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Sunday, March 25, 2007
Law - Chicago Tribune editorializes against death penalty
"Abolish the death penalty" writes the Chicago Tribune today. The editorial begins by stating that it has "long been the position of this editorial page that the government should have the legal right to impose capital punishment--the death penalty." It continues:
A Tribune editorial in 1952 called the death penalty "the most powerful deterrent to other criminals." In 1976 this page said, "The danger of executing an innocent person is often cited, but we think unjustifiably."That last sentence sounds chilling today, in light of evidence in recent years of scores of cases in which government has wrongfully convicted defendants and sentenced them to death. The evidence of recent years argues that it is necessary to curb the government's power. It is time to abolish the death penalty.
We have learned much, particularly with advances in DNA technology, about the criminal justice system's capacity to make terrible mistakes. These revelations--many stemming from investigations by this newspaper--shake the foundation of support for capital punishment.
Who gets a sentence of life and who gets death is often a matter of random luck, of politics, of geography, even a matter of racism. Mistakes can occur at every level of the process. * * *
The system is arbitrary, and the system just plain gets it wrong. In the three decades since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S., more than 120 people have been released from Death Row after evidence was presented that undermined the case against them. In that time Illinois has executed 12 people--and freed 18 from Death Row.
This newspaper has done groundbreaking reporting on cases that suggest innocent people have been executed. * * *
Even when the government convicts the right person, it can horribly botch the punishment. In December, it took Florida authorities 34 minutes to end the life of Angel Nieves Diaz because a poorly trained executioner incorrectly inserted a needle into his arm. The blunder prompted then-Gov. Jeb Bush to halt executions until the state improved its lethal injection procedures. * * *
Society's standards of justice and punishment continue to evolve. In the early 1900s, states began to substitute the electric chair as a more humane method of execution than the gallows. In the 1980s, lethal injection began to replace the electric chair and firing squads. Now lethal injection is coming under more scrutiny as evidence grows that it subjects the condemned to a great deal of pain. Eleven states have halted executions while they examine their lethal injection procedures.
In the last five years, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute juveniles and the mentally retarded.
New Jersey placed a moratorium on executions in 2005, in part because of legislators' concerns about irreversible mistakes. A special commission in New Jersey has recommended abolishing the death penalty and replacing it with life imprisonment without possibility of parole. The commission cited, among other reasons, the high cost of prosecuting and carrying out the sentence in a capital case. That far exceeds the cost of trying a defendant and keeping him locked up for life. * * *
When it acknowledged widespread problems in its system of capital punishment, Illinois prompted a nationwide soul-searching. Illinois can now lead the country by recognizing those errors will not be sufficiently addressed, that the state cannot have moral certainty that new injustices won't be heaped atop old ones.
Research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment has produced conflicting results over the years. But with the small number of instances--less than one-half of one percent of all murderers are executed--it seems that if capital punishment ever did serve to stop violence, it does not do so now.
Illinois already has the necessary alternative to death: life without possibility of parole. It is not a comfortable existence. It can mean life in a Supermax prison, where inmates spend 23 hours a day alone in 7-by-12-foot cells.
The evidence of mistakes, the evidence of arbitrary decisions, the sobering knowledge that government can't provide certainty that the innocent will not be put to death--all that prompts this call for an end to capital punishment. It is time to stop killing in the people's name.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 25, 2007 09:23 AM
Posted to General Law Related