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Working to Abolish the Death Penalty
The year 2001 marks the 25th Anniversary of the reinstatement of the death penalty by the United States Supreme Court in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976). In 1972, a moratorium was placed on executions in the United States culminating in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), which effectively found all death penalty statutes to be unconstitutional. Four years later, the court reinstated the death penalty in Gregg which purportedly addressed the problems that the Furman decision recognized.
The Furman Decision
The Furman decision was announced on June 29, 1972. By a 5-4 vote, the Court found that the death penalty statutes under review - and by implication, all others in the country - to be cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Justices Douglass, Marshall, Brennan, Stewart and White voted with the majority. Only Justices Brennan and Marshall, however, argued that the death penalty per se violated the Eighth Amendment. The other justices ruled that the capital punishment statutes were unconstitutional because the statutes were arbitrary and capricious and could be applied unfairly. In particular, the justices were worried that the statutes could lead to race and class bias. The dissenting justices, Rehnquist, Burger, Blackmun and Powell, argued that the decision should be left to the legislators and that the death penalty did not offend the contemporary moral standards of decency. Based on this decision, most observers agreed with Jack Greenberg, the head of the Legal Defense Fund, who stated, "There will no longer be any more capital punishment in the United States."
The Gregg Decision
In response to the Furman decision, several states quickly went back to the legislative drawing boards to see if they could devise capital punishment statutes that would survive the Supreme Court's muster. The Supreme Court analyzed several of these new death penalty statutes in Gregg v. Georgia. The Gregg decision was a conglomeration of five challenges to different state statutes. In two of the cases, the state statutes contained mandatory death sentences. In the other three cases, the Court examined the constitutionality of states that had enacted "guided discretion" statutes - where judges and jurors were given guidelines to distinguish between prison and death sentences for those convicted of capital murders.
On July 2, 1976, the Court announced its decision. With another 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court struck down the mandatory capital punishment statutes. The Court, however, upheld the "guided discretion" statutes by a 7-2 vote. Only Justices Brennan and Marshall dissented, sticking to their position that the death penalty, in all circumstances, was an excessively cruel punishment. The other justices ruled that the death penalty did not offend "the evolving standards of decency which mark the progress of a maturing society." Nor could the death penalty be seen as an affront to the "dignity of man," and nor was it seen as "excessive." The justices in the majority saw the death penalty as justified by retribution and the possibility of deterrence. In short, the Supreme Court held that the punishment for death for the crime of murder does not, under all circumstances, violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Why Should the United States Abolish the Death Penalty?
- The death penalty is a human rights violation. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "everyone has the right to life."
- Governments all over the world are doing away with the death penalty. While the world has moved away from the death penalty, recognizing that there is no worthwhile social goal that requires a government to commit state-sanctioned murder, the US continues to accelerate the pace of executions. Each year since the 1976, two more nations have added their names to the list of countries that have abolished the death penalty. A majority of the world's nations have now put an end to capital punishment, and virtually all western democracies are abolitionist states. Today, the United States, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia account for over 80% of the executions recorded by Amnesty International.
- The death penalty has no deterrent effect. In contrast to the claim by the Supreme Court that the death penalty has a deterrent effect and will make society safer, Amnesty International has found that the death penalty does nothing to make society safer. In fact, homicide rates in states with the death penalty are no lower than homicide rates in states that do not maintain the death penalty.
- The death penalty costs more than life imprisonment. Capital punishment is not an inexpensive way to deal with the problem of violent crime. Taxpayers in Texas are spending an average of $2.3 million on each execution - while lifetime incarceration costs from $800,000 to $1 million.
- An innocent person could be wrongly executed. Since 1977 alone, more than 70 condemned prisoners have been released due to credible claims of innocence. And, of the 500 executions since 1997, innocence and wrongful convictions have required the release of one person for every seven executed. Last year in Illinois, Governor George Ryan placed a moratorium on all executions because so many of the prisoners on death row had recently been exonerated.
- The death penalty is arbitrary and capricious. As argued by the justices in the Furman case, the death penalty is unjustly applied on every level - racially, socio-economically and even geographically. A 1998 study of death sentences in Philadelphia found that African American defendants were almost four times more likely to receive the death penalty than were others who committed similar crimes. Meanwhile, over 80% of people executed since 1976 were convicted of killing whites, although people of color make up more than half of all homicide victims in the United States. In addition, 98% of all people sentenced to death could not afford their own attorney. Another shocking reality of capital punishment in the US is the fact that in many death penalty states the death penalty laws make no allowance for those suffering from mental retardation - individuals who often have little or no understanding of the crimes for which they've been charged.
- The death penalty has become less popular in the United States. In a poll taken in early 2000, the Gallup Organization found that only 52 percent of Americans supported capital punishment given an alternative of life-without parole and that overall support for the death penalty was at its lowest level in 19 years. Furthermore, all of the major religious denominations in the U.S. also have found the death penalty to violate their moral standards.
For more information, email the AI Legal Support Network at sbalthaz@aiusa.org.
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