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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Mary Kate Cary
Exonerations and cost outweigh the benefits of capital punishment
Back in the day, I worked as a spokesperson for Attorney General William Barr, and one of my duties was to oversee the speech-writing operation. I can't tell you how many get-tough, pro-death-penalty speeches I worked on with our conservative team of writers, defending the death penalty as preventative, deterrent, retributive, and proportionate -- all the usual reasons. Even though I considered myself pro-life, I had no problem with the death penalty at all. It was part of being tough on crime.
Then, a few years after we left office, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin died. His obituary highlighted his writings on "the seamless garment of life," in which he argued that one can't be simultaneously anti-abortion and pro-euthanasia, a big issue at the time of his death. It was an epiphany of sorts for me, as I suddenly saw the moral inconsistency of my pro-death-penalty stance: Pro-life means pro-life in all things, not just abortion. To me, that meant I couldn't be pro-life and pro-death penalty anymore. I can respect those who might come to a different conclusion; reasonable people can disagree when it comes to a question like this. But I decided to stop supporting the death penalty.
Part of what made the decision difficult was that death penalty advocates consider themselves the voice of the innocent victims and their families. It's hard to turn your back on innocent people whose lives have been destroyed. At the time, it seemed that most of the people on death row were vicious killers, proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Not so much anymore.
There are still plenty of vicious killers on death row, but it turns out there may also be some as innocent as the victims. Over the last 35 years, more than 130 people have been released from death row because of evidence of their innocence. From 1973 to 1999, there was an average of three exonerations per year. Between 2000 and 2007, that average rose to five per year.
Since 1977, Illinois alone has exonerated 20 death row inmates, seven of them since 2000. Earlier this month, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn -- who until now supported the death penalty -- signed legislation outlawing capital punishment, making Illinois the fourth state to abolish the death penalty in the last decade, joining New Jersey, New York, and New Mexico. Overall, 16 states now ban capital punishment, and such bills have been introduced over the last few years in nine more, according to the
Here's the interesting part:
Quinn did not make his decision so much on moral grounds as on the unacceptably high number of wrongful convictions and discriminatory decisions. "I have concluded that our system of imposing the death penalty is inherently flawed," he said. "As a state, we cannot tolerate the executions of innocent people, because such actions strike at the very legitimacy of government."
Over the last decade, the number of death sentences imposed has dropped dramatically. In 1999, 277 people were sentenced to die; in 2009, only 112 were, according to the
Because DNA results are irrefutable, they expose what's wrong with the rest of the case. According to the
As I said, it's hard to turn your back on innocent people whose lives have been destroyed.
It's becoming harder to justify the death penalty in the face of evidence that our system is flawed. It's also becoming difficult to defend financially. According to various published studies, California's death penalty system costs taxpayers anywhere from
For years, people like me thought that being tough on crime meant supporting the death penalty. Times have changed, and it's time for conservatives to get on the right side of the death penalty argument. One can oppose the death penalty and still be in favor of a tough, affordable, accurate, and fair criminal justice system. Knowing what we know now, it just feels like the right thing to do.
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The Conservative Case Against the Death Penalty | Politics
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