “very real risk that unapproved thiopental will not actually render a condemned prisoner unconscious.” [20] A federal district judge agreed and ordered the FDA to confiscate the imported thiopental, but the agency has appealed. [21]

Witnessing the Execution

Most people who have observed an execution are horrified and disgusted. "I was ashamed," writes sociologist Richard Moran, who witnessed an execution in Texas in 1985. "I was an intruder, the only member of the public who had trespassed on [the condemned man's] private moment of anguish. In my face he could see the horror of his own death."

Revulsion at the duty to supervise and witness executions is one reason why so many prison wardens – however unsentimental they are about crime and criminals – are opponents of capital punishment. Don Cabana, who supervised several executions in Missouri and Mississippi reflects on his mood just prior to witnessing an execution in the gas chamber:

"If [the condemned prisoner] was some awful monster deemed worthy of extermination, why did I feel so bad about it, I wondered. It has been said that men on death row are inhuman, cold-blooded killers. But as I stood and watched a grieving mother leave her son for the last time, I questioned how the sordid business of executions was supposed to be the great equalizer…. The 'last mile' seemed an eternity, every step a painful reminder of what waited at the end of the walk. Where was the cold-blooded murderer, I wondered, as we approached the door to the last-night cell. I had looked for that man before… and I still had not found him – I saw, in my grasp, only a frightened child. [Minutes after the execution and before] heading for the conference room and a waiting press corps, I… shook my head. 'No more. I don't want to do this anymore.'" 1996)

Recently, Allen Ault, former executioner for the State of Georgia, wrote , “The men and women who assist in executions are not psychopaths or sadists. They do their best to perform the impossible and inhumane job with which the state has charged them. Those of us who have participated in executions often suffer something very much like posttraumatic stress. Many turn to alcohol and drugs. For me, those nights that weren’t sleepless were plagued by nightmares.”

For some individuals, however, executions seem to appeal to strange, aberrant impulses and provide an outlet for sadistic urges. Warden Lewis Lawes of Sing Sing Prison in New York wrote of the many requests he received to watch electrocutions, and told that when the job of executioner became vacant. "I received more than seven hundred applications for the position, many of them offering cut-rate prices." (Life and Death in Sing Sing 1928)

Public executions were common in this country during the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the last ones occurred in 1936 in Kentucky, when 20,000 people gathered to watch the hanging of a young African American male. (Teeters, in Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society 1960)

Delight in brutality, pain, violence and death may always be with us. But surely we must conclude that it is best for the law not to encourage such impulses. When the government sanctions, commands, and ceremoniously carries out the execution of a prisoner, it lends support to this destructive side of human nature.

More than two centuries ago the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria, in his highly influential treatise On Crimes and Punishment (1764), asserted: "The death penalty cannot be useful, because of the example of barbarity it gives men." Beccaria's words still ring true – even if the death penalty were a "useful" deterrent, it would still be an "example of barbarity." No society can safely entrust the enforcement of its laws to torture, brutality, or killing. Such methods are inherently cruel and will always mock the attempt to cloak them in justice. As Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg wrote, "The deliberate institutionalized taking of human life by the state is the greatest conceivable degradation to the dignity of the human personality."(Boston Globe, August 16, 1976)

Death Row Syndrome

Capital appeals are not only costly; they are also time-consuming. The average death row inmate waits 12 years between sentencing and execution, and some sit in anticipation of their executions on death row for up to 30 years. [22] For these prisoners, most of whom are housed in solitary confinement, this wait period may cause “Death Row Phenomenon” or “Death Row Syndrome.” Although the terms are often used interchangeably, “Death Row Phenomenon” refers to the destructive consequences of long-term solitary confinement [23] and the inevitable anxiety that results from awaiting one’s own death, while “Death Row Syndrome” refers to the severe psychological illness that often results from Death Row Phenomenon. [24]

In solitary confinement, inmates are often isolated for 23 hours each day without access to training or educational programs, recreational activities, or regular visits. Such conditions have been demonstrated to provoke agitation, psychosis, delusions, paranoia, and self-destructive behavior. [25] To inflict this type of mental harm is inhumane, but it also may prove detrimental to public safety. When death row inmates successfully appeal their sentences, they are transferred into the general inmate population, and when death row inmates are exonerated, they are promptly released into the community. [26] Death Row Syndrome needlessly risks making these individuals dangerous to those around them.

Neither Death Row Syndrome nor Death Row Phenomenon has received formal recognition from the American Psychiatric Association or the American Psychological Association. [27] In 1995, however, Justices Stevens and Breyer, in a memorandum regarding the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari to death row inmate Clarence Lackey, highlighted the “importance and novelty” of the question “whether executing a prisoner who has already spent some 17 years on death row violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.” [28] Further, as some scholars and advocates have noted, the mental deterioration symptomatic of Death Row Syndrome may render an inmate incompetent to participate in their own post-conviction proceedings. [29]

Death Row Syndrome gained international recognition during the 1989 extradition proceedings of Jens Soering, a German citizen arrested in England and charged with committing murder on American soil. [30] Soering argued, and the European Court of Human Rights agreed, that extraditing him to the United States would violate Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. [31] The Court explained that, in the United States, “the condemned prisoner has to endure for many years the conditions on death row and the anguish and mounting tension of living in the ever-present shadow of death” such that extraditing Soering would violate protections against “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” [32] Similar conclusions have been reached by the United Kingdom’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and the Canadian Supreme Court. [33]

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS UNJUSTIFIED RETRIBUTION

Justice, it is often insisted, requires the death penalty as the only suitable retribution for heinous crimes. This claim does not bear scrutiny, however. By its nature, all punishment is retributive. Therefore, whatever legitimacy is to be found in punishment as just retribution can, in principle, be satisfied without recourse to executions.

Moreover, the death penalty could be defended on narrowly retributive grounds only for the crime of murder, and not for any of the many other crimes that have frequently been made subject to this mode of punishment (rape, kidnapping, espionage, treason, drug trafficking). Few defenders of the death penalty are willing to confine themselves consistently to the narrow scope afforded by retribution. In any case, execution is more than a punishment exacted in retribution for the taking of a life. As Nobel Laureate Albert Camus wrote, "For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life." (Reflections on the Guillotine, in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death 1960)

It is also often argued that death is what murderers deserve, and that those who oppose the death penalty violate the fundamental principle that criminals should be punished according to their just desserts – "making the punishment fit the crime." If this rule means punishments are unjust unless they are like the crime itself, then the principle is unacceptable: It would require us to rape rapists, torture torturers, and inflict other horrible and degrading punishments on offenders. It would require us to betray traitors and kill multiple murderers again and again – punishments that are, of course, impossible to inflict. Since we cannot reasonably aim to punish all crimes according to this principle, it is arbitrary to invoke it as a requirement of justice in the punishment of murder.

If, however, the principle of just deserts means the severity of punishments must be proportional to the gravity of the crime – and since murder is the gravest crime, it deserves the severest punishment – then the principle is no doubt sound. Nevertheless, this premise does not compel support for the death penalty; what it does require is that other crimes be punished with terms of imprisonment or other deprivations less severe than those used in the punishment of murder.

Criminals no doubt deserve to be punished, and the severity of the punishment should be appropriate to their culpability and the harm they have caused the innocent. But severity of punishment has its limits – imposed by both justice and our common human dignity. Governments that respect these limits do not use premeditated, violent homicide as an instrument of social policy.

Murder Victims Families Oppose the Death Penalty

Some people who have lost a loved one to murder believe that they cannot rest until the murderer is executed. But this sentiment is by no means universal. Coretta Scott King has observed, "As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder and assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder." (Speech to National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Washington, D.C., September 26, 1981)

Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, daughter of the slain Senator Robert Kennedy, has written:

"I was eight years old when my father was murdered. It is almost impossible to describe the pain of losing a parent to a senseless murder.…But even as a child one thing was clear to me: I didn't want the killer, in turn, to be killed. I remember lying in bed and praying, 'Please, God. Please don't take his life too.' I saw nothing that could be accomplished in the loss of one life being answered with the loss of another. And I knew, far too vividly, the anguish that would spread through another family – another set of parents, children, brothers, and sisters thrown into grief."(Foreword to Gray and Stanley, A Punishment in Search of A Crime 1989)

Across the nation, many who have survived the murder of a loved one have joined Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation or Murder Victims Families for Human Rights, in the effort to replace anger and hate toward the criminal with a restorative approach to both the offender and the bereaved survivors.

Groups of murder victims family members have supported campaigns for abolition of the death penalty in Illinois, Connecticut, Montana and Maryland most recently.

Barbara Anderson Young, the sister of James Anderson, who was allegedly run over by a white teenager in Mississippi in 2011, who reportedly wanted to hurt him because he was Black, wrote a letter to the local prosecutor on behalf of their family indicating the family’s opposition to the death penalty, which is “deeply rooted in our religious faith, a faith that was central in James’ life as well.” The letter also eloquently asks that the defendant be spared execution because the death penalty “historically has been used in Mississippi and the South primarily against people of color for killing whites.” It continues, “[e]xecuting James' killers will not help balance the scales. But sparing them may help to spark a dialogue that one day will lead to the elimination of capital punishment."

Lawrence Brewer, convicted of the notorious dragging death of James Byrd in Texas, was executed in 2011. Members of Mr. Byrd’s family opposed the death penalty, despite the racist and vicious nature of the killing. Of Brewer’s remorseless – he said he had no regrets the day he was executed – Byrd’s sister, Betty Boatner, said, “If I could say something to him, I would let him know that I forgive him and then if he still has no remorse, I just feel sorry for him.” Byrd’s daughter shared that she didn’t want Brewer to die because “it’s easy . . .(a)ll he’s going to do it go to sleep” rather than live every day with what he did and perhaps one day recognize the humanity of his victim. James Byrd’s son, Ross, points out "You can't fight murder with murder . . .(l)ife in prison would have been fine. I know he can't hurt my daddy anymore. I wish the state would take in mind that this isn't what we want."

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT COSTS MORE THAN INCARCERATION

It is sometimes suggested that abolishing capital punishment is unfair to the taxpayer, on the assumption that life imprisonment is more expensive than execution. If one takes into account all the relevant costs, however, just the reverse is true. "The death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a more economical alternative to life imprisonment.") A murder trial normally takes much longer when the death penalty is at issue than when it is not. Litigation costs – including the time of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and court reporters, and the high costs of briefs – are mostly borne by the taxpayer. The extra costs of separate death row housing and additional security in court and elsewhere also add to the cost. A 1982 study showed that were the death penalty to be reintroduced in New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more than double the cost of a life term in prison. (N.Y. State Defenders Assn., "Capital Losses" 1982)

The death penalty was eventually reintroduced in New York and then found unconstitutional and not reintroduced again, in part because of cost.

In Maryland, a comparison of capital trial costs with and without the death penalty for the years concluded that a death penalty case costs "approximately 42 percent more than a case resulting in a non-death sentence." In 1988 and 1989 the Kansas legislature voted against reinstating the death penalty after it was informed that reintroduction would involve a first-year cost of more than $11 million. 59 Florida, with one of the nation's most populous death rows, has estimated that the true cost of each execution is approximately $3.2 million, or approximately six times the cost of a life-imprisonment sentence." (David von Drehle, "Capital Punishment in Paralysis," Miami Herald, July 10, 1988)

A 1993 study of the costs of North Carolina's capital punishment system revealed that litigating a murder case from start to finish adds an extra $163,000 to what it would cost the state to keep the convicted offender in prison for 20 years. The extra cost goes up to $216,000 per case when all first-degree murder trials and their appeals are considered, many of which do not end with a death sentence and an execution.

In 2011 in California, a broad coalition of organizations called Taxpayers for Justice put repeal of the death penalty on the ballot for 2012 in part because of the high cost documented by a recent study that found the state has already spent $4 billion on capital punishment resulting in 13 executions. The group includes over 100 law enforcement leaders, in addition to crime-victim advocates and exonerated individuals. Among them is former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, whose office pursued dozens of capital cases during his 32 years as a prosecutor. He said, "My frustration is more about the fact that the death penalty does not serve any useful purpose and it's very expensive." Don Heller, a Republican and former prosecutor, wrote "I am convinced that at least one innocent person may have been executed under the current death penalty law. It was not my intent nor do I believe that of the voters who overwhelmingly enacted the death penalty law in 1978. We did not consider that horrific possibility." Heller emphasized that he is not "soft on crime," but that "life without parole protects public safety better than a death sentence." Additionally, he said the money spent on the death penalty could be better used elsewhere, as California cuts funding for police officers and prosecutors. "Paradoxically, the cost of capital punishment takes away funds that could be used to enhance public safety." [34]

From one end of the country to the other public officials decry the additional cost of capital cases even when they support the death penalty system. "Wherever the death penalty is in place, it siphons off resources which could be going to the front line in the war against crime…. Politicians could address this crisis, but, for the most part they either endorse executions or remain silent." The only way to make the death penalty more "cost effective" than imprisonment is to weaken due process and curtail appellate review, which are the defendant's (and society's) only protection against the most aberrant miscarriages of justice. Any savings in dollars would, of course, be at the cost of justice : In nearly half of the death-penalty cases given review under federal habeas corpus provisions, the murder conviction or death sentence was overturned .

In 1996, in response to public clamor for accelerating executions, Congress imposed severe restrictions on access to federal habeas corpus and also ended all funding of the regional death penalty "resource centers" charged with providing counsel on appeal in the federal courts. (Carol Castenada, "Death Penalty Centers Losing Support Funds," USA Today, Oct. 24, 1995) These restrictions virtually guarantee that the number and variety of wrongful murder convictions and death sentences will increase. The savings in time and money will prove to be illusory.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS LESS POPULAR THAN THE ALTERNATIVES

It is commonly reported that the American public overwhelmingly approves of the death penalty. More careful analysis of public attitudes, however, reveals that most Americans prefer an alternative; they would oppose the death penalty if convicted murderers were sentenced to life without parole and were required to make some form of financial restitution. In 2010, when California voters were asked which sentence they preferred for a first-degree murderer, 42% of registered voters said they preferred life without parole and 41% said they preferred the death penalty. In 2000, when voters were asked the same question, 37% chose life without parole while 44% chose the death penalty . A 1993 nationwide survey revealed that although 77% of the public approves of the death penalty, support drops to 56% if the alternative is punishment with no parole eligibility until 25 years in prison. Support drops even further, to 49%, if the alternative is no parole under any conditions. And if the alternative is no parole plus restitution, it drops still further, to 41% . Only a minority of the American public would favor the death penalty if offered such alternatives.

INTERNATIONALLY, CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS WIDELY VIEWED AS INHUMANE AND ANACHRONISTIC

An international perspective on the death penalty helps us understand the peculiarity of its use in the United States. As long ago as 1962, it was reported to the Council of Europe that "the facts clearly show that the death penalty is regarded in Europe as something of an anachronism…." 1962)

Today, either by law or in practice, all of Western Europe has abolished the death penalty. In Great Britain, it was abolished (except for cases of treason) in 1971; France abolished it in 1981. Canada abolished it in 1976. The United Nations General Assembly affirmed in a formal resolution that throughout the world, it is desirable to "progressively restrict the number of offenses for which the death penalty might be imposed, with a view to the desirability of abolishing this punishment." By mid-1995, eighteen countries had ratified the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, outlawing the death penalty in peacetime.

Underscoring worldwide support for abolition was the action of the South African constitutional court in 1995, barring the death penalty as an "inhumane" punishment. Between 1989 and 1995, two dozen other countries abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Since 1995, 43 more abolished it. All told, 71% of the world’s nation’s have abolished the death penalty in law or practice; only 58 of 197 retain it .

International Law

A look at international trends and agreements sheds light on the peculiarity of the United States’ continued imposition of capital punishment. Today, over 140 nations have abolished the death penalty either by law or in practice and, of the 58 countries that have retained the death penalty, only 21 carried out known executions in 2011. [35] Furthermore, capital punishment has compelled the United States to abstain from signing or ratifying several major international treaties and perhaps to violate international agreements to which it is a party:

In 1989, the General Assembly adopted the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), one of the UN’s primary human rights treaties. [36] Parties to the Protocol must take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty and protect their citizens’ right not to be executed, although signatories may reserve the right to apply the death penalty for serious military criminals during wartime. [37] The United States has yet to join the 35 signatories or 75 parties to the Protocol, trailing behind the world’s leading democracies in the protection of human rights.

Although the Second Protocol to the ICCPR is the only worldwide instrument calling for death penalty abolition, there are three such instruments with regional emphases. Adopted by the Council of Europe in 1982 and ratified by eighteen nations by mid-1995, the Sixth Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) provides for the abolition of capital punishment during peacetime. In 2002, the Council adopted the Thirteenth Protocol to the ECHR, which provides for the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances, including times of war or imminent threat of war. In 1990, the Organization of American States adopted the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty, which provides for total abolition but allows states to reserve the right to apply the death penalty during wartime. [38]

The United States has ratified the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR), an international treaty setting forth a framework for consular relations among independent countries. Under Article 36 of the VCCR, local authorities are obligated to inform all detained foreigners “without delay” of their right to request consular notification of their detention and their right to demand and access opportunities to communicate with their consular representatives. [39] Local authorities have repeatedly disregarded this obligation, resulting in the International Court of Justice holding in 2004 that states had violated the VCCR by failing to inform 51 named Mexican nationals of their rights. All 51 were sentenced to death. When the State of Texas refused to honor this judgment and provide relief for the 15 death-row inmates whose VCCR rights it had violated, President George W. Bush sought to intervene on the prisoners’ behalf, taking the case to the United States Supreme Court. The Court denied the President’s appeal, and Texas has gone on to execute inmates whose VCCR rights it had failed to honor.

In 1994, the United States signed the United Nations (UN) Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). [40] The treaty, which has now been ratified or signed by 176 nations, outlaws the imposition of physical or psychological abuse on people in detention. While it does not explicitly prohibit capital punishment, the treaty does forbid the intentional infliction of pain. Since 1976, however, more than 20 executions in the United States have involved prolonged, painful, or shocking errors, such as an inmate’s head catching fire or a lengthy and torturous search for a vein suitable for lethal injection. Additionally, accidents aside, our methods of execution—lethal injection, electrocution, firing squad, gas chamber, and hanging—may be inherently painful. The CAT also forbids the infliction of pain and suffering “based on discrimination of any kind,” [41] yet racial inequality is endemic to our death rows .

Also in 1994, the United States ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), a treaty intended to protect against racial discrimination, whether intentional or resulting from seemingly neutral state policies. To meet its obligations as a party to ICERD, the United States must take steps to review and amend policies and procedures that create or perpetuate racial discrimination, including capital punishment. [42]

Once in use everywhere and for a wide variety of crimes, the death penalty today is generally forbidden by law and widely abandoned in practice, in most countries outside the United States. Indeed, the unmistakable worldwide trend is toward the complete abolition of capital punishment. In the United States, opposition to the death penalty is widespread and diverse. Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant religious groups are among the more than 50 national organizations that constitute the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The Case Against the Death Penalty was first published by the ACLU as a pamphlet in 1973. The original text was written by Hugo Adam Bedau, Ph.D., who also contributed to several subsequent editions of the pamphlet. This version was most recently revised by the ACLU in 2012.

[1] Glenn L. Pierce & Michael L. Radelet, Death Sentencing in East Baton Rouge Parish, 1990-2008 , 71 La. L. Rev. 647, 671 (2011), available at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/PierceRadeletStudy.pdf .

[2] Liebman et. al, Los Tocayos Carlos , 43 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 711, 1104 (2012).

[3] See Andrew Cohen, Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man , Atlantic, May 14, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/yes-america-we-have-executed-an-innocent-man/257106/ .

[4] See id.

[5] See id. ; Carlos DeLuna Case: The Fight to Prove an Innocent Man Was Executed , PBS Newshour, May 24, 2012, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june12/deathpenalty_05-24.html .

[6] A Three-Drug Cocktail , WashingtonPost.com, Sep. 26, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2007/09/26/GR2007092600116.html ; see also Victoria Gill, The Search for a Humane Way to Kill , BBC News, Aug. 7, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19060961 .

[7] See Carol J. Williams, Maker of Anesthetic Used in Executions is Discontinuing Drug, L.A. Times, Jan. 22, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/22/local/la-me-execution-drug-20110122 ; John Schwartz, Death Penalty Drug Raises Legal Questions , N.Y. Times, Apr. 13, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/us/14lethal.html?pagewanted=all .

[8] See Brandi Grissom, Texas Will Change its Lethal Injection Protocol , Tex. Tribune, July 10, 2012, www.texastribune.org/texas-dept-criminal-justice/death-penalty/texas-changing-its-lethal-injection-protocol/ ; Rob Stein, Ohio Executes Inmate Using New, Single-Drug Method for Death Penalty , Wash. Post, Mar. 11, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/10/AR2011031006250.html ; David Beasley, Georgia Delays Execution Amid Drug Protocol Change , Reuters, July, 17, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/17/us-usa-execution-georgia-idUSBRE86G14L20120717 ; Rhonda Cook & Bill Rankin, State Changes Lethal Injection Protocol, Reschedules Execution , Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 17, 2012, http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/state-changes-lethal-injection-1479424.html ; Steve Eder, A Texas First: Single-Drug Used to Execute Inmate , WSJ Law Blog, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/07/19/a-texas-first-single-drug-used-to-execute-inmate/ ; Idaho Switches Execution Protocol to Single-Drug Lethal Injection , Spokesman.com, May 18, 2012, http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise/2012/may/18/idaho-switches-execution-protocol-single-drug-lethal-injection/ .

[9] See Carol J. Williams, California’s New Lethal Injection Protocol Tossed By Judge, L.A. Times, Dec. 17, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/17/local/la-me-executions-20111217 ; Kathy Lohr, New Lethal Injection Drug Raises Concerns , NPR, Jan. 29, 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/01/29/133302950/new-lethal-injection-drug-raises-concerns ; Steve Eder, Virginia Adds New Drug for Lethal Injections , WSJ Law Blog, July 27, 2012, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/07/27/virginia-adds-new-drug-for-lethal-injections/ .

[10] Laura Vozzella, Virginia opts for One-Drug Lethal Injection Protocol , Wash. Post, July 27, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/virginia-opts-for-one-drug-lethal-injection-protocol/2012/07/27/gJQA8jxiEX_story.html .

[11] See Linda Greenhouse, Supreme Court Allows Lethal Injection for Execution , N.Y. Times, Apr. 17, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/us/16cnd-scotus.html?pagewanted=all .

[12] See Michael Kiefer, State is Sued Again Over Its Lethal-Injection Procedure , USA Today, Feb. 7, 2012, http://www.usatoday.com/USCP/PNI/Valley%20&%20State/2012-02-07-PNI0207met--executionsART_ST_U.htm ; Court Gives Arizona Warning About Execution Protocol , Associated Press, Feb. 28, 2012, available at http://www.azcentral.com/community/pinal/articles/2012/02/28/20120228arizona-moorman-execution-death-row-inmate-lawyers-seek-stays.html . Notably, however, the panel did not halt Arizona’s scheduled executions. Id.

[13] David Beasley, Georgia Inmate Gets Stay Hours Before Scheduled Execution , Reuters, July 23, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/23/us-usa-execution-georgia-idUSBRE86M1F720120723 .

[14] Steve Eder, Missouri Executions on Hold Amid Concerns About New Drug , Aug. 15, 2012, WSJ Law Blog, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/15/missouri-executions-on-hold-amid-concerns-about-new-drug/ .

[15] Melissa Anderson, ACLU Challenges Montana’s Lethal Injection Protocol , KXLH.com, Aug. 1, 2012, http://www.kxlh.com/news/aclu-challenges-montana-s-lethal-injection-protocol/ .

[16] See Eder, supra note 3; Steve Olfason, Oklahoma to Execute Man Who Killed Ex-Girlfriend and Her Two Kids , Chicago Tribune, Aug. 14, 2012, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-14/news/sns-rt-us-usa-execution-oklahomabre87d0s8-20120814_1_jerry-massie-method-of-lethal-injection-three-drug-protocol ; Steve Eder, Oklahoma Execution Set After Lethal Injection Challenge Fails , Aug. 13, 2012, WSJ Law Blog, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/13/oklahoman-set-for-executution-after-lethal-injection-challenge-fails/ .

[17] See Grissom, supra note 3; Ed Pilkington, Texas Executions Threatened As Stocks of Death Penalty Drug Run Low , Guardian, Feb. 14, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/14/texas-executions-threatened-stocks-run-low ; John Schwartz, Seeking Execution Drug, States Cut Legal Corners , N.Y. Times, Apr. 13, 2011,

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/us/14lethal.html?pagewanted=all ; Kiefer, supra note 7.

[18] EU Imposes Strict Controls on ‘Execution Drug’ Exports, BBC News, Dec. 20, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16281016 ; Matt McGrath, FDA Goes to Court to Secure Drugs for Lethal Injections , BBC World, June 1, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18253578 .

[19] See Jeremy Pelofsky, U.S. Wants Lawsuit Over Execution Drug Dismissed , Reuters, Apr. 20, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/us-usa-execution-lawsuit-idUSTRE73J7MH20110420 ; Michael Kiefer, Execution Drugs: Arizona Inmate Lawsuit Seeks FDA Policing , Ariz. Republic, Feb. 3, 2011, http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/02/02/20110202arizona-execution-drug-fda-lawsuit-brk02-ON.htm l; Kevin Johnson, Lawsuit Seeks to Block Imports of Key Execution Drug , USA Today, Feb. 2, 2011, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/02/lawsuit-seeks-to-block-imports-of-key-execution-drug/1#.UA2pmKBCzGc ; Ryan Gabrielson, Lethal Injection Drug Tied to London Wholesaler , California Watch, Jan. 7, 2011, http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/lethal-injection-drug-tied-london-wholesaler-7888 ; Ryan Gabrielson, California Lethal Injection: Prison Officials Refuse to Hand Over Lethal Injection Drug , California Watch, May 30, 2012, available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/30/california-lethal-injection_n_1556155.html .

[20] Pelofsky, supra note 14.

[21] See Raymond Bonner, FDA’s Immoral Stance on Lethal Injection Drugs , Bloomberg, July 29, 2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-29/fda-s-immoral-stance-on-lethal-injection-drugs.html .

[22] See Elizabeth Rapaport , A Modest Proposal: The Aged of Death Row Should be Deemed Too Old to Execute, 77 Brook. L. Rev. 1089 (Spring 2012); Michael J. Carter, Wanting to Die: The Cruel Phenomenon of “Death Row Syndrome”, Alternet, Nov. 7, 2008, http://www.alternet.org/rights/106300/waiting_to_die%3A_the_cruel_phenomenon_of_%22death_row_syndrome%22/ ; Dr. Karen Harrison and Anouska Tamony, Death Row Phenomenon, Death Row Syndrome, and Their Affect [sic.] on Capital Cases in the U.S. , Internet Journal of Criminology 2010, available at http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Harrison_Tamony_%20Death_Row_Syndrome%20_IJC_Nov_2010.pdf .

[23] See Stop Solitary – The Dangerous Overuse of Solitary Confinement in the United States, ACLU.org, https://www.aclu.org/stop-solitary-dangerous-overuse-solitary-confinement-united-states-0 .

[24] See Harrison and Tamony, supra note 25.

[25] See Carter, supra note 25; Death Penalty Information Center, Time on Death Row (2006), at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/time-death-row .

[26] See id.

[27] Amy Smith, Not “Waiving” But Drowning: The Anatomy of Death Row Syndrome and Volunteering for Execution , 17 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 237, 243, available at http://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/pilj/vol17no2/documents/17-2SmithArticle.pdf .

[28] Lackey v. Texas, 115 S. Ct. 1421, 1421 (1995) (Stevens, J., concurring in the denial of certiorari).

[29] Stephen Blank, Killing Time: The Process of Waiving Appeal – The Michael Ross Death Penalty Cases , 14 J.L. & Pol’y 735, 738-39 (2006).

[30] Soering v. UK , App. No. 14038/88, 11 Eur. H.R. Rep. 439 (1989), available at http://eji.org/eji/files/Soering%20v.%20United%20Kingdom.pdf .

[31] See David Wallace-Wells, What is Death Row Syndrome? , Slate, Feb. 1, 2005, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2005/02/what_is_death_row_syndrome.html ; Smith supra note 30.

[32] Smith supra note 30. (quoting Soering , 11 Eur. H. R. Rep. at 475-76).

[33] Id. at 239.

[34] Carol J. Williams, Death Penalty: Exhaustive Study Finds Death Penalty Costs California $184 Million a Year , L.A. Times, June 20, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/20/local/la-me-adv-death-penalty-costs-20110620 .

[35] Figures on the Death Penalty , Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty/numbers .

[36] UN General Assembly, Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty , Dec. 15, 1989, A/RES/44/128, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b3a70.html [accessed 15 August 2012] [ hereinafter Second Optional Protocol].

[37] See Pierre Desert, Second Optional Protocol: Frequently Asked Questions , World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, June 27, 2008, http://www.worldcoalition.org/Second-Optional-Protocol-Frequently-Asked-Questions.html ; Pierre Desert, Second Optional Protocol: The Only Global Treaty Aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty , World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, June 24, 2008, www.worldcoalition.org/UN-Protocol-the-only-global-treaty-aiming-at-the-abolition-of-the-death-penalty.html ; Second Optional Protocol, supra note 21.

[38] Desert, Second Optional Protocol: Frequently Asked Questions , supra note 22.

[39] Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, Mar. 19, 1967, 596 U.N.T.S. 261, available at http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_2_1963.pdf .

[40] United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Dec. 10, 1984, 1465 U.N.T.S. 85, available at http://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/UNTS/Volume%201465/v1465.pdf .

[41] Richard C. Dieter, Introduction: Ford Foundation Symposium, Nov. 12, 1998, available at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/us-death-penalty-and-international-law-us-compliance-torture-and-race-conventions .

[42] International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Mar. 7, 1966, 660 U.N.T.S. 195, available at http://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/UNTS/Volume%20660/v660.pdf .

Related Issues

Capital Punishment

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Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty

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The death penalty deters future murders.

Retribution

A just society requires the taking of a life for a life.

The risk of executing the innocent precludes the use of the death penalty.

Arbitrariness & Discrimination

The death penalty is applied unfairly and should not be used.

Why the Death Penalty should be Abolished

This essay about the death penalty argues for its abolition based on several compelling reasons. It highlights the irreversible and fallible nature of capital punishment, its disproportionate impact on minority and economically disadvantaged groups, and the lack of evidence supporting its deterrence effect. Additionally, the essay critiques the moral and financial costs associated with the death penalty. It advocates for a justice system focused on rehabilitation and human dignity rather than retributive measures.

How it works

The death penalty, a contentious and deeply ingrained aspect of legal systems around the world, has been the subject of fierce debate for centuries. Advocates argue that it serves as a deterrent against heinous crimes and offers justice to victims and their families. However, despite these arguments, the death penalty remains a flawed and morally questionable practice that should be abolished for several reasons.

First and foremost, the irreversible nature of the death penalty is inherently problematic. Once a person is executed, there is no way to reverse the decision if new evidence emerges that proves their innocence.

The fallibility of the justice system means that wrongful convictions occur more often than we would like to admit. According to the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing, over 370 people in the United States alone have been exonerated after serving time on death row since 1973. These cases highlight the terrifying reality that innocent people can and have been sentenced to death. The irreversible nature of the death penalty makes it an unacceptable risk in a justice system that is prone to error.

Furthermore, the death penalty is often applied disproportionately along racial and socioeconomic lines. Numerous studies have shown that race plays a significant role in determining who receives the death penalty, with African Americans disproportionately represented on death row. This racial bias reflects broader systemic inequalities within the criminal justice system, where minority communities are disproportionately targeted and disadvantaged at every stage, from arrest to sentencing. Additionally, individuals from marginalized backgrounds who cannot afford competent legal representation are more likely to receive the death penalty than those who can. This unequal application of justice undermines the principles of fairness and equality that are supposed to underpin our legal system.

Moreover, the death penalty fails to serve its purported purpose as a deterrent to crime. Despite the severity of the punishment, there is little evidence to suggest that it has a significant impact on crime rates. In fact, studies have shown that states without the death penalty often have lower murder rates than those that retain it. This suggests that factors such as socioeconomic conditions, access to education and healthcare, and effective law enforcement play a far more significant role in deterring crime than the threat of capital punishment. By focusing on the death penalty as a solution to crime, we divert attention and resources away from addressing the root causes of criminal behavior.

Additionally, the death penalty is morally indefensible in a society that values human rights and dignity. The intentional taking of a human life, even in the name of justice, is fundamentally at odds with the principle that every individual has inherent worth and deserves the opportunity for rehabilitation and redemption. By executing individuals, we perpetuate a cycle of violence and vengeance that does nothing to heal the wounds of victims or society as a whole. Instead, we should focus on promoting alternatives to incarceration, such as restorative justice programs, that prioritize rehabilitation, accountability, and reconciliation over punishment and retribution.

Furthermore, the financial cost of maintaining the death penalty is staggering. Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty is often more expensive than life imprisonment due to the lengthy and complex legal processes involved in capital cases. These costs include not only the expenses associated with trials and appeals but also the long-term costs of housing death row inmates and maintaining the infrastructure necessary for executions. In a time when governments are facing increasing pressure to allocate resources efficiently and effectively, the exorbitant cost of the death penalty is simply unjustifiable.

In conclusion, the death penalty is a deeply flawed and morally bankrupt practice that has no place in a just and humane society. Its irreversible nature, disproportionate application, lack of deterrent effect, moral implications, and financial costs all serve as compelling reasons for its abolition. Instead of clinging to outdated and barbaric forms of punishment, we should work towards creating a justice system that prioritizes rehabilitation, fairness, and human dignity for all. Abolishing the death penalty is not only the right thing to do, but it is also a necessary step towards building a more just and equitable society for future generations.

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Argumentative Essay on Why Death Penalty Should Be Abolished in the US

Death penalty is one of the most controversial issues that have created endless debates in the US and all nations worldwide. The concept of capital punishment, sometimes known as the death penalty, is the notion that a criminal can be executed for the perpetrated crime. Murder and treason are two of the most common capital crimes. In certain nations, other crimes such as murder, drug trafficking, crime against humanity, and adultery have also been designated as capital offenses and committing such crimes results in death. There have been approximately 1400 executions since 1976 in the United States. In the USA, 18 states have abolished the death penalty, while 31 states have the death penalty applied, which means that people are killed due to capital crime convictions. Poor defense, class, and racism and some of the causes of wrongful conviction. Those underprivileged have inadequate money to defend themselves and, therefore, a high possibility of being subjected to such cruel convictions. The point is that the Death penalty should not be legalized in the US as it has no deterrent effect on crime, it allows the government to have the power to take human life, and perpetuates social injustices through discrimination, and hence the US government should use lifetime jail sentences instead.

Death penalty is cruel and is contrary to the right to life as stipulated in the US constitution. The US constitution was founded to safeguard its citizens’ life and right to liberty. The death penalty contravenes the right to life. According to Amnesty International, a human being is a right to life, and freedom from cruel and degrading treatment is inalienable. Therefore, the value of human life cannot be overstated, and it cannot be arbitrarily shortened (Capital punishment in the early 21st century, n.d.). Similarly, the death sentence sends a negative message to the general public. People in society believe that human life is worthless and that anyone who commits a horrific act such as murder deserves to die. Again, for many people, the phrase “An eye for an eye” justifies implementing the death sentence, yet it denotes revenge rather than justice (Nathanson, 2001). Death penalty executions can take years after a person is placed on death row. The individual on death row is subjected to an agonizingly long wait. Such suffering should not be inflicted on any living person. In addition, the execution of the criminal is a heinous crime (Death penalty should be abolished, 2019). The point is that every human life is precious and should be treated with respect.

The death penalty does not deter crime, and for this reason, it should be abolished. Even though the death penalty is not ideal, many people think that it is worth the cost if it deters prospective perpetrators. However, public opinion polls demonstrate that most people do not believe that capital punishment has this effect. More than 80 percent of all executions occur in the United States’ southern states, where homicide rates are greatest. The murder rate is significantly lower in states that do not have a death sentence. Even while other factors are at play, no studies demonstrate that the death penalty is deterrence. Most killings are not spontaneous, premeditated, and are committed out of passion. This explains why so many murderers who are convicted try to defend themselves by trying to justify how extreme provocation made them cause the crime. Most of them are not aware of the severe consequences. Research shows that the death penalty is useless and counterproductive, and it has zero impact on reducing crime. Therefore, the death penalty is cruel, inhuman, and does not prevent further crimes from happening; it should not be in existence, nor should it be implemented.

The death penalty should be abolished because it is racial and class discrimination when executing it. Even though it is in the constitution, it does not affect everyone. For instance, people of color, poor people, and mentally ill people often make up most of those sentenced to death. Poor defense is one of the most common reasons for unjust convictions. Poor people can only afford an inadequate defense team. A wealthy person has a higher chance of acquittal since they can afford to hire an adequate counsel. In 68 percent of all death sentence cases, it has been found guilty simply because of insufficient funds to hire a good defense team. According to Mental Health America, 5-10% of death row inmates suffer from serious mental diseases (Robert, 2016). As for racial groups, black people make up over 40 percent of the convicts given a death sentence despite making up just 13 percent of the US population. The minority groups receive the harshest penalty despite not committing the most crimes. Therefore, it is apparent that the legal system is prejudiced, and for this reason, the death penalty should be abolished in the US.

Since the death penalty imposes a high burden on the legal system and the government, it should be eliminated in the US. After a person is sentenced to death, an appeals procedure must begin. This is a lengthy procedure that may take several years to complete. To put it another way, if a person is on death row, the government uses the taxpayer’s money to cater to the prisoner’s living expenses, pay lawyers, and all the legal procedures involved. It is cheaper to keep a criminal in prison for the rest of her/his life than to put them on death row and execute them later. This is one of the most compelling arguments in favor of abolishing the death penalty.

The final reason why the death penalty is not worth it is that if new evidence comes to light, the death penalty cannot be reversed. Since the death sentence is irreversible, it differs from life in prison in that the decision cannot be overturned even if there is new evidence to justify that the victim was innocent. This is called crime error and is immense in the US today. There are several cases where a person is convicted and later found innocent. For instance, in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, a parent convicted of arson and executed later, he was later found innocent (Dioso-Villa, 2013). This might mean that there can be errors and mistakes committed that can result in an innocent person being sent to his or her death when it comes to execution. There have been several situations in which convicted criminals have been vindicated of their crimes before they have been executed. The death sentence is an excessively harsh punishment in a culture where the judicial system cannot be depended upon to provide justice. This is possibly one of the most compelling arguments for why the death penalty should be abolished, as it has the potential to result in the execution of innocent individuals.

Even though the death penalty does not deter crime, some argue that it deters crime. For example, many individuals do not commit murder recklessly because they are terrified of being apprehended and condemned to death like the victims. People who support the death penalty feel that if the punishment for murder is that the perpetrator will be killed, they will refrain from committing the crime.(Death penalty should be abolished, 2019). Society is trained to learn a lesson from the victims, such as mob justice, where a mob ruthlessly kills a criminal. Nonetheless, this is not always the case; in places like California and Arizona, murder crimes are immense even though the law is imposed(Death penalty should be abolished, 2019). This demonstrates that the death sentence has no effect on crime reduction or deterrence in the real world.

Despite the fact that the death penalty goes against the right to life, others disagree and believe murderers should be executed. This argument is reasonable since the same pain is transferred to the murderer. For instance, it is a basic fact that when Osama Bin Laden killed thousands of people during the 911 attack, the American soldiers conducted an operation that killed Osama 10 years later. In this case, Americans were satisfied and felt that justice had been made. Barack Obama, the then-president, said that “justice had been made” (Osama bin Laden dead, 2016). Another argument favoring capital punishment is that it has been described in religious and biblical texts. According to God’s depiction, a murderer should be put to death if that is what the rule and laws are for humanity to obey.

To conclude, the death penalty should be abolished in the US. This essay has demonstrated that human life is precious, and therefore the death penalty is cruel and against the human right to life. That notwithstanding, the death sentence is worthless since it does little to prevent criminal activity. Even though the death penalty is still imposed, people continue to be victimized, and many of the perpetrators are not terrified of the brutal consequences. Furthermore, we have discovered that the death sentence is exceedingly expensive and maybe a significant financial burden on both the state and the taxpayers. Additionally, a death sentence is final and cannot be reversed even if the victim is innocent. No one is perfect, and for that reason, the legal system can have flaws that can subject innocent people to this cruel act. Again this essay has demonstrated that the legal system has prejudice. There are those that argue that death penalty preventive measure for most crimes. Therefore this cruel penalty is only imposed on certain groups of people, the poor, black people, and the mentally ill. These considerations lead to the conclusion that the death penalty should be abolished in the United States.

Capital punishment in the early 21st century . (n.d.). Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/capital-punishment/Capital-punishment-in-the-early-21st-century

Death penalty and people with mental illnesses . (n.d.). Mental Health America. https://www.mhanational.org/issues/position-statement-54-death-penalty-and-people-mental-illnesses

Death penalty should be abolished . (2019, August 22). Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics. https://www.lushusa.com/stories/article_the-death-penalty-should-be-abolished.html

Dioso-Villa, R. (2013). Scientific and Legal Developments in Fire and Arson Investigation Expertise in Texas v. Willingham. Minn. JL Sci. & Tech. , 14 , 817.

Nathanson, S. (2001). An eye for an eye: The immorality of punishing by death . Rowman & Littlefield.

Osama bin laden dead . (2016, December 15). whitehouse.gov. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead

Robert T. Muller. (2016, October 19). The death penalty may not bring peace to victims’ families . Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/talking-about-trauma/201610/death-penalty-may-not-bring-peace-victims-families

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US death penalty must be abolished, rights experts urge President Biden

Prison cells at former Alcatraz Penitentiary in San Francisco, California. (file)

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President Biden should do everything in his power to end death row executions in the United States, UN-appointed independent rights experts said on Thursday.

The call comes after a resumption of federal executions in the US in the last year of Donald Trump’s Presidency, in which 13 people were put to death.

UN Special Procedures March 11, 2021

In their appeal to the White House, the rights experts insisted that the death penalty served “no deterrent value and cannot be reconciled with the right to life”.

‘Inherently flawed’

The punishment is “inherently flawed” and disproportionately affected African-Americans and people living in poverty, they maintained.

Due process guarantees were also violated by the practice, the rights experts alleged, before calling on Mr. Biden to grant clemency to 48 people, many on death row for a decade or more.

“This should be only a first step”, the experts declared. “We further urge the president, as well as members of Congress, to strongly support legislative efforts to formally abolish the death penalty at a federal level.”

They argued that the president “should consider all other possible federal-level actions including directing the Department of Justice to stop seeking the death penalty and withdrawing notices of intent to seek the death penalty in ongoing cases.”

Thousands on death row

Thousands more individuals remain on state death rows across the country and several executions are scheduled at state level in 2021.

In their appeal for concrete measures to halt the practice, the experts urged lawmakers to consider linking federal funding to alternative sentencing and banning the sale and transport of chemicals used in lethal injections.

Although 108 countries have abolished capital punishment, 60 per cent of the world's population live in the 48 countries that retain it, such as China, India and Iran.

“There is no time to lose with thousands of individuals on state death rows across the country”, they said, making clear that they had written to the White House to express their concerns.

The full list of experts involved, is at the bottom of the press statement released by the human rights office, OHCHR , here .

The Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts and Working Groups are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council . The experts are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

United States
death penalty

Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished Because Innocent People May Be Executed?

General reference (not clearly pro or con).

John Gramlich, Senior Writer and Editor at Pew Research Center, in a July 19, 2021 article, “10 Facts about the Death Penalty in the U.S.,” available at pewresearch.org, stated:

“A majority of Americans have concerns about the fairness of the death penalty and whether it serves as a deterrent against serious crime. More than half of U.S. adults (56%) say Black people are more likely than White people to be sentenced to death for committing similar crimes. About six-in-ten (63%) say the death penalty does not deter people from committing serious crimes, and nearly eight-in-ten (78%) say there is some risk that an innocent person will be executed.” July 19, 2021

Jared Olsen, JD, Wyoming State Representative (R), in a July 29, 2019 article, “I’m a Republican and I Oppose Restarting Federal Executions,” available at nytimes.com, stated:

“And let’s be honest: Few conservatives trust the government to get it right. Since 1973, 166 people on state death rows have been exonerated and freed. Conservatives are now in the vanguard of the movement to end the death penalty. A recent report by Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty showed a sharp increase in the number of state Republican lawmakers sponsoring repeal legislation; so far this year, such bills have been introduced in 11 states.” July 29, 2019

Ernie Chambers, JD, Nebraska State Senator, stated the following during an Apr. 16, 2015 floor debate in the Nebraska Legislature, available at legislature.ne.gov:

“I want to get as many votes as I can to abolish this death penalty… [O]ver 150 people in the last few years have been taken off death row because they were innocent. I know there are people who want to believe that no innocent person has ever been executed in this country. But when you have this many people conclusively proved by DNA evidence to be actually innocent, there is no escaping the conclusion that innocent people have been executed… There are cases where prosecutors withheld exculpatory information. They knew that there were bogus pieces of evidence introduced. They knew that there were defendants who were coerced into entering a guilty plea to a crime they had not committed.” Apr. 16, 2015

George Ryan, former Governor of Illinois, in a Dec. 27, 2000 speech aired on Democracy Now , in support of his decision to impose a state-wide moratorium on executions, stated:

“Like a lot of other elected officials, I believed that there were crimes that were so heinous – and I believe that today – that the death penalty sentence is the only proper societal response. I supported the death penalty when I was in the Illinois General Assembly. I spoke for the death penalty. I voted for the death penalty. And I believed in the death penalty… But since those days, a lot has happened to shake my faith in the death penalty system… I said that until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent person would be put to death, nobody would meet the fate as long as I was Governor… And I won’t sign off on any death sentences until I am absolutely certain that the individual, in fact, is guilty and all rights have been preserved and safeguarded… It was clear to me that when it came to the death penalty in Illinois there was no justice in the justice system. So on January the 31st, I told the citizens of Illinois that I was going to impose a moratorium, because of the grave concerns I had about the state’s shameful record of convicting innocent people and putting them on death row. I can’t support that system. And its administration, it’s proven to be very fraught with error, and it’s come awful close to the ultimate nightmare.” Dec. 27, 2000

The American Bar Association, on its website, accessed on Aug. 7, 2008, states the following reasons for support of a federal death penalty moratorium:

“Serious questions also have been raised about the fairness of the administration of the federal capital punishment system. On September, 12, 2000, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a study of the federal death penalty that suggests the system is plagued by geographic disparities and ethnic bias. Fourteen of the 21 prisoners on federal death row at that time were from just three states – Texas, Virginia, and Missouri. The study also shows that prosecutors seek the death penalty much more often for Hispanic and African-American defendants. As of January 2002, 20 of the 24 prisoners on federal death row were African-American, Latino/a, or Asian. The ABA’s 1997 moratorium resolution applies to the federal government. Indeed, ABA Presidents have called upon the President of the United States to impose a moratorium on executions.” Aug. 7, 2008

Russ Feingold, JD, US Senator (D-WI), on April 26, 2000, introduced the “National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2000” to Congress where he stated:

“Since the reinstatement of the modern death penalty, 87 people have been freed from death row because they were later proven innocent. That is a demonstrated error rate of 1 innocent person for every 7 persons executed. When the consequences are life and death, we need to demand the same standard for our system of justice as we would for our airlines… It is time for the Congress to take the lead and declare once and for all that it is unacceptable to execute an innocent man or woman. It is a central pillar of our criminal justice system that it is better that many guilty people go free than that one innocent should suffer. Sadly, history has demonstrated that time and again, America has brought innocence itself to the bar and condemned it to die. That history now demonstrates that even in America, innocence itself has provided no security from the ultimate punishment… Let us reflect to ensure that we are being just. Let us pause to be certain we do not kill a single innocent person. This is really not too much to ask for a civilized society. I urge my colleagues to join me and my distinguished colleague, Senator Levin, in sponsoring the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2000.” Apr. 26, 2000

The Board of Directors of the New York State Defenders Association, on July 25, 2002, adopted the following resolution regarding a moratorium on the death penalty:

“[M]any groups have identified serious flaws and omissions in fairness and consistency, finding that the [death penalty] system is not without risk to the innocent… WHEREAS, events subsequent to the enactment of New York’s death penalty law, including developments in DNA testing which have called into question evidence used to convict defendants sentenced to death, have demonstrated clearly that the death penalty has been imposed on innocent people… WHEREAS, in June 2000, a study entitled ‘A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases 1973-1995,’ … determined that appellate review of death sentences had found reversible error in 68 percent of these sentences, that in 82 percent of the cases retried after reversal a death sentence was not issued, and that in 7 percent of the retried cases the defendant was found not guilty; and… WHEREAS, on January 31, 2000, the State of Illinois suspended executions because 13 people on death row were found to be actually innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted due, in part, to recent developments in DNA testing… IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED THAT the New York State Defenders Association calls upon the executive and legislative branches of New York State government to enact and adopt legislation imposing a moratorium on executions.” July 25, 2002

Nathan Diament, JD, Director of the Institute for Public Affairs of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, in a June 5, 2001 appearance at the Pew Forum’s event “Religious Reflections on the Death Penalty,” stated:

“For a state to be properly using capital punishment, it needs to be following those guidelines that are found in the Bible. There do need, in our mind, to be clear evidences of guilt. It is not for government to use for its own ends. It is not proper for some governments to victimize others for its own purposes. There is supposed to be justice involved in this, and we believe that that’s justice related to the way God calls for justice… Our greatest concern about capital punishment is the concern that’s been shared here and the concern that I think everyone shares. And that is the possibility that someone who’s innocent might be executed. We are not oblivious to that accusation, to that concern as being raised about capital punishment today. And so, in our resolution the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, Orthodox Union (OU) resolution is calling for a nation-wide moratorium on the death penalty.” June 5, 2001

The United Nations General Assembly, on Nov. 1, 2007, in an 104-54 vote to which the US was a primary opponent, adopted a non-legally binding moratorium on the death penalty:

“The General Assembly… Recalling also the resolutions on the question of the death penalty adopted over the past decade by the Commission on Human Rights in all consecutive sessions… in which the Commission called upon States that still maintain the death penalty to abolish it completely and, in the meantime, to establish a moratorium on executions… Considering that the use of the death penalty undermines human dignity, and convinced that a moratorium on the use of the death penalty contributes to the enhancement and progressive development of human rights, that there is no conclusive evidence of the death penalty’s deterrent value and that any miscarriage or failure of justice in the death penalty’s implementation is irreversible and irreparable, Welcoming the decisions taken by an increasing number of States to apply a moratorium on executions, followed in many cases by the abolition of the death penalty.” Nov. 1, 2007

Charles Stimson, JD, Acting Chief of Staff and Senior Legal Fellow of the Heritage Foundation, in a Dec. 20, 2019 article, “The Death Penalty Is Appropriate,” available at heritage.org, stated:

“Death penalty opponents, quite understandably, note that there have been a number of death row inmates who have been exonerated through groups like the Innocence Project. Sadly, mistakes can happen. Indeed mistakes can happen on both sides when it comes to the death penalty. However, acknowledging that mistakes can occasionally occur in capital cases does not render the death penalty unjust any more than imposing a sentence of incarceration for a term of years is not rendered unjust simply because mistakes occasionally occur in non-capital cases. Today, there are built-in checks and balances in the criminal justice system, from jury selection to the penalty phase to the appeals process that are designed to provide fair process for each defendant. The system is not perfect, and we must work to make it better for everyone involved. But we cannot forget the victims either. Genny Gonzales [murdered in 1995 at four years old] would be 28 years old this year. She never went to high school, attended college, or fell in love. She is gone. Her murderers richly deserve the death penalty, though justice won’t be complete until their sentence is carried out.” Dec. 20, 2019

Michele Hanisee, JD, Deputy District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles and President of the Association of District Attorneys, stated the following in her Sep. 27, 2016 article

“Those in support of abolishing the death penalty point to the possibility of an innocent person being executed… The innocent can take solace in knowing that a unanimous jury of 12 citizens must render the death verdict after an exhaustive trial where the accused murderer is represented by two highly competent attorneys and overseen by an independent judge who ensures a fair trial. Voters understand that the criminals on death row have been convicted of the most heinous crimes. Voters also realize that those left behind, grieving families throughout California and their loved ones, don’t deserve anything less than justice. Justice is a reformed, not eliminated death penalty.” Sep. 27, 2016

Ronald Eisenberg, JD, Deputy District Attorney for Philadelphia, Supervisor of the Law Division, in an article titled “‘Innocence’ and the Death Penalty,” for the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Association Newsletter accessed on Aug. 4, 2008, stated:

“[T]he factual basis for the Illinois moratorium is even more suspect. Governor Ryan claims that, more than half the time, Illinois capital defendants were actually innocent: twelve men executed; thirteen freed. But in reality there have been 247 death-sentenced defendants in Illinois, not just 25. Of the thirteen ‘innocents,’ five were acquitted on retrials — which means not that they were really innocent, but that they were not proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. In the other eight cases, prosecutors dismissed charges without a retrial because of evidence problems. Only one of the thirteen has been clearly established as innocent. Questions about the Illinois moratorium, however, obscure a more fundamental problem with the moratorium movement: we already have a moratorium, in fact hundreds of them, in each and every death penalty case. Every capital verdict is held up for years, often for decades, while the case is studied and restudied and studied again in the courts, in all its individual detail. The only defendants who would benefit from a general moratorium are those whose appeals have been rejected every time — in other words, the capital murderers who least deserve more years of delay.” Aug. 4, 2008

Antonin Scalia, JD, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, in a concurring decision on June 26, 2006, in regards to the case of Kansas v. Michael Lee Marsh , wrote:

“Reversal of an erroneous conviction on appeal or on habeas, or the pardoning of an innocent condemnee through executive clemency, demonstrates not the failure of the system but its success. Those devices are part and parcel of the multiple assurances that are applied before a death sentence is carried out… Capital cases are given especially close scrutiny at every level, which is why in most cases many years elapse before the sentence is executed. And of course capital cases receive special attention in the application of executive clemency… As a consequence of the sensitivity of the criminal justice system to the due-process rights of defendants sentenced to death, almost two-thirds of all death sentences are overturned…. [T]hose ideologically driven to ferret out and proclaim a mistaken modern execution have not a single verifiable case to point to, whereas it is easy as pie to identify plainly guilty murderers who have been set free. The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment—in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes—outweighs the risk of error.” June 26, 2006

Steven D. Stewart, JD, Prosecuting Attorney for Clark County Indiana, in a message on the Clark County Prosecutor website accessed on Aug. 6, 2008, wrote:

“No system of justice can produce results which are 100% certain all the time. Mistakes will be made in any system which relies upon human testimony for proof. We should be vigilant to uncover and avoid such mistakes. Our system of justice rightfully demands a higher standard for death penalty cases. However, the risk of making a mistake with the extraordinary due process applied in death penalty cases is very small, and there is no credible evidence to show that any innocent persons have been executed at least since the death penalty was reactivated in 1976. The 100+ death row inmates ‘innocent’, ‘exonerated’ and released, as trumpeted by anti-death penalty activists, is a fraud. The actual number of factually innocent released death row inmates in closer to 40, and in any event should be considered in context of over 7,000 death sentences handed down since 1973. It stands as the most accurate judgment/sentence in any system of justice ever created. The inevitability of a mistake should not serve as grounds to eliminate the death penalty any more than the risk of having a fatal wreck should make automobiles illegal.” Aug. 6, 2008

Dudley Sharp, Resource Director of Justice for All, an organization advocating the use of the death penalty, in a July 2002 article for ProDeathPenalty.com titled “Innocence Issues: The Death Penalty,” wrote:

“Death penalty opponents claim that ‘Since 1973, 102 (now 114) people in 25 states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence,’ That is a blatantly false claim… What is the real number of actual innocents released from death row? A review of the DPIC [Death Penalty Information Center] 102 case descriptions finds that only about 32 claim actual innocence, with alleged proof to support the claim. 12 of those 32 are DNA cases. That is 32 cases out of about 7,300 death sentences since 1973, or 0.4%… And there is no proof of an innocent executed within the US since 1900. Some supporters of a moratorium and death penalty opponents claim that a concern for innocents is why they want to halt executions. Yet, history and reason confirm that an end to executions will result in more innocents harmed and murdered… At least 8% of those on death row had committed one or more murders prior to the murder(s) which put them on death row, suggesting that with 7,300 sentenced to death, since 1973, that those sent to death row had murdered at least 600 additional innocents after we failed to properly restrain them after their previous murder(s)… It currently takes nearly 12 years to execute those sentenced to death. And some elected officials are debating a moratorium on executions. Yet, under all debated scenarios, halting executions will put more innocents at risk.” July 2002

Mark H. Creech, Reverend and Executive Director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, Inc, in a Sep. 14, 2004 article for Renew America titled “North Carolina Death Penalty Moratorium: Is it Really about Fairness and Innocence?,” wrote:

“[T]he overwhelming majority of capital cases contain no credible evidence of innocence. In fact, most death row appeals are not even based on claims of factual innocence… The facts show the vast majority of death row releases are based on legal technicalities, not real innocence! Moreover, the entire contention about ‘innocence’ rests on the notion there is actually some evidence innocent people are being executed. This is nonsense! There is no such evidence anywhere – not even a single case of an innocent execution!… We are all aware living murderers injure, maim and kill again, in prison, after improper release, and after escape. Whether one believes in the effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent or not is irrelevant, one matter can’t be contested: the murderer who is executed will never kill again. Furthermore, it’s important to note that in some states where a moratorium was instituted, the murder rate increased. For instance, in Texas, an unofficial moratorium on executions was implemented during most of 1996 and early 1997… [T]he state appeared to have spared few, if any, condemned prisoners, while the citizens of Texas experienced an added loss of 90 innocent lives to homicide, over and above what would have been expected had no moratorium been in place.” Sep. 14, 2004

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Capital punishment has long engendered considerable debate about both its morality and its effect on criminal behaviour. Contemporary arguments for and against capital punishment fall under three general headings: moral , utilitarian, and practical.

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Supporters of the death penalty believe that those who commit murder , because they have taken the life of another, have forfeited their own right to life. Furthermore, they believe, capital punishment is a just form of retribution , expressing and reinforcing the moral indignation not only of the victim’s relatives but of law-abiding citizens in general. By contrast, opponents of capital punishment, following the writings of Cesare Beccaria (in particular On Crimes and Punishments [1764]), argue that, by legitimizing the very behaviour that the law seeks to repress—killing—capital punishment is counterproductive in the moral message it conveys. Moreover, they urge, when it is used for lesser crimes, capital punishment is immoral because it is wholly disproportionate to the harm done. Abolitionists also claim that capital punishment violates the condemned person’s right to life and is fundamentally inhuman and degrading.

Although death was prescribed for crimes in many sacred religious documents and historically was practiced widely with the support of religious hierarchies , today there is no agreement among religious faiths, or among denominations or sects within them, on the morality of capital punishment. Beginning in the last half of the 20th century, increasing numbers of religious leaders—particularly within Judaism and Roman Catholicism—campaigned against it. Capital punishment was abolished by the state of Israel for all offenses except treason and crimes against humanity, and Pope John Paul II condemned it as “cruel and unnecessary.”

Supporters of capital punishment also claim that it has a uniquely potent deterrent effect on potentially violent offenders for whom the threat of imprisonment is not a sufficient restraint. Opponents, however, point to research that generally has demonstrated that the death penalty is not a more effective deterrent than the alternative sanction of life or long-term imprisonment.

There also are disputes about whether capital punishment can be administered in a manner consistent with justice . Those who support capital punishment believe that it is possible to fashion laws and procedures that ensure that only those who are really deserving of death are executed. By contrast, opponents maintain that the historical application of capital punishment shows that any attempt to single out certain kinds of crime as deserving of death will inevitably be arbitrary and discriminatory. They also point to other factors that they think preclude the possibility that capital punishment can be fairly applied, arguing that the poor and ethnic and religious minorities often do not have access to good legal assistance, that racial prejudice motivates predominantly white juries in capital cases to convict black and other nonwhite defendants in disproportionate numbers, and that, because errors are inevitable even in a well-run criminal justice system, some people will be executed for crimes they did not commit. Finally, they argue that, because the appeals process for death sentences is protracted, those condemned to death are often cruelly forced to endure long periods of uncertainty about their fate.

Under the influence of the European Enlightenment , in the latter part of the 18th century there began a movement to limit the scope of capital punishment. Until that time a very wide range of offenses, including even common theft, were punishable by death—though the punishment was not always enforced , in part because juries tended to acquit defendants against the evidence in minor cases. In 1794 the U.S. state of Pennsylvania became the first jurisdiction to restrict the death penalty to first-degree murder, and in 1846 the state of Michigan abolished capital punishment for all murders and other common crimes. In 1863 Venezuela became the first country to abolish capital punishment for all crimes, including serious offenses against the state (e.g., treason and military offenses in time of war). San Marino was the first European country to abolish the death penalty, doing so in 1865; by the early 20th century several other countries, including the Netherlands, Norway , Sweden , Denmark , and Italy , had followed suit (though it was reintroduced in Italy under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini ). By the mid-1960s some 25 countries had abolished the death penalty for murder, though only about half of them also had abolished it for offenses against the state or the military code. For example, Britain abolished capital punishment for murder in 1965, but treason, piracy, and military crimes remained capital offenses until 1998.

During the last third of the 20th century, the number of abolitionist countries increased more than threefold. These countries, together with those that are “de facto” abolitionist—i.e., those in which capital punishment is legal but not exercised—now represent more than half the countries of the world. One reason for the significant increase in the number of abolitionist states was that the abolition movement was successful in making capital punishment an international human rights issue, whereas formerly it had been regarded as solely an internal matter for the countries concerned.

In 1971 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that, “in order fully to guarantee the right to life, provided for in…the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” called for restricting the number of offenses for which the death penalty could be imposed, with a view toward abolishing it altogether. This resolution was reaffirmed by the General Assembly in 1977. Optional protocols to the European Convention on Human Rights (1983) and to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1989) have been established, under which countries party to the convention and the covenant undertake not to carry out executions. The Council of Europe (1994) and the EU (1998) established as a condition of membership in their organizations the requirement that prospective member countries suspend executions and commit themselves to abolition. This decision had a remarkable impact on the countries of central and eastern Europe , prompting several of them—e.g., the Czech Republic , Hungary , Romania , Slovakia , and Slovenia—to abolish capital punishment.

In the 1990s many African countries—including Angola, Djibouti, Mozambique, and Namibia—abolished capital punishment, though most African countries retained it. In South Africa , which formerly had one of the world’s highest execution rates, capital punishment was outlawed in 1995 by the Constitutional Court, which declared that it was incompatible with the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment and with “a human rights culture.”

Sould the Death Penalty Be Abolished? Essay

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Introduction

Reasons for the abolishment of this sentence, reasons for the appropriateness of the death sentence.

Criminal justice systems have faced criticisms regarding the implementation of the death penalty. Even though they try to ensure that this process is conducted in a humane way, it has still not gained acceptance by many people and organizations (Bedau 2011). In addition, states are now becoming cautious in administering this punishment. This essay explores the various controversies and reasons that support or oppose the abolishment of this penalty.

Death penalty refers to the termination of criminals’ lives after facing criminal charges to prove that they committed capital offenses (Goodheart 2011). Many nations had adopted this policy but they are now reconsidering to abolish it because of the controversies surrounding its application.

The prevalence of criminal activities necessitated the need to establish strict laws that will ensure the culprits are given appropriate sentences. However, it has now come to the attention of most states that this penalty is not an effective way of punishing capital offenders because of the following reasons.

First, it denies prisoners their right to life, yet constitutions all over the world state that people have an express right to life and no one is allowed to take away another person’s life (Bergman 2011). This sentence ignores this constitutional requirement and offers the state an ability to kill criminals. In addition, religious teachings insist that no human being has a right to deny another person the right to life.

It is only God who created people and has the right to decide when they should die. Criminals have a right for life just like other people no matter the degree of the crime committed (Albenese 2012). Therefore, this sentence must be abolished since it contravenes constitutional and religious declarations.

Secondly, all suspects are presumed to be innocent until the court proves otherwise using the evidence presented before it. However, sometimes, defense lawyers fail to present sufficient evidence to prove their clients are innocent. On the other hand, the petitioners present evidence that links the suspect with the alleged criminal activities (Goodheart 2011).

However, no matter the turn of events, sometimes, court rulings are reversed long after the concerned suspects have served long terms in jail. This occurs when there is a new evidence to prove that the suspect never committed the crime or there was no adequate evidence to subject the criminal to corporal punishment. However, death penalties do not give courts opportunities to reverse their rulings since the suspects are usually already dead.

Thirdly, there are other alternatives that may be used to punish capital offenders. The most common and ethical long term punishment for a criminal is life imprisonment (Albenese 2012). This is a decent punishment compared to the death sentence.

This punishment should be abolished because it denies family members their right to associate and interact with their people even though they are criminals. It is necessary to state that human beings have strong bonds that are only broken by death (Roth 2010).

However, when prisoners are killed by means of the death sentences, this act denies them and their family members their right to interact with one another. Therefore, this penalty should be abolished since it leaves family members with painful memories.

Lastly, this sentence has finality issues that cannot be reversed. Once an individual is condemned to death, he or she feels that the society has discriminated against the individual and it does not recognize their value. In addition, once an individual is killed, there is no way the person can be brought back to life (Bergman 2011).

This sentence assumes that there are sufficient reasons to kill a criminal and that there is no possibility that the case can be readdressed. Therefore, it should be abolished and replaced with ones that can be reversed in case there is the need to evaluate the evidence presented at the first place (Albenese 2012).

Proponents of this sentence argue that this is the most suitable way of punishing capital offenders and deterring others from committing similar crimes. People are always cautious about their lives and will try to avoid anything that may lead to injuries or death (Bedau 2011). Therefore, when criminals realize that they may face death penalties in case they are caught, they will try to avoid committing capital crimes or even stop their criminal activities.

Secondly, nations are spending a lot of money on financing various correctional facilities. Life imprisonment means these states must prepare long term budgets to cater for these criminals (Albenese 2012).

However, death sentences ensure these criminals not to spend additional and unnecessary money in their upkeep. The opponents argue that there is no need to spend a lot of money in supporting a convicted criminal, but instead they should be killed to save this money for other purposes (Roth 2010).

Lastly, this penalty should not be abolished since it reflects the magnitude of the crime committed. Justice requires that individuals get proportional punishment for their crimes and thus this penalty is an adequate punishment for capital offenders.

This sentence is an abuse of human rights and does not give the victim a reprieve for the crime committed. This sentence perpetuates human suffering and ignores the need to rehabilitate criminals. Therefore, it should be abolished and replaced with appropriate sentences.

Albenese, J. S. (2012). Criminal Justice. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Bedau, H. A. (2011). The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bergman, P. (2011). The Criminal Law Handbook: Know Your Rights, Survive the System. California: Nolo Publishing.

Goodheart, L. B. (2011). The Solemn Sentence of Death: Capital Punishment in Connecticut. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press.

Roth, M. P. (2010). Crime and Punishment: A History of the Criminal Justice System. New York: Wadsworth Publishing.

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Why The Death Penalty Should Be Abolished

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I Put Him on Death Row. He Shouldn’t Die.

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‘I Am So Sorry’: Meeting the Man I Put on Death Row

Admitting a mistake can be very hard. But how would it feel if the mistake helped put a man on death row?

That’s the burden the Rev. Brian Wharton has been carrying for more than two decades. He played a crucial role in the prosecution of Robert Roberson, who was found guilty in 2003 of killing his 2-year-old daughter and sentenced to death.

But as the Opinion video above explores, Wharton came to regret his involvement and the outcome of the case. He recently visited Texas death row, along with a crew from Opinion Video, and met with Roberson. It was the first time the men had spoken with each other since before Roberson’s conviction.

The film is the first in a three-part series that we’re publishing over the next few weeks, each taking a critical view of the death penalty by exposing flaws in cases and questioning whether retributive justice can truly provide closure. The videos are in keeping with The Times’s longstanding position that the punishment is full of bias and error , morally abhorrent and futile in deterring crime and should be abolished .

The series lands at a hopeful but still-challenging time in the movement to get rid of capital punishment in the United States.

The death penalty has been falling out of favor with officials and the broader public alike over the past three decades, in part owing to what the Death Penalty Information Center called “society’s greater understanding about the fallibility of our legal system and its inability to protect innocent people from execution.” Twenty-nine states have now either abolished the death penalty or have paused executions by executive action, up from 12 in 1999.

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