Progressive World Review

Now that the Supreme Court has decided that it’s okay to inflict unbearable pain while executing someone and therefore ending the de facto moratorium on capital punishment, it’s time to re-examine the use of this uncivilized and barbaric punishment.

Study after study shows that the death penalty does not deter crime nor does it reduce the cost to society for dealing with murderers.  Its sole purpose has been to satisfy the visceral need for revenge that many people understandably feel as a result of some of the more heinous crimes that are committed.  But revenge has absolutely nothing to do with our criminal justice system whose purpose is only to protect the safety of the general population.

Topping the list of reasons to end capital punishment has to be the fact that innocent people have been executed and there’s no reason to think it will stop here.  Michael Radelet and Hugo Adam Bedau wrote a book entitled Inspite of Innocence where they document 23 innocent people executed and Equal Justice Project finds an additional 16 wrongly put to death.  Furthermore, more than one-hundred people convicted of capital crimes on death row have since been exonerated demonstrating just how flawed the system is.  This from a New York Times article discussing this issue and specifically, the case of Levon Jones, recently released after fourteen years on death row,

John Holdridge, director of the A.C.L.U. Capital Punishment Project, which provided representation for Mr. Jones, said the successful appeals showed that the problem with the death penalty was not the method of execution – the issue ruled on by the Supreme Court last month – but instead “poor people getting lousy lawyers.”

“All these states are gearing up to start executing people again, and nobody seems to be concerned about these systemic problems,” Mr. Holdridge said. (emphasis added)

Our legal system was founded on the principle that it’s better to let ten guilty men go free rather than imprison one innocent man.  But the permanence of the death penalty flies in the face of this belief.  That would be true even in the best of circumstances but is especially so given the gross inequities found in the application of justice, particularly as it applies to the poor and minorities.

The only real argument that death penalty proponents have in their favor is that the majority of Americans favor it.  It’s doubtful though that most Americans truly understand how many mistakes are made in its application, most believing that every opportunity to ascertain a person’s possible innocence is exhausted before actually being put to death.  But even if we could be reasonably sure that innocent people weren’t being executed, it wouldn’t change the fact that this practice is cruel and unnecessary. 

Years from now history will not be kind to those in favor of capital punishment.  I’m reminded of a PBS documentary, Eyes on the Prize, a history of the Civil Rights movement.  There were many disturbing scenes in this film but one in particular stands out in my mind.  It’s the scene where in Little Rock Arkansas, after the courts have mandated integration and the National Guard has to be called in to protect nine black students entering a white high school for the first time from a mob of angry white people hurling disgusting slurs at these innocent children.  When I watched that, I had to wonder, all these years later, how would these people feel now if they could witness their despicable behavior.  Would they want that to be their legacy, preserved for generations to come?  Future generations will almost certainly judge the proponents of capital punishment in the same light.  Is that how you want to be remembered?

–Paul Wilden

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