Washington lawmakers should act to abolish executions in the 2013 legislative session

A few months ago, as spring reached its apex, Connecticut’s Gov­er­nor, Dan­nel Mal­loy, a Demo­c­rat, signed a bill out­law­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. “Con­necti­cut joins six­teen oth­er states and the rest of the indus­tri­al­ized world by tak­ing this action,” he not­ed as he signed the bill into law.

The signs are obvi­ous for any­one who looks. Cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is in decline. How long will it take Wash­ing­ton to join Con­necti­cut and the rest of the indus­tri­al­ized world? If you believe, as we do, that abol­ish­ing exe­cu­tions is an imper­a­tive action for a civ­i­lized soci­ety to take, your next step should be to join the Wash­ing­ton Coali­tion to Abol­ish the Death Penal­ty and learn more.

The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is one of a small hand­ful of coun­tries that con­tin­ues to exe­cute its own cit­i­zens (though, as men­tioned, some states have out­lawed this bar­bar­ic prac­tice). With forty-three exe­cu­tions in 2011, the U. S. ranks fifth — behind Chi­na, Iran, Sau­di Ara­bia, and Iraq. Those are not coun­tries whose human rights records deserve emulation.

We should all be alarmed by the fre­quen­cy with which inno­cent men and women are sen­tenced to death. When Illi­nois out­lawed exe­cu­tions in 2011, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor Pat Quinn declared that it was “impos­si­ble to fix a sys­tem that wrong­ly con­demned twen­ty men who were lat­er found to be innocent.”

He was speak­ing only of Illi­nois; since 1973 one hun­dred and forty peo­ple in twen­ty-six states have been released from death row with evi­dence of their inno­cence. Why do peo­ple get unjust­ly con­vict­ed? Because human beings make mis­takes. And all judges and jurors are human beings.

Some­times the pros­e­cu­tion with­holds excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence, some­times sus­pects are coerced into mak­ing false confessions.

Some­times eye­wit­ness­es make mis­tak­en identifications.

Plea bar­gains can effec­tive­ly bribe wit­ness­es into mak­ing false tes­ti­mo­ny. All of these things are doc­u­ment­ed to hap­pen with sig­nif­i­cant frequency.

Thank­ful­ly, many pros­e­cu­tors have begun to real­ize that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment serves no use­ful pur­pose. That may help explain why exe­cu­tion rates in the U.S. have been falling pret­ty steadi­ly since a high of nine­ty-eight in 1999.

But as exe­cu­tion rates drop, the moral­i­ty and con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment con­tin­ues to be debat­ed. With exe­cu­tion rates a frac­tion of a per­cent of the mur­der rate, appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty is most­ly a mat­ter of chance. Some­what like “being struck by light­ning”, as Jus­tice Pot­ter Stew­art said in 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty.

Its arbi­trary appli­ca­tion was the main con­sid­er­a­tion in that rul­ing, and the hope that a sys­tem had been devised to pre­vent it was the ratio­nale for its return in 1976. But that hope has proved false.

It’s time to abol­ish exe­cu­tions once and for all.

Anoth­er key con­sti­tu­tion­al issue is whether the death penal­ty actu­al­ly serves the goals of ret­ri­bu­tion and deter­rence. The sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence is a resound­ing NO. In study after study, states with­out cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have con­sis­tent­ly low­er mur­der rates. In 2010, the aver­age mur­der rate in death penal­ty states was 4.6, while that in states with­out the death penal­ty was 2.9 per 100,000. The exis­tence of the death penal­ty cheap­ens the val­ue of life.

Each time a state enacts leg­is­la­tion out­law­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, it brings us clos­er to the day when the U.S. will be able to join the rest of the civ­i­lized world in respect­ing the sanc­ti­ty of human life. Wash­ing­ton has a choice. We can help bring about mean­ing­ful and pos­i­tive change, or we can let change be brought to us.

For me, the choice is obvi­ous. I hope it is for you, too.