Crime & Justice, Headlines, Human Rights, North America

Q&A: New Victory Against Death Penalty in U.S.

Aline Cunico interviews RICHARD DIETER, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center

NEW YORK, Mar 10 2011 (IPS) - After trying unsuccessfully for years to design a flawless death penalty system, Democratic Governor Pat Quinn signed a bill Wednesday abolishing capital punishment in the state of Illinois.

The new bill represents a milestone in the United States, where capital punishment is still used in 34 states, costing exorbitant amounts of taxpayer money and, critics say, carrying the strong risk that an innocent person will be executed.

In an interview with IPS, Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, explains what this new victory represents to the abolition movement in the United States, and why the death penalty should be abandoned in all the other states.

Q: What will this represent to the abolition movement in the U.S.? A: It will be a major milestone in a long trend away from the death penalty in the U.S. No state has studied the death penalty and its problems more carefully than Illinois. For the people and their representatives to come to the conclusion that the death penalty simply cannot be fixed and should be ended would be a strong statement for the rest of the country that the death penalty may be in its final phase.

In other states, executions and death sentences are on the decline. Yet enormous amounts of money continue to be spent on a programme that returns nothing to society.

Q: Why do some states still have the death penalty and is the system effective? A: The death penalty in the U.S. has a long history, going back 400 years. It is difficult to uproot such a tradition all at once. But many states are considering legislation to abolish the death penalty and it’s clear that other states will follow Illinois in abolishing it. States that have a lot of executions may be defensive about that process and reluctant to say that those lives should not have been taken.

Few believe that the death penalty is effective. The main argument for keeping it is the belief that certain crimes can only be punished by the death penalty. But as more states prove that even when punishing for horrendous crimes, they are better off without the death penalty, the strength of that argument fades.

Q: Is it more expensive for the state to keep inmates in prison for life, or to apply capital punishment? A: The death penalty system is far more expensive than a system that punishes the worst offenders with life in prison. The legal costs of preparing for a death penalty trial, the trial itself, the appeals, and the higher expense of death row overwhelm the costs of even 40 years in prison.

A death sentence, counting all the related expenses, costs the taxpayer about three million dollars, whereas a life sentence costs about one million dollars.

Q: There could still be executions in Illinois, since the law won’t be applied retroactively. What do you think should happen to the prisoners who have been waiting on death row for so many years? A: The law in Illinois will not be retroactive and current death row inmates may still face execution. The governor could commute their death sentences to life or courts could find their death sentences to be disproportionate, given the state’s vote to abolish the death penalty. In any case, they would likely remain in prison for the rest of their lives.