What We Can Learn from the National Moratorium

John Holdridge, DIRECTOR, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION'S CAPITAL PUNISHMENT PROJECT

Executions in the United States have essentially been put on hold in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's announcement in late September that it would decide the constitutionality of the lethal injection protocol used by almost all death-penalty states. With Texas leading the way, there is a good chance that few if any executions will take place until the Court issues a decision next spring.

This historic suspension of capital punishment across the nation presents a unique opportunity to ask ourselves a few simple questions: Why does this matter? What does this de facto moratorium mean for our society? And what is wrong with the nation's most severe sanction?
For starters, the moratorium means that, for the time being, we can rest assured knowing that no innocent people will be executed by our government; It means that, between now and next spring, the U.S. will at long last be sending the right message to the world – that cool, deliberate and lethal violence cannot be justified and that the condemned are human beings capable of reformation.

Finally, the moratorium offers some simple truths that illustrate why the government must not have the power to decide who lives and who dies:
We do not need the death penalty to keep us safe. The inmates whose lives are now at least temporarily spared do not pose any danger to society - they will remain in prison, many in solitary confinement. Furthermore, the moratorium will not increase the murder rate based on credible studies showing the death penalty has no deterrent effect. That's why a 1995 survey of U.S. police chiefs found that a majority does not believe that the death penalty is an effective law enforcement tool.

We don't need capital punishment to exact retribution against offenders. Life imprisonment without the possibility of release is clearly retributive. More than half the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice; 12 states in the U.S. do not have capital punishment; and more than two-thirds of the counties in U.S. have never returned a death sentence. The people living in these places have accepted that life imprisonment constitutes sufficient retribution.

Capital punishment is an extraordinary waste of taxpayer dollars. An act of state-sanctioned killing costs far more than life without the possibility of parole. And that is true even though society is getting the death penalty on the cheap as a result of woefully underfunded public defender programs in almost all death-penalty states. Tragically, the death penalty is often imposed not on the worst defendants, but on the defendants with the worst lawyers.
Capital punishment is a failed government program and a colossal stain on our criminal justice system. The administration of capital punishment in this country is fraught with error. Since 1973, more than 123 innocent death-row inmates have been exonerated; in addition, eight men have been executed even though there is a very good chance they were innocent. Moreover, despite popular myths, DNA testing cannot ensure that only the guilty are executed because DNA evidence is available in only 10 percent of murder cases.

The death penalty is arbitrary and capricious. Receiving a death sentence is like being struck by lightning - only 2% of all murders are punished with the death penalty, even in death-penalty states. Furthermore, the use of capital punishment is tainted by racial, economic and geographic discrimination. In general, a defendant is four and a half times more likely to get the death penalty if he kills a white person than if he kills a black person. And virtually everyone on death row is poor.

The current de facto moratorium on the death penalty presents a rare opportunity to reflect on why we remain the only advanced Western democracy to retain this punishment. If we seize this moment, we will reach only one conclusion: there is no good reason to have capital punishment and many good reasons not to.