Last week, a 53-year old man was executed with a triple injection in
Tennessee’s Nashville prison. A jury had found him guilty of the murder of a policeman and sentenced him to death.
The defense claimed that the victim was probably killed by another officer’s accidental shot. No policeman saw the defendant shoot; no ballistic analysis was conducted; and the only witness against the defendant subsequently retracted his testimony.
According to The Economist, more than 120 persons were wrongly sentenced to death by American courts since 1973. Nevertheless, a majority of Americans continue to favor death as the ultimate penalty for lawbreakers. According to Gallup polls, 80 percent of those questioned in 1994 favored capital punishment but that number dropped to 67 percent in 2003.
Opposition to the death penalty has increased, as DNA tests showed more and more wrongly convicted persons on death row. In a stunning reversal of its long-standing defense of capital punishment, the Chicago Tribune recently wrote: “The evidence of mistakes, the evidence of arbitrary decisions, the sobering knowledge that governments 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 people in the people’s name.”
In Texas, which since 1976 has executed 370 persons--more than any other state--, the Dallas Morning News followed the lead of the Chicago Tribune: “We do not believe that any legal system devised by inherently flawed human beings can determine with moral certainty the guilt of every defendant convicted of murder. That is why we believe the state of Texas should abandon the death penalty--because we cannot reconcile the fact that it is both imperfect and irreversible.”
Pennsylvania’s Sentinel, which serves the metropolitan Harrisburg area, decried the state’s lengthy appeals process which caused 221 persons to be on death row at present: “We are left with a grueling process that in the end only guarantees more suffering for the victims’ families and for society at large, as faith in the justice system erodes.”
Worldwide, the number of countries without a death penalty for any crime rose from only 16 in 1977 to 89 in 2006. The number of executions worldwide fell by more than 25 percent from 2005 to 2006.
In 2006, Amnesty International reported 1,591 executions, compared to “at least” 2,148 in 2005, in the 25 countries with the largest number of death penalty convictions. Ninety percent of all executions occurred in China (1,010), Iran (177), Pakistan (82), Iraq (65), Sudan (65). and the US (53). In Africa, death sentences were carried out in only four countries. In the Americas, only the United States has executed anybody since 2003.
Popular disapproval of the death penalty is least noticeable in China and the Muslim world. Clearly opposition to capital punishment is strongest in Europe. Its abolition is a condition of membership in the European Union and the Council of Europe. To be a member of the Council, Russia had to cease executions. Belarus will not be admitted until it fulfils abolishes capital punishment.
Among Americans, too, there is mounting evidence that injustice in the administration of the death penalty is having a profound impact on judicial and popular opinion. The U.S. Supreme court recently ruled against the execution of juveniles and mentally retarded defendants.
Yet, while Amnesty International and the Roman Catholic Church fight to abolish the death penalty, Southern Baptists and law enforcement groups, among others, are pushing hard to retain it. Significantly, moreover, in 37 of the 50 states and in the federal courts, capital punishment legally remains the ultimate punishment.