death penalty news April 8, 2005
NEW YORK: Putting death penalty on Death Row Talk about a mercy killing: Albany is finally on the verge of putting the death penalty out of its misery. It was last summer that the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, pulled the plug on capital punishment in New York. Since then, the death law has lingered in a persistent vegetative state, not officially dead yet, but pretty darn close. Come this Tuesday, the Codes Committee of the Assembly is set to pass the legislative equivalent of a DNR, a do-not-resuscitate order - effectively deep-sixing one of the most pointless and most expensive laws in the history of crime fighting in New York. Who says Albany never learns from its mistakes? "So much has changed in 10 years," David Kaczynski was saying from the capital yesterday. "In 1995, we didn't have all this experience with DNA. We didn't have the questions about innocent people being killed. Ten years ago, crime was such a bigger emotional issue." Kaczynski runs a small but smart lobbying group called New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty. He was opposed to the state killing people when that was a lonely position and his cause seemed hopeless. He's just as opposed today, as he stands at the edge of an extraordinary victory. He can give you a thousand reasons - practical, moral, financial, political and personal - why capital punishment is a dreadful idea for a place like New York. Or anywhere, actually. "Support for the death penalty has cooled significantly," he said, and the polls do seem to back him up. Remarkably, a Siena College survey last month found that only 29 percent of New Yorkers support death for first-degree murderers. Fifty-six percent said life in prison without parole is a more fitting punishment. Asked straight up if the death penalty has a place in New York law, 42 percent said yes, 46 said no. Voter backlash? What voter backlash? "People are learning that when you try to play God, it is hard to get it right," Kaczynski said. "Hard to make sure you have the right person every time. At the same time, we now have what was unavailable prior to 1995 - a sentence of life without parole. We have a fallback position to the death penalty. We can protect ourselves without shedding blood, without risking the death of an innocent person. All of that put together has affected public opinion and that has changed the politics." It would be naive, I suppose, to say that some moral argument has changed the hearts and minds of New York legislators. If history is any guide, that's an awful lot to expect from the people we send to Albany. It may just be that some assemblymen who once pandered to the public's death wishes are now reversing course, pandering to the public's pleas for restraint. Or maybe it was the death of an eloquently anti-death-penalty pope. Whatever! What a difference 10 years can make! If you doubt this, remember what happened to Mario Cuomo. A principled death-penalty opponent who vetoed every capital-punishment bill that crossed his desk, Cuomo paid the ultimate electoral price in 1994. After a campaign all about death, he was beaten by the pro-death Gov. George Pataki, who promptly gave crime-weary New Yorkers the death penalty they seemed so much to crave. Of course, no one was ever killed under that law, even though seven people were sentenced to die. The state's last execution was in 1963, under an earlier death penalty that was also found unconstitutional. And here's a depressing tabulation for a state with budget woes: We've now spent $200 million for 10 years worth of a death penalty that didn't kill anyone. Trial and appeal costs. Death-row construction and staffing. Prosecutor training and expert witnesses. Can't anyone think of better ways of fighting crime? More cops on the street? More drug-treatment slots? Job training, anti-gang programs or remedial reading classes? Irony alert: Cuomo's son, Andrew, the former federal housing secretary, is among the stronger voices working to keep the death bill in the ground where it belongs. And Pataki, nearing the end of his third term, doesn't seem to have the clout left to resurrect the death penalty. This could all be settled by next week. Joseph Lentol, the Brooklyn assemblyman who chairs the Codes Committee, says the death penalty just doesn't have the votes anymore. Lentol himself has gone from pro- to anti-death. And David Kaczynski is waiting anxiously through the weekend for the proper burial. "We know the results now," he said. "We've had this death penalty that sentenced seven people and didn't kill anyone. Nobody in Albany is gonna get punished for being against the death penalty now." (source: Ellis Henican Column, Newsday.com) USA: It's high time to kill the death penalty As we mourn Pope John Paul II's passing, it is important for us to reflect upon "the culture of life" that embodied his papacy. An important part of that culture of life included unwavering opposition to capital punishment. For example, in a homily given at the Papal Mass in St. Louis, Mo., he said: "A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away ... I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary." Pope John Paul II reflected an increasing sentiment around the world that life is sacred and that governments should not have the power to end life, that even people who have done terrible things have value. More than half the world has now abolished the death penalty, with only a few nations -- China, Iran and the United States among them -- that kill their own citizens. Thus, we ally ourselves with some of the world's worst human rights abusers when we kill in the name of justice. There are good reasons for the worldwide trend toward abolition of the death penalty. Evidence mounts that we repeatedly execute innocent people. Carefully constructed scientific studies fail to show that the death penalty deters violent crime. Indeed, some studies suggest that its brutalization effect may actually serve to increase homicides. Study after study shows that race is the strongest factor in determining who lives and who dies. It is no wonder that the majority of all executions occur in former slaveholding states. Moreover, it costs far more to execute someone than it does to imprison them for life. No good empirical grounds for supporting the death penalty remain. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rejects a religious basis for the death penalty and "regards the question of whether and in what circumstances the state should impose capital punishment as a matter to be decide solely by the prescribed processes of civil law. We neither promote nor oppose capital punishment." Given that religious authorities do not require the death penalty, and given the lack of secular reasons for it, we are morally compelled to reassess. Even those few who seek only an "eye for an eye" must hesitate at a system that repeatedly strikes the wrong eye. Failure as a society to reconsider the propriety of the ultimate sanction would be a failure to seriously consider the moral implications of our collective responsibility to seek a more humane world. On March 1 the Supreme Court ended our isolation on the issue of the juvenile death penalty. Now, in the entire world, only Somalia, which has no functioning central government, claims the right to execute children. It is both amazing and reprehensible that a nation that regards itself as a shining example of human rights should be next to last on so important a human rights issue. That we have not begun serious discussion of capital punishment's broader moral deficiency is itself a moral failing. And it is a moral failing -- one that lessens us as a people. In a democracy, it is we who are responsible, who must ultimately be held to account, who are coarsened and diminished by our common moral bankruptcy. Winston Churchill wrote, "The mood and temper of the public with regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country." Similarly, our treatment of those who murder tells us a great deal about ourselves. It is time to consider whether we are serious about building a culture of life, one that respects even the worst of us and renounces killing as an instrument of state power -- not only because we are concerned about all people, including human beings who happen to have done bad things, but because we are concerned about our own moral health. It is time to end the death penalty. (source: The Daily Herald; Alan W. Clarke is an associate professor of integrated studies at Utah Valley State College. Laurelyn Whitt is a professor of philosophy and integrated studies at Utah Valley State College.)
