Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Editorial: Review state death penalty systems
Halt executions until their weaknesses are addressed -- or abolish the inhumane practice forever.
From the RoundTable blog
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An American Bar Association report citing problems in state death penalty systems has been unjustly criticized as reflecting an anti-death penalty agenda.
The lawyers' organization, which has not taken a position on the death penalty, raised concerns about systemic failures serious enough to warrant a nationwide halt on executions, at least temporarily.
The timing is appropriate. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to review the constitutionality of lethal injections already has slowed the number of executions, creating an unofficial national moratorium on lethal injections.
But the issues raised by the ABA report deserve as much scrutiny as whether the current lethal injection procedure constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
The ABA for years has been concerned about how fairly and accurately the death penalty is administered. Its call for a moratorium on executions was first raised 10 years ago.
The problems the organization cites in its report are not new: failure to protect death row inmates against inadequate counsel; inadequate access to experts and investigators; flawed collection and preservation of DNA evidence.
A significant number of jurors in capital cases failed to understand that alternate life sentences would keep the convicted in prison until they died.
In separate reviews of death penalty systems in eight states, the ABA found alarming racial disparities in capital sentencing.
In Pennsylvania, a state with an 11 percent minority population, 68 percent of death row inmates are minorities. In Tennessee, a review of capital sentencing concluded that people who killed whites were more likely to receive the death penalty than those who killed blacks.
Capital punishment cannot possibly be applied fairly and consistently as long as death sentences are imposed in such an arbitrary and discriminatory way. The ABA is right to call for review and reform -- and a moratorium.
Perhaps a moratorium would eventually lead to the most just outcome of all: the permanent repeal of the inhumane and ineffective death penalty.
