SUPPORT FOR DEATH PENALTY SOFTENS IN US

By Mark Sommer and - - Reprint | | Print |

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ARCATA, CALIFORNIA, Mar 1 2006 (IPS) - Support for capital punishment is starting to soften even among some long-time death penalty advocates, writes Mark Sommer, director of the US-based Mainstream Media Project and host of the award-winning internationally-syndicated radio programme \’\’A World of Possibilities\’\’. In this article Sommer writes, alongside Iraq, Iran, and China, the US remains the sole advanced democracy still cleaving to what much of the world views as state-sponsored homicide. At 64 percent, Americans\’ support for the death penalty is 20 percent higher than Canada and 40 percent higher than Australia. Nonetheless, it is at its lowest level in 27 years and is lowest among youth, indicating that a shift may be in the offing. Surprisingly, this shift is occurring most of all among some of those who until now have been adamantly opposed to abolishing the death penalty: Republican officeholders. The reason they are changing their minds is less ideological than pragmatic — a realization that too often the wrong man is executed and the exorbitant cost of prosecution is stealing resources from law enforcement programmes of more proven effectiveness.

When death row inmate Tookie Williams sought a final reprieve from execution this January, California Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger expressed uncharacteristic anguish before making the decision not to intercede. A founder of the notorious Crips gang in Los Angeles, Williams claimed to have undergone a remarkable transformation in prison. His exhortations to youth not to join gangs had earned him several Nobel Prize nominations.

The governor’s tremors were likely less due to qualms of conscience than to a queasy sense that support for capital punishment is starting to soften even among some long-time death penalty advocates.

Alongside Iraq, Iran and China, nations whose human rights records it vociferously condemns, the US remains the sole advanced democracy still cleaving to what much of the world views as state-sponsored homicide. At 64 percent, Americans’ support for the death penalty is 20 percent higher than Canada and 40 percent higher than Australia. Nonetheless, it is at its lowest level in 27 years and is lowest among youth, indicating that a shift may be in the offing.

Surprisingly, this shift is occurring most of all among some of those who until now have been adamantly opposed to abolishing the death penalty: Republican officeholders. The reason they are changing their minds is less ideological than pragmatic — a realization that too often the wrong man is executed and the exorbitant cost of prosecution is stealing resources from law enforcement programmes of more proven effectiveness.

In recent years, DNA testing has resulted in the exoneration of 14 death row inmates. In all, 114 people nationwide have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence, sometimes within hours of their scheduled execution. These exonerations have sown doubt about the fairness of the entire death penalty prosecution system. Following the lead of Illinois Republican Gov. George Ryan, several states have instituted moratoria on executions pending comprehensive reviews of their death row cases.

Still more troubling is the racial bias embedded in death penalty prosecutions, as it is in the entire US criminal justice system. In an American population that is just 12 percent African American, 42 percent of the more than 3,100 inmates on death row are black and just 45 percent white. Of those actually executed, 34 percent are African American. In Pennsylvania and Texas, minorities comprise 70 percent of death row inmates. A 1990 US government report found that ”those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks”.

Indeed, since 1976, 209 black defendants were executed for killing whites while just 12 whites were executed for killing blacks. The reasons for this stark imbalance are not far to seek. The great majority of prosecutors in every state are white and in many jurisdictions blacks are barred from jury service for frivolous reasons. Black defendants lack the financial resources to hire their own attorneys and must often settle for overwhelmed, under-qualified public defenders.

To those for whom racial discrimination is not a compelling concern, the cost of prosecuting capital punishment cases is more persuasive. With complex pre-trial motions, lengthy jury selections, and the protracted appeals required to assure due process, capital trials cost up to six times more than other murder trials. In Texas, which leads the nation in executions, the average death penalty case costs taxpayers 2.3 million dollars, three times the price of placing someone in solitary confinement for 40 years. In California, given that just 11 death row inmates have been executed since capital punishment was reinstated thirty years ago, federal and state taxpayers have paid 250 million dollars for each execution. The burden of death penalty prosecutions falls most heavily on counties with few resources to bear them.

Ironically, a single capital trial can force early prisoner releases and law enforcement cutbacks, measures that only increase the likelihood of higher crime rates.

For some former hard-line death penalty advocates, such ironies are starting to trump ideology. ”This may seem strange coming from a man known as the `hanging judge’ of Orange County,” wrote Donald McCartin, a retired Superior Court judge from right Republican Southern California, ”but I think it’s time to abolish the death penalty. Legal debates result in staggering expenses and years of irresolution. In times of huge budget deficits, too much money is being squandered in murder trials. Human error, inequities, biases and personal ideologies create the problems that have caused my rejection of the death penalty. because these frailties will not magically vanish, capital punishment cannot be implemented with any sense of balance or fairness.”

And finally, no survey to date has definitively proven that capital punishment actually deters capital crimes. A 1996 UN study reported that ”research has failed to provide scientific proof that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment.” On the contrary, programmes like community policing, restorative justice, alternative sentencing, and educational opportunities within the prison system appear to be more effective both in preventing crime and reducing recidivism. such programmes cost far less than capital prosecutions, yet they remain unaffordable as long as death row cases dominate the docket.

But if not the death penalty, what other form of justice should be meted out to convicted murderers? Death penalty opponents advocate life in prison without parole combined with restitution to the victim’s family. When offered this option, Americans’ support for the death penalty plunges to just 41 percent.

Given that the US is currently governed by politicians from a state of fervent death penalty devotees, it could be some time yet before the country as a whole relinquishes the practice, though individual states may jump-start the process. If and when the death penalty is abolished, it will be less because soft hearts prevail than because a hard look at the costs and benefits persuades a pragmatic majority that public safety is better served by alternative sentencing that is less costly and more effective in deterring capital crimes. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)