Abolishing the Death Penalty in the Era of Hope


The outcome of the election for President, and for state and local
legislators, not only demonstrates how much Americans want change. It
confirms Americans' commitment to our fundamental values of equality
and fairness. It gives me reason to hope that we will soon see the
end of the death penalty.

The American public simply cannot maintain the death penalty and be
true to these deeply held values. There are too many instances of
innocent men and women being sentenced to death, of people of color,
both defendants and victims, being treated more harshly, and dealt
with as if they were expendable.

This is why New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007, and why
we fully expect other states will follow.

Americans can't square our values of what is right and lawful with
the operation of the death penalty in practice. As we learn more
about it, support for the death penalty has dropped over the years,
to 63%. Support declines even further when we learn about
alternatives to the death penalty, and are given the opportunity to
choose life rather than death.

With the current economic downturn, all government programs --
including the death penalty -- should and will be evaluated on
whether they deliver on their promises and whether the "benefits"
they confer are worth the cost. Measured against this stricter
standard, the death penalty comes up short. Having failed to deliver
on the promise of accurately selecting only the guilty to receive the
punishment, it also fails miserably at being cost efficient, and
worse, it siphons precious resources from helping crime victims heal
and move on with their lives, or preventing the tragedy of murder
from occurring in the first place.

Americans would be appalled to discover how much of their tax dollars
support the flawed, ineffective death penalty system. For example, it
costs Florida $51 million a year to enforce the death penalty above
what it would cost to sentence first degree murderers to life in
prison without parole. Imagine how that money could be spent on
better ways to ensure public safety, such as hiring and training more
police to protect our neighborhoods, and enabling them to purchase
the equipment they need to do so, such as updated patrol cars, and
more efficient information technology systems,

As newly elected and incumbent state legislators take their seats in
statehouses next year, they should remember that constituents expect
them to provide leadership and creative thinking on a range of social
problems, including criminal justice reform and the death penalty. To
paraphrase one commentator' s post-election analysis, Americans want a
more pragmatic and concrete approach to our nation's problems, not
rhetoric and symbolic nods in that direction.

An honest assessment of the problems associated with the death
penalty is long overdue. The National Coalition to Abolish the Death
Penalty and its more than 100 affiliates looks forward to engaging
state legislators in a reasoned, thoughtful discussion about capital
punishment and its alternatives.

Diann Rust-Tierney is the Executive Director of the National
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

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