On Sept. 21 at 11:05 p.m. Troy Davis was executed by lethal injection in connection with the 1989 murder of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail.
The case garnered national attention because of the doubt surrounding Davis’ guilt.
Though I am not vastly familiar with the specifics of the case, I give my full-throated support to those who fought against Davis’ execution.
My support has nothing to do whatsoever with whether I believed Davis to be guilty or innocent.
I didn’t want Davis executed simply because I don’t want any prisoner executed.
Approximately 9,000 prisoners have been executed by way of the death penalty since 1900 according to information in the National Archive for Criminal Justice Data and the Death Penalty Information Center.
According to a 2010 study by the Innocence Project, there have been 273 post-conviction exonerations cases because of later DNA evidence testing. Of those, 17 death-row inmates were put to death before they were later discovered innocent.
So we know at least 17 innocent people have been executed. And the exoneration figures only go back to 1989, which is when DNA testing became prevalent.
The same study also found that DNA testing is only possible in about 5 to 10 percent of criminal cases.
So, this statistic indicates that untold numbers of people could have been already executed or are currently on death-row and might be innocent.
The justice system isn’t perfect. Sometimes innocent people become incarcerated. And sometimes innocent people die.
This alone should be enough to turn anyone against the death penalty, but let’s explore this practice a bit further.
What about the notion that the death penalty acts as a deterrent for would-be murderers?
Simple logic should dictate that it’s highly unlikely people would reconsider murder because they’re afraid they might get the death penalty. However, let us examine some the statistics on this issue.
When comparing the murder rates of states with the death penalty versus states without it, states without the death penalty typically have a lower murder rate according to data compiled by the F.B.I.
According to a recent study published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 88 percent of criminologists do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent.
The study concluded, “There is overwhelming consensus among America’s top criminologists that the empirical research conducted on the deterrence question fails to support the threat or use of the death penalty.”
What about the costs of trying and executing prisoners?
In the 35 states that still use capital punishment, numerous studies have shown that the costs associated with death penalty cases are staggeringly higher than the cost of those seeking life without parole.
A 2008 study by the Urban Institute found that in Maryland it costs approximately $1.9 million more for trials in which prosecutors seek the death penalty.
An investigation by the Palm Beach Post in 2000 found that Florida spends over $50 million each year to enforce the death penalty, which, considering our state only executes on average two prisoners a year, works out to around $24 million per execution — $23 million more than it would cost to simply imprison them for life.
And where does the United States stand in the world when it comes to the death penalty?
According to Amnesty International, 96 countries have abolished the death penalty, and 34 countries have abolished the death penalty in practice, meaning an execution has not been carried out in the past 10 years.
Besides the United States, Japan and South Korea are the only democracies that still have the death penalty, though South Korea has abolished it in practice, having not carried out an execution since 1998.
Japan typically uses it in only extreme cases of multiple murders with aggravating factors.
The countries that still do regularly carry out death penalty executions are basically a who’s who of non-democratic authoritarian regimes with sordid histories of human rights abuses, countries such as China, North Korea, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Syria, the Congo, the Sudan, Libya and Cuba.
That’s not exactly a list of countries in which I think most Americans wish to be included.
Regardless of all these statistics and facts, ultimately it comes down to this very basic point: to support the death penalty is to support the notion that murder is just.
And we’re not talking about justifiable homicide in the context of defending one’s self or family — we’re talking about the slow, deliberate, premeditated murder of another human being merely for bloodlust revenge.
It’s not what civilized people do. And it’s certainly not what civilized democracies do.
Innocent people get killed; it’s not a deterrent; it costs too much; it’s been abandoned by nearly every other modern democracy, and it condones the notion that murder is just.
It’s high time America abolishes the outdated, barbaric practice of capital punishment and simply institute life in prison without the possibility of parole for convicted murderers.
Davis was the 44th prisoner executed in the United States this year.
W. Paul Smith
Opinions Editor
Cartoon courtesy of Andy Marlette/amarlette@pnj.com
