30th Anniversary of Gregg vs. Georgia: The beginning of the modern era of America's Death Penalty
"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person".
Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
"No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".
Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
July 2, 2006 will mark the 30th anniversary of the Gregg v. Georgia ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that reinstated the death penalty. Since 1976, over 1000 condemned prisoners have been executed, while about 3,400 sit on death row.
The 1976 Gregg ruling marked the beginning of the modern period of capital punishment. Just four years earlier, the Supreme Court had declared an effective moratorium on the death penalty when it ruled, in Furman v. Georgia, that all existing death penalty statutes were unconstitutional. The justices found that the prevailing pattern of arbitrary imposition of the death penalty could no longer be tolerated. In the words of Justice Potter Stewart, "These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual" - - they are capriciously, freakishly, and wantonly imposed. The Supreme Court commuted the sentences of all 629 people on death row.
But when the court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 by recognizing new statutes in Georgia, Florida, and Texas, it in effect declared that all the problems that it had recognized four years earlier would now be resolved through implementation of the new procedures contained in the statutes of these three states, statutes that established "guided discretion" for imposing a death sentence.
Thirty years later, we are convinced that the Gregg ruling has not lived up to its promise. Defendants continue to be convicted and sentenced to death after being represented by inadequate counsel. Racial disparity in sentencing continues to mar the system. And many death row inmates clearly suffer from mental retardation or mental illness.
Even more dramatically, over 120 people have been released from death row in recent years because they were wrongfully convicted. In January 2000, after 13 death row prisoners were found to have been wrongfully convicted in Illinois since 1977, during the period that 12 other were executed, Illinois Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium in his state. On January 10th, 2003 Governor Ryan pardoned four death row inmates who were sent to death row on the basis of confessions extracted through the use of torture.
Amnesty International regards the death penalty as a human rights violation and is opposed to all executions without reservation. We consider the death penalty a form of torture and urge its outright abolition. At the same time, we urge everyone, opponents and proponents of the death penalty, to take a sober and well-informed look at how the death penalty is administered in the United States. The history of both the Furman and Gregg rulings indicates where the United States has gone wrong.
