death penalty news March 4, 2005
USA: Small, Slow Steps Toward Abolishing Death Penalty ?Developed Nation? Needs to Focus on the Living, Not on Killing On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court abolished the sentencing of juveniles, namely 16 and 17-year-olds, to death in the case Roper vs. Simmons. In a 5-4 majority, the Supreme Court cited that these juvenile executions violate the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits any form of ?cruel and unusual punishment.? Several Supreme Court justices stated that international opinion was a factor in their decision?Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, Congo and China are the only other nations that have executed any juveniles since 1990, but even those countries have since renounced this practice. Three years ago, the Supreme Court struck down the execution of mentally retarded inmates. With two rulings that have scaled back the distribution of death sentences, is it possible that a moratorium and eventually abolition of capital punishment will occur in the United States? Let us hope. Now that the Supreme Court has recognized that the death penalty should not be applied to minors and the mentally impaired, they should realize that death sentences should never be handed out because of the grave flaws in the capital punishment system in the United States. Can we endorse capital punishment when 117 innocent people have been sentenced to die since 1976? Can we support a system where a black person kills a white person is 19 times more likely to receive a death sentence than a white person who kills a black person? Can we believe that we are bringing about justice when more than 90 percent of defendants charged with capital crimes cannot afford to hire their own defense attorney and must rely on court-appointed ones, who are often inexperienced, overworked and underpaid? As students worrying about education costs we need to question the efficiency of the death penalty. In California, a death sentence costs an estimated 2 million more dollars per inmate than life without parole, which totals about $90 million extra dollars per year. This state cannot find the money to fund higher education, but it is proposing to build a new death row that will cost an estimated $220 million. What does it say about us as a society when we prefer to fund executions before education? The majority opinion of Roper vs. Simmons quoted Chief Justice Earl Warren from 1958 when he stated that rulings must be judged by ?the evolving standards of decency that mark progress of a maturing society.? The United States should be able to progress with society and give up its title as the only developed country in the world that still kills its own citizens. The death penalty is only about one thing?death. We should end state-sanctioned murder and become a country whose concern is life. (source: Opinion, Daily Californian; Rachel Alison Pringle is a UC Berkeley student.)
