Every month brings more evidence that the death penalty is inherently unworkable. It is so fundamentally flawed that it cannot be reformed and must simply be abolished.

• In April U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff stated in writing that he was preparing to find the federal death penalty law unconstitutional on the grounds that innocent people were being sent to death row "with a frequency far greater than previously supposed." He gave the federal government until May 31 to present arguments to the contrary. The order would pertain only to the federal death penalty law and a limited geographical area.
• In April the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment issued its long-awaited report. Gov. Ryan created the Commission two years ago when he declared a moratorium on executions after it was revealed that Illinois was releasing more people from death row because they were actually innocent than were being executed. The 14-member Commission – which included a broad mix of death penalty supporters and opponents – found an overwhelming number of defects and injustices at each step in death penalty cases. They concluded that if we are going to have the death penalty, we would have to do it correctly rather than sloppily and unjustly. Almost all of their report’s 85 recommendations were unanimous. Implementing them would make the death penalty even more cumbersome and expensive than it is now. Would the death penalty collapse under its own weight?
• June 29, 2002, will mark the 30^th anniversary of Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court case that ruled the death penalty unconstitutional because it was too arbitrary and inconsistent to provide real justice. States rewrote their death penalty laws to tighten up the criteria and procedures. Now – 30 years later – we still see similar patterns of gross inconsistencies based on race, economic class, geography, and other variables. The Supreme Court members have changed, and the current ones tolerate such injustice. However, more and more experts and public opinion as a whole are recognizing that the death penalty is inherently unworkable, despite attempts at reform.
• Public opinion is indeed shifting. Polls show that public support for the death penalty – while still a majority – has dropped to the lowest level in 23 years. When the survey questions offer viable alternatives (e.g., life without parole and with working in prison for restitution for the victims’ families), death penalty support drops further.
• Sister Helen Prejean’s petition calling for a global moratorium on executions received 3.2 million signatures from 145 countries worldwide, including 5,540 signatures from Washington state.
• In the U.S. the number of executions might have peaked in 1999 at 98. The number dropped 85 in 2000 and dropped to 66 in 2001. (Analogously, the government and electric utilities continued to actively promote nuclear power plants for years after the number of new nuclear power plants had peaked, so we should recognize that official policies often lag behind public opinion.)
• The Olympia FOR’s Committee for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and the Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty are working to abolish it once and for all. Contact our Olympia group at 943-4076 alismcurtis@earthlink.net or the statewide coalition at (206) 622-8952 info@abolishdeathpenalty.org http://www.abolishdeathpenalty.org

We are at a turning point in history. Now is the time when every person counts. Please help!

web posted August 4, 2002, by Jean Buskin, Seattle Chapter, bb369@scn.org

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