What if I told you that I had a product that would make neighborhoods safer, and still hold violators accountable for their criminal acts? What if I told you, that while there were a few bugs to work out, I could deliver on the product's promises?
You would probably be convinced that what I was selling you was something valuable, and want to invest.
But what if I came to you thirty-five years later and told you that I really couldn't prove the product worked. And at best, the outcomes were equivocal and contradictory. That where the investment was used most, neighborhoods were less safe. And where the product was rarely or never used, neighborhoods seemed to be safer than others.
What if I said, Oh, by the way, we're not doing such a good job of matching the product with the right people? In fact, we've had 138 failures, but it's too late to issue a recall. And, we can't explain it, but race, class and geography control the way in which the product is marketed and used.
Would you still want to invest? Your original decision to back my product might have been reasonable. But now, all these years later, with a miserable track record of error -- you would likely, rightfully send me packing.
A report released recently by the Death Penalty Information Center shows the bankruptcy of the death penalty enterprise.
"Struck by Lightning: The Continuing Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty Thirty-Five Years After Its Reinstatement in 1976," concludes that the more than three-decade long effort to make the system fair has failed. Factors such as race, wealth and geography play a greater role in determining who faces the ultimate punishment than the crime itself or the character of the defendant. Consequently, the death penalty's value has declined dramatically. Even the nine Supreme Court Justices who once approved the process now believe that its problems are intractable and argue that the death penalty should be abandoned.
Another study, by Lake Research Partners found that a majority of the public supports abolishing the death penalty in favor of alternative punishments. This isn't surprising because 69 percent of Americans are convinced the death penalty is applied unfairly.
Even the most ardent supporters of capital punishment concede that it is not a matter of whether, but when the death penalty will be repealed. The momentum is building. In fact, four states -- Illinois, New Mexico, New Jersey and New York have renounced capital punishment in the past five years. The handwriting is on the wall -- the death penalty is a failed, antiquated experiment on its way out.
It is obvious from "Struck By Lightning" that the responsible thing to do is to pull the plug on the death penalty venture and replace it with alternative sentences. We can still hold people accountable for the harm they do without violating our collective values of fairness and intelligent public policy. We can channel resources directly to programs that keep neighborhoods safer and provide for victims of crime.
Two items in the news today give these observations special currency. The first is that today, the Illinois repeal bill takes effect. The Illinois experience is instructive because policymakers worked harder than most to get it right. They studied the administration of the death penalty for two years and then passed legislation to fix the problems. Eleven years later, still finding that problems persisted they opted not to throw good money after bad.
Also in the news today is the imminent release of a Mississippi man from prison after being convicted of capital murder for mistakenly shooting a police officer. The police were breaking into his house in a forced-entry drug raid. But the police were at the wrong house. And Cory Maye thought that thugs were breaking in -- he shot at the intruders to protect his sleeping daughter, killing one of the police officers. A lethal combination of race and class ( Officer Ron Jones Jr. was white and the son of the Police Chief. Cory Maye is black) turned a terrible series of mistakes and tragedy into something else altogether. It was only after lawyers in Washington DC learned of the case in a blog that Maye's luck changed -- hardly a ringing endorsement for the system.
We've given the death penalty a very generous trial. But the product doesn't work. It's time to recall it and put it on the shelf forever.