CHICAGO: When Illinois halted executions six years ago, death penalty opponents thought they glimpsed a way to abolish capital punishment across the United States. But since then, none of the 38 US states that have the death penalty have abolished it, and none of the 12 states that do not have it have enacted the punishment, reflecting political paralysis over the issue, experts say.
The paralysis stems from the complications wrought by dozens of exonerations of Death Row inmates, flaws found in the justice system and increasing scorn from countries that brand executions as barbaric.
“A lot of states seem comfortable with a stalemate on the death penalty,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “Executions are rare in most states but they’re not ready to get rid of them.”
The fear of executing an innocent person haunts some who control the death penalty machinery and led former Illinois Governor George Ryan to declare a moratorium on executions and then, in 2003, to clear the state’s Death Row of its 167 condemned inmates.
Ryan, a conservative Republican now on trial on unrelated corruption charges, became an unlikely international celebrity for commuting the sentences in what he called an act of conscience.
The justice system was broken, he said, noting Illinois had exonerated more men on Death Row — 13 at the time and five more since — than it had executed since it resumed executions in 1990.
Ryan’s successor, Democrat Rod Blagojevich, signed into law a raft of measures designed to prevent errors, such as requiring pretrial scrutiny of ‘snitch’ testimony by other inmates and videotaping of police interrogations.
A committee was given until 2009 to determine whether the reforms were working, providing Blagojevich, a death penalty supporter, breathing space to maintain the moratorium. The state’s Death Row now has seven inmates.
Since the death penalty’s so-called modern era began in 1977 with Utah multiple murderer Gary Gilmore’s execution by firing squad, none of the more than 1,000 inmates executed has later been proven innocent.
But several of the highly publicized exonerations, most through DNA evidence, have exposed misconduct by prosecutors or police, ineptitude by defence lawyers, mistaken or lying witnesses, or racial and other biases that critics say plague the system.
Perhaps coincidentally, a year before Illinois’ moratorium was declared, US executions peaked in 1999 at 98. There were 60 last year and five as of the end of January this year, and the Death Penalty Information Center lists 28 tentatively scheduled executions in the next few months.
Polls show nearly two-thirds of Americans support the death penalty, a slimmer majority than in the mid-1990s but larger than in the 1960s. When life in prison without possibility of parole is offered as an alternative along with the death penalty, about half support each form of punishment.
With all but one death penalty state, New Mexico, offering life without parole as an option, juries are meting out fewer death sentences. The number of death sentences dropped to 124 in 2004 from 300 in 1998.
Still, given continued public support for the death penalty it would seem to be an attractive political issue.
Yet it is rarely referred to in stump speeches and it was hardly raised during the 2004 presidential campaign.
“The issue has multiple sides to it, so it’s not so easy to pummel your opponent with it,” Dieter said. “(Politicians) don’t want to be seen abolishing the death penalty permanently but don’t want to be seen as cavalier about it, either.”
The death penalty carries religious overtones and sparks sharp divisions. For example Roman Catholic bishops have voiced strong opposition to the death penalty while the Southern Baptists support it.
Other states’ moves reveal the political murkiness of the issue.
New Jersey last month enacted a one-year moratorium on executions to study its system. California rejected a moratorium but is studying the makeup of its bulging Death Row. Massachusetts’ lawmakers handily voted down a proposal to bring back capital punishment.
Legislators in New York and Kansas put off fixing flaws in their death penalty laws identified in court rulings that effectively suspended all executions. New Hampshire is considering simultaneous proposals to expand and to abolish the death penalty.
In Texas, executions are practically routine.
Iowa is one of a dozen US states without the death penalty and a lone Republican legislator has been stymied in his drive to enact one for sexual predators who murder.
“We have a glaring weakness in this state in terms of deterring this type of sexual offence,” Senator Larry McKibben said, who displayed the photograph of one young victim on an easel on the senate floor. “It would be my sincere hope that we would implement the death penalty but never use it.”
Rob Warden of Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions in Illinois, which has teamed with the Innocence Project to win many exonerations, scoffs at the notion that executions deter crime and says implementing the death penalty costs at least three times as much per inmate as imprisoning murderers for life.
“Ultimately, we’re going to abolish the death penalty. It’s not rational to be spending all this money for no reason,” Warden said. “South Africa abolished it 10 years ago. It doesn’t exist in Europe. It’s not consistent with 21st-century morality.”—Reuters
