Five reasons to oppose death penalty

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   I quote after http://www.nodeathpenalty.org:

1. The death penalty is racist.

The 1972 Furman V. Georgia case abolished the death penalty for four years on the grounds that capital punishment was rife with racial disparities. Over twenty five years later, those disparities are as glaring as ever. 

African Americans are 12% of the U.S. population, but are 43% of prisoners on death row. Although Blacks constitute 50% of all murder victims, 83% of the victims in death penalty cases are white. 

Since 1976 only ten executions involved a white defendant who had killed a Black victim. 

In all, only 37 of the over 18,000 executions in this country's history involved a white person being punished for killing a Black person. 

A comprehensive Georgia study found that killers of whites are 4.3 times more likely to receive a death sentence than killers of Blacks. 

More than 75% of those on federal death row are non-white. Of the 156 federal death penalty prosecutions approved by the Attorney General since 1988, 74% of the defendants were non-white. 

The crime of being poor and Black

Girvies Davis spent 16 years on death row. He was sentenced to death in 1978, accused of being an accomplice in a robbery in which someone else shot and killed the victim. There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime. He was convicted purely on the basis of a signed "confession" -- a confession in which he also confessed to 9 other murders known to have been committed by others. He was illiterate at the time he supposedly penned the confession. Girvies said that police took him out for a ride and threatened to shoot him "while trying to escape" if he didn't sign the confession. The police admitted that they took him for a drive, claiming it was to search for evidence! Despite this information, Illinois gov. Jim Edgar refused to commute Girvies Davis sentence or allow a retrial, and he was executed on May 17, 1995. He died because he was poor and Black.

2. The death penalty punishes the poor.

If you can afford good legal representation, you won't end up on death row. 

Over 90 percent of defendants charged with capital crimes are indigent and cannot afford to hire an experienced criminal defense attorney to represent them. They are forced to use inexperienced, underpaid court-appointed attorneys. 

In most states the pay for court appointed attorneys is so low that lawyers assigned to capital cases will lose $20-$30 an hour if they do an adequate job. In Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi defense attorneys are paid a flat fee of $1,000 -- which translates into about 5 dollars an hour for most lawyers. 

In 1996 Clinton cut federal funding to 20 legal resource centers which provided counsel to poor defendants. Now, all of the centers that received this funding have shut down. 

Many capital trials last less than a week -- hardly enough time to present a good defense. 

The wealthy don't get punished

Between 1971 and 1977, an estimated 500 people burned to death in Ford Pinto crashes. Ford Motor Company knew that the Pinto's rear gas tank tended to puncture even in low-speed crashes. But Ford made a calculation that it could save millions of dollars if it opted to pay for damages and medical bills in Pinto explosion cases rather than install an $11 safety device that prevented the gas tank ruptures. Ford made a calculated decision to sell a lethal product, yet it was acquited of criminal charges. But even had they been convicted, there would be no Ford Motor Company executives sitting on death row. When it comes to capital punishment, our justice system can be compared to a fishing net in the ocean which has the peculiar quality of catching the minnows and letting the whales pass through!

3. The death penalty condemns the innocent to die.

Since 1976, more than 100 people have been released from prison after being sentenced to death despite their innocence. In other words, 1 in 7 of those on death row have been freed after being fully exonerated. 

The book, In Spite of Innocence, notes that between 1900 and 1992 there have been 416 documented cases of innocent persons who have been convicted of murder or capital rape -- a third of whom were given a death sentence. The authors discovered that in 23 of these cases, the person was executed. 

Illinois has released as many from death row as it has executed since 1976. As a result, an Illinois Supreme Court Justice said, "Despite the courts' efforts to fashion a death penalty scheme that is just..., the system is not working. Innocent people are being sentenced to death... If this is the best our state can do, we have no business sending people to their deaths." 

President Clinton has called appeals by death row prisoners "ridiculous" and "interminable." He signed a law that limits prisoners to a single habeas corpus appeal within one year of conviction. Under this law, many of those released from death row due to innocence since 1976 would be dead. 

"I am an innocent man."

Leonel Torres Herrera was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1982 murders of two police officers. New evidence was brought forward which proved that Herrera's brother committed the murders. By Texas law, which states that any new evidence must be presented within 30 days of the conviction, this new revelation was irrelevant. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Texas ruling, arguing that Herrera's claim of "actual innocence" was in itself not a constitutional claim for which judicial relief could be granted. Thus, though the court agreed he was innocent, Leonel was executed on May 12, 1993.

4. The death penalty is not a deterent to violent crime.

An FBI study shows that states which have abolished the death penalty averaged lower murder rates than states which have not. 

More executions, more murders

Texas moved from its first execution after Furman in 1982 to becoming the national leader in the use of the death penalty. During the same period, the state also experienced a tremendous growth in its violent crime rate. From 1982 to 1991, the national crime rate rose by 5%. In the same period, the Texas crime rate rose by 24%, and the violent crime rate in Texas rose by nearly 46%. In Texas, more people die from gunshot wounds than traffic accidents. A strong case can be made that, rather than decreasing murder, capital punishment actually has a brutalizing effect on society, contributing to an increase in murder.

5. The death penalty is "cruel and unusual punishment."

In the decades since Furman 13 people have been executed who were under the age of 18 when they committed the crime for which they were convicted. Seventy more juveniles are currently on death row awaiting execution. 

Since Furman 34 mentally retarded inmates have been executed. 

RICKY RAY RECTOR died in order to help Bill Clinton get elected President. Ricky was black and mentally retarded. In 1992, Clinton left the campaign trail and returned to Arkansas to oversee Ricky's execution so he could show that he was "tough on crime." Ricky had absolutely no understanding of what was about to happen to him. As a part of his last meal, he requested pie for dessert, but explained he would eat it when he came back. He was executed on Jan. 24, 1992.

I think it speaks for itself. Nothing to add. The third point especially makes me mad!   

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