Is the death penalty worth what it costs us?

That provocative question might not be “news” when it is asked by a known opponent of the death penalty.  However, when it is posed by a federal judge with thirty years on the bench it certainly merits attention.  Judge Boyce Martin, Chief Justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, concurring in a capital case (Wiles v. Bagley) on April 14, wrote that the death penalty is “so fundamentally flawed at its very core that it is beyond repair.”   He answers his own question by writing, “In my view, this broken system would not justify its costs even if it saved money, but those who do not agree may want to consider just how expensive the death penalty really is.”   US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens recently called for 'a dispassionate, impartial comparison of the enormous costs that death penalty litigation imposes on society with the benefits that it produces.'  Judge Martin echoed that call, adding that “Such an evaluation … is particularly appropriate at a time when public funds are scarce and our state and federal governments are having to re-evaluate their fiscal priorities."

Repeal bill passes Colorado House

On April 21 the Colorado House narrowly passed a bill to repeal the state’s use of the death penalty.  According to the Denver Daily News the bill faces an uncertain future in the state Senate and, should it pass, on the Governor’s desk.  Nevertheless opponents of capital punishment are heartened because similar legislation failed two years ago.  The bill attempts to help close unsolved murder cases by shifting funds used to prosecute death penalty cases to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, currently facing over 1,400 unsolved murders across the state.  Proponents believe the state would save close to $4 million by repealing the death penalty.

Maryland Commission Recommends Abolition

In November 2008 the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment voted to recommend the abolition of the state’s death penalty. The Commission cited racial and geographic disparities as well as the possibility that an innocent person might be executed in explaining its 13-7 vote. The Commission’s full report is due to be released by December 15. Observers are uncertain how the state legislature will react, but Governor Martin O’Malley has already said that he will sign repeal legislation if it reaches his desk.

According to WBAL-TV, Jane Henderson, executive director of Maryland Citizens Against State Executions, said the panel's findings strengthen arguments death penalty opponents have made for years. The panel found death penalty cases cost more and that there is "a real possibility" a mistake could cause an innocent person to be executed. "I think we now have a strong recommendation - that's factually based - that Maryland should ban the death penalty," Henderson said.


Newspapers in Two States Editorialize Against the Death Penalty

The Journal-Star in Lincoln, Nebraska and The Virginian-Pilot in Hampton Roads, Virginia have recently published editorials opposing their respective state’s use of the death penalty. Serious prosecutorial misconduct was the precipitating issue in Nebraska, while the seeming arbitrariness of the decision to pursue the death penalty as opposed to life without parole was what drew the response in Virginia. Due to the prevalence of human error in the system, The Journal-Star concluded "The death penalty should be abolished." And if life without parole is enough for the families of some victims then “It should be enough for the rest of us, too” wrote The Virginian-Pilot. Public discussion of these and other procedural problems can mobilize opposition and can recruit those who do not already oppose the death penalty on strictly moral grounds.


Documentary: “Lethal Solution”

From the Death Penalty Information Center’s Web site comes a recommendation of a new resource from the BBC: The documentary "Lethal Solution" chronicles reporter Vivian White’s exploration of the death penalty in the US through the prism of the lethal injection issue. White traveled across the US to execution chambers where lethal injection executions are carried out and interviewed participants from a wide variety of perspectives.

The documentary features judges, doctors, and men on death row. White interviewed the family of a man whose execution lasted 34 minutes and a lawyer who witnessed that event, vividly recalling the details. He spoke with the doctor who first proposed the lethal injection system, and to the judge in California who recommended that medically-qualified people should be present at executions to ensure a humane death. In the California case, two doctors walked out of the execution chamber when they realized they might have to assist in the killing. The execution was called off.

The full 48-minute documentary may be viewed on the BBC Web site here.


Former Warden Opposes Death Penalty

Jeanne Woodford, the former warden of San Quentin prison in California, has written an Op-Ed piece for the Los Angeles Times, "Death Row Realism, Do Executions Make Us Safer?" Her answer is “No.”

She writes that she “worked in corrections for 30 years, starting as a correctional officer and working my way up to warden at San Quentin and then on to the top job in the state -- director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. During those years, I came to believe that the death penalty should be replaced with life without the possibility of parole.”

She reasons that “If we condemn the worst offenders … to permanent imprisonment, resources now spent on the death penalty could be used to investigate unsolved homicides, modernize crime labs and expand effective violence prevention programs, especially in at-risk communities. The money also could be used to intervene in the lives of children at risk and to invest in their education -- to stop future victimization.”

“To say that I have regrets about my involvement in the death penalty is to let myself off the hook too easily,” she concludes. “To take a life in order to prove how much we value another life does not strengthen our society. It is a public policy that devalues our very being and detracts crucial resources from programs that could truly make our communities safe.”


Murder Rate Declines in Every Region Except the South,
Where Executions Are Most Prevalent

In 2007 the South was the only region of the US that had a rise in its murder rate according to Crime in the U.S., 2007, released by the FBI on Sept. 15, 2008. Over the years the South has consistently had the highest murder rate when compared to the other three regions, the Northeast, the Midwest and the West. In response to the FBI report the Death Penalty Information Center observed that “The South also leads the country in executions: 100% of the executions carried out in 2008 have been in the South and 86% of those carried out in 2007 were in this region. By contrast, the Northeast has the lowest murder rate in the country and the fewest number of executions. The Northeast also experienced the sharpest decline in its murder rate among the four regions, while carrying out no executions in 2006-08.”


D.A. in Texas to Re-Examine Convictions and Possibly Halt Executions

When the current Dallas County, Texas, District Attorney took office he inherited nearly 40 death penalty convictions – cases awaiting execution – from his predecessor. Recent exonerations and problems with the prosecution in those cases has led Craig Watkins to announce that he will be reviewing all of those cases and that no execution will occur until he does. “I don’t want someone to be executed on my watch for something they didn’t do,” said Watkins to the Dallas Morning News. The newspaper added that Southern Methodist University Law Professor Fred Moss said he has never heard of another prosecutor in the country conducting such a review. “It’s really quite extraordinary,” said Moss.


Live Radio Show Covers Issues in Texas Executions

A unique public awareness and education tool has been launched in Texas. Starting at 6:00 pm Central Time on the days that an execution is scheduled in Texas, live coverage and commentary can be heard on the radio and streamed on the internet. Texas’ execution schedule and an archive of past shows are also available.

New Findings Regarding Racial Disparities

Over the years it has been well documented that defendants who kill whites are more likely to get the death penalty than defendants who kill blacks. So when Scott Phillips, a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver, examined several years of court records in Harris County (Houston) in Texas and reached the same conclusion, Adam Liptak, writing in the New York Times (April 29, 2008) called that result “commonplace.” But Phillips, whose research will be published in The Houston Law Review later in 2008, also found what Liptak called a “surprising” result. In Phillips’ words, his findings “challenge conventional wisdom by suggesting that the race of the defendant and victim are both (emphasis added) pivotal…: death is more likely to be imposed against black defendants than white defendants, and death is more likely to be imposed on behalf of white victims than black victims.”


Another Prosecutor Speaks Out Against the Death Penalty

From the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Web site: The ACLU of Northern California has unveiled a new YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-o_HWgatFM) taken from California's ongoing death penalty study commission hearings. The video tells the story of Aundre Herron, a former prosecutor who lost her older brother to murder in 1994. At first Herron wanted revenge; now she speaks out against the death penalty.


Supreme Court Upholds Lethal Injection Protocol

On April 16, 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 7-2 ruling upholding the constitutionality of the lethal injection protocol used by the federal government and nearly all of the 36 states which still have the death penalty. Reacting to the announcement the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP) said the Baze v. Rees decision sidesteps the critical issues surrounding the death penalty debate in the U.S. “The death penalty system was a flawed public policy before the Supreme Court agreed to review Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol,” said NCADP Executive Director Diann Rust-Tierney. “It was a flawed public policy while the Court debated the protocol. And now that the Court has ruled, it remains as deeply a flawed public policy as ever.”

The last execution in the US was in September 2007, marking the beginning of a de facto moratorium while the Court considered the case. As a result of the decision analysts expect execution dates to be set quickly, at least in some states such as Texas. However, many observers are also expecting a wave of new litigation, partly because of the nature of the decision: the 7 votes in favor of the judgment were assembled from 6 different opinions, some of which raised additional questions.

For example, quoting from the syllabus released in connection with the ruling: “Justice Stevens concluded that instead of ending the controversy, this case will generate debate not only about the constitutionality of the … protocol … but also about the justification for the death penalty itself.” To read more please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/us/16cnd-lethal.html?hp or http://www.ncadp.org/news.cfm?articleID=212.


Number of Exonerations Reaches 128

The Death Penalty Information Center maintains a list of all those exonerated from Death Row since 1973. For inclusion, defendants must have been convicted, sentenced to death and subsequently either they were given an absolute pardon by the governor based on new evidence of innocence – OR – their conviction was overturned AND they were acquitted at re-trial or all charges were dropped. The average length of time between being sentenced to death and exoneration? 9.6 years!! To see the list please visit http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=6&did=110.


Maryland Considers the Cost of the Death Penalty

On March 6 the Urban Institute released a study revealing that the average cost to Maryland taxpayers for reaching a death sentence was $3 million, $1.9 million more than a non-death penalty case. The research, covering 162 murder cases between 1978 (when executions resumed in Maryland) and 1999, concluded that seeking the death penalty had cost $186 million more over those years than would have been spent seeking a lesser sentence. While the methods and conclusions were criticized by the top prosecutor in Baltimore County, the state’s busiest jurisdiction for capital cases, the study was praised by a researcher with the New York State Defenders’ Association for being the first of its kind to control statistically for confounding factors. In other words, "(t)he argument goes that ... death penalty cases might be worse or more heinous cases, so that even if they weren't death penalty cases, they still would be more expensive," said Andrew Davies. "But in this study, they've isolated the pure effect of the death penalty on inflating the cost of cases." (emphasis added) To read more visit http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.death06mar06,0,5961444.story or http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=2641&scid=64.


Maryland Senate Committee Hears From Murder Victims’ Families

The Judiciary Committee of the Maryland Senate is once again considering a bill that would repeal the death penalty. A similar measure failed – by one vote – to pass the Committee last year. This year, on the day that the Urban Institute study was released, the Committee heard testimony from some family members of murder victims. "My real life experience has taught me as long as the death penalty is still on the books, it would continue to harm families…There is no such thing as closure," said Kathy Garcia, whose nephew was murdered 20 years ago. To read more visit http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0801413.htm or http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=2649&scid=64 .


Religion and the Death Penalty

“Most Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church oppose capital punishment, though many of their members support it,” says a posting on the Death Penalty Information Center’s Web site, www.deathpenaltyinfo.org. In fact, according to a Pew Forum poll from 2007, the strongest supporters of the death penalty are white evangelicals, with 74% approval. This might help explain why overall support for the death penalty in the United States is at 62% according to that same poll. This also means that faith-based opponents of the death penalty have work to do in their own pews. A successful argument may be found in the results of “a January poll done by NationalChristianPoll.com (which found that) about two-thirds of active Christians who oppose capital punishment are troubled by mistakes in the legal system that could lead to the execution of innocent people.” (Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra in Christianity Today, February 19, 2008) Read her article and get insight from church leaders at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/march/6.20.html.


Will Nebraska Abolish the Death Penalty?

On Feb. 8, 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the electric chair was unconstitutional. Because Nebraska is the only state in which electrocution is the sole means of execution this means that – temporarily at least – Nebraska is without a death penalty. Two days later the Lincoln Journal Star editorialized that the Nebraska Legislature “should take this opportunity to finally get rid of the death penalty." "With the advent of more DNA testing, errors in sending people to death row were shown to be far more frequent than most people believed." Hence, the paper concluded, "the time is ripe to abolish capital punishment in the state.” The last execution to take place in Nebraska occurred in 1997.

(“Abolish the death penalty in Nebraska,” Lincoln Journal Star, February 10, 2008).


The Year of No Executions

2008 marks the 40th anniversary of 1968 – the 1st year in the history of the United States that not a single prisoner was executed. That got Vince Beiser, a California-based writer who often writes on criminal justice issues, thinking about what has happened since then. He observes that “just a few years later, the nation began an astonishing about-face. The Supreme Court reopened the door to capital punishment in 1976, launching an era in which the U.S. didn't just bring back the death penalty, it feverishly embraced it.” Find his essay, “Falling Out of Love with Death,” under Death Penalty Files.


Are death penalty juries fairly representative?

From the Web site of Catholics Against Capital Punishment http://www.cacp.org/whatsnew.html

In a nationwide public opinion poll of 1,000 U.S. adults, 47% of Catholic respondents said “yes” when asked if they believed they would be disqualified from serving on a jury in a death penalty case because of their moral beliefs. The percentages were even higher for two other subgroups of the population who were asked the same question - women (48%) and African Americans (68%).

“This points to a problem of skewed juries that do not represent the country’s diversity,” said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which commissioned the survey. "Jurors in capital cases," he explained, "must be interrogated about their positions on the death penalty. If they are opposed to it in all cases, they will not be permitted to serve. The resultant juries look different than society at large because they will have fewer minority members, fewer women, and none of those who represent one side on this divisive issue."

For more information, visit the Death Penalty Information Center's website at www.deathpenaltyinfo.org.


Supreme Court Case Attracts Much Interest

The Death Penalty Information Center reports that “several amicus curiae briefs have been filed in support of the inmates from Kentucky who are challenging the constitutionality of lethal injections as practiced in their state before the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The amicus (“friend of the court”) briefs have been submitted by law schools, policy institutes opposed tot the death penalty, professionals such as doctors, nurses and veterinarians – the latter argue that “Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol would not meet the minimum standards for the humane euthanization of animals” – and organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch.

The briefs filed by various amici, as well as the Petitioner's brief, are available here. (Source: Death Penalty Clinic, U.C. Berkeley School of Law, Nov. 13, 2007). Oral arguments in the case, Baze v. Rees, are scheduled for Jan. 7, 2008 with a ruling expected by June.


Something to Think About

The November 10, 2007 issue of Newsweek included an article by Evan Thomas and Martha Brant discussing the atmosphere surrounding the death penalty as the nation awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling in Baze v. Rees. They write that “The new reluctance to punish by killing is part of a historical trend” and they ask a cautionary question: will the Supreme Court end up improving the lethal injection procedures and, in effect, raising the standards for killing humans up to those for killing animals?

You can read the article by clicking here: “Injection of Reflection,” Newsweek, November 10, 2007).