Some thoughts on the death penalty

As of this writing, 130 death row inmates in 26 states have be released from prison since 1973 due to evidence of their innocence.

That is 130 people who were almost killed even though they were innocent. Dale Johnston was one of them.

Nineteen years after he walked off of Ohio's death row and out of prison, Dale Johnston may finally be in a position to clear his name.

With his double murder conviction overturned, Johnston, formerly of Xenia, was freed in 1990 but never exonerated by the state.

Then in December 2008, Chester McKnight pleaded guilty to the crimes and was sentenced to 20 years to life. Another man, Kenneth Linscott, is scheduled to stand trial later this year for his alleged role.

His 1984 conviction and death sentence delivered catastrophic losses to Johnston: He lost his marriage, his freedom, his 53-acre farm and dream house, and any faith he had in the justice system.

With 130 freed due to innocence, one has to wonder how many weren't. How many innocent people have been put to death for crimes they didn't commit?

So why do 36 states (and the Federal government and the military) still have the death penalty? Some claim that it is a crime deterrent. Unfortunately, the statistics do not back this up. At all.

Recent studies in Oklahoma and California failed to find that capital punishment had a deterrent effect on violent crime and, in fact, found a significant increase in stranger killings and homicide rates after the death penalty had been reinstated. (William Bailey, "Deterrence, Brutalization, and the Death Penalty," Criminology, 1998; Ernie Thompson, "Effects of an Execution on Homicides in California." Homicide Studies, 1999)

Need another example?

The murder rate in Canada has dropped by 27% since the death penalty was abolished in that country in 1976. (Amnesty International)

How about this fact:

The five countries with the highest homicide rates that do not impose the death penalty average 21.6 murders per 100,000 people. The five countries with the highest homicide rate that do impose the death penalty average 41.6 murders for every 100,000 people. (United Nations Development Program)

Even if you happen to agree with the penalty of death, the system is flawed enough that we should stop executions and fix the system.

While they make up only 12% of the population, African Americans account for 43% of current death row inmates. ("Death by Discrimination – The Continuing Role of Race in Capital Cases."—Amnesty International, April 24, 2003)

Since 1977, blacks and whites have been the victims of murders in almost equal numbers, yet 80% of the people executed in that period were convicted of murders involving white victims. (Bureau of Justice Statistics)

In North Carolina, the odds of receiving a death sentence were 3.5 times higher among those defendants whose victims were white. (Prof. Jack Boger and Dr. Isaac Unah, University of North Carolina, 2001)

Odds of receiving the death penalty in Philadelphia increased by 38% when the accused was black. ("The Death Penalty in Black and White"—Death Penaly InformationCenter, 1998)

Any system with that level of institutional prejudice is a system that is impossible to support.

But the problems aren't simply racial. Often the difference of whether or not a convicted person will receive the death penalty is based on the location of the crime.

About one-quarter of Ohio’s death row inmates come from Hamilton County (Cincinnati), but only 9% of the state’s murders occur there. (R. Willing and G. Fields, Geography of the Death Penalty, USA Today, Dec. 20, 1999).

Baltimore City had only one person on Maryland’s death row, but suburban Baltimore County, with one tenth as many murders as the city, had nine times the number on death row. (L. Montgomery, Md. Questioning Local Extremes on Death Penalty, Wash. Post, May 12, 2002).

An investigation by seven Indiana newspapers in 2001 found that the death penalty depended on factors such as the views of individual prosecutors and the financial resources of the county. Two Indiana counties have produced almost as many death sentences as all of the other Indiana counties combined. (S. Bend Trib., Oct. 21, 2001).

In 1995, President Bill Clinton spoke at Michigan State University. In reference to the Oklahoma City Bombing, he stated the following:

...But there is no right to resort to violence when you don't get your way. There is no right to kill people who are doing their duty, or minding their own business, or children who are innocent in every way. Those are the people who perished in Oklahoma City. And those who claim such rights are wrong and un-American.

Timothy McVeigh was later executed for that crime. The problem is that this sends a seriously mixed message: how can one emphatically claim that there is no right to resort to violence, there is no right to kill people, and those who claim such rights are wrong and un-American...and then turn around and kill the people responsible. How does the un-American act of murder culminate in the totally American act of killing the person responsible for the un-American act of murder? That is completely illogical.

If murder is wrong, then it is irrelevant who commits the murder. Murder is wrong whether it is committed by an individual or committed by a government. Wrong is wrong.