| Hannah Richey Contributing Columnist [email protected] |  |
The death penalty is an archaic and inhumane form of punishment and needs to be abolished. It disproportionately affects Black defendants and is an unreliable deterrent.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, people of color make up 43% of all executions and 55% of people on death row currently.
This disproportionate application of the death penalty is one of many reasons for it to be abolished.
Many defendants are eventually found not guilty of the crime they were sentenced to death for. The National Academy of Sciences found that 4% of death row inmates were and are innocent.
Even one innocent inmate out of every death row inmate is enough to stop using the death penalty. There is no greater good achieved through execution.
Gallup has observed a growing number of people not in favor of the death penalty, with 41% of Americans being against it.
Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed was set to be executed on Nov. 20 after being convicted in 1998 for the murder of a white woman by an all-white jury.
Since the conviction, there have been multiple new pieces of evidence worth examining that point to Reed’s innocence. However, it wasn’t until Nov. 15 that he was granted a stay of execution.
Rodney Reed was lucky in that he was able to get a crowd rallied behind him to help search for evidence of his innocence. There was also a massive social media campaign launched by the Innocence Project to stop his execution.
Every other innocent death row inmate is not so lucky.
In a civilized society, there is no room for doubt when someone is going to be killed by the state. There is, however, no doubt that innocent people have been executed for crimes they did not commit.
The disproportionate impact the death penalty has on people of color, particularly Black people is a residual of Jim Crow and the practice of lynching.
The larger issue is that this is not a mistake in the system. This is how it was intended to work.
There is a fundamental flaw in the idea of imprisoning people for the rest of their lives and killing them in the name of the state.
It shows a complete disregard for human life. A life for a life is an outdated and dangerous ideology.
The judicial system is an unequal playing field not just by race, but by the power held in the courtroom.
Prosecutors hold an inordinate amount of power by determining the charges against defendants and their sentencing recommendations are taken very seriously by judge and jury.
If the defendant has a public defender, they hold very little power in the courtroom. Public defenders are often overworked and in a capital murder case they have very little time or ability to help their defendant.
There is no doubt the death penalty is not applied fairly and the tough of crime policies of the United States is killing innocent people. In no uncertain terms is there any reason a civilized society should be killing its citizens.
