USA: 30 years of executions, 30 years of wrongs

[Madspirit]

http://web.amnesty.org/pages/usa-170107-feature-eng

USA: 30 years of executions, 30 years of wrongs

If the USA's capital justice system was a private company, it would have been shut down long ago. After three decades, this is an enterprise showing no measurable benefit for society, despite an investment of billions of dollars.

On the cost side have been multiple errors and inconsistencies, racism, cruelty and damage to the national image abroad. This business may repeatedly be making a killing, but it is operating at a huge loss, and has been from the outset.

Executions resumed in the USA on 17 January 1977 after a decade without them. By 16 January 2007, there had been 1,059 executions. A third of these killings -- 380 -- had been carried out in Texas, which is set to mark the 30th anniversary with another execution. Johnathan Moore was executed on 17 January 2007 (for details of the case, see Amnesty International's Urgent Action). In the same 30 years, some 70 countries have abolished the death penalty, bringing to 128 the number that have turned their backs on judicial killing.

There are signs that the USA, too, is slowly turning against the death penalty. The 53 executions in 2006 was the lowest annual total for a decade, and death sentencing continues to drop from its peak in the mid-1990s. The number of people sentenced to death in 2006 was the lowest since 1977.

An erosion of the public’s belief in the deterrence value of the death penalty, an increased awareness of the frequency of wrongful convictions in capital cases, and a greater confidence that public safety can be guaranteed by life prison terms rather than death sentences have all contributed to the waning of enthusiasm for capital punishment.

To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive, diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values. It not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly -- to the public purse, as well as in social and psychological terms. It has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect. It tends to be applied discriminatorily on grounds of race and class. It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation.

It promotes simplistic responses to complex human problems, rather than pursuing explanations that could inform positive strategies. It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim’s family, and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner. It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. It is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. It is an affront to human dignity. It should be abolished.

For further information, please see:

USA: The experiment that failed – A reflection on 30 years of executions


Arbitrariness riddles the USA's capital justice system:

James Elledge was executed in Washington State in 2001 for the murder of a woman. He had turned himself in after the crime, and pleaded guilty at the trial. He refused to allow any mitigating evidence to be presented and waived his right to appeal.

Two years later in Washington State, Gary Ridgway was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 48 women. He avoided a death sentence in return for his cooperation with the authorities and a guilty plea. If Gary Ridgway was not subject to the death penalty, why was James Elledge executed for killing 47 fewer victims?

John Luttig and Ivan Holland were murdered in the same town in Texas. John Luttig was a wealthy white businessman, Ivan Holland was a homeless African American man. Ivan Holland’s assailants were three young white men who targeted him because of his race. John Luttig’s attackers were three black teenagers who targeted him for his Mercedez Benz. Two of John Luttig’s attackers were sentenced to life imprisonment and will be eligible for parole after 80 years, or about six decades after Ivan Holland’s assailants. The third black youth, Napoleon Beazley, was sentenced to death by an all-white jury and executed in 2002.

A few hours earlier, in Missouri, the state high court granted an indefinite stay of execution to Christopher Simmons – like Napoleon Beazley, 17 years old at the time of the crime – on exactly the same argument that had been rejected by the Texas court in Beazley’s case. The US Supreme Court then took the Simmons case to decide that juvenile offenders should be exempt from execution. Yet it had allowed Napoleon Beazley to go to his death.

[Madspirit]

1. I think this is important

The death penalty is the act of trying to combat barbarism with barbarism.

So, I'm kicking.
Lee

[ulysses]

2. I do too.

:thumbsup: