In 2011, in California, a broad coalition of organizations called Taxpayers for Justice put the abolition of the death penalty on the 2012 ballot, in part because of the high cost documented by a recent study that found the state had already spent $4 billion on the death penalty. resulting in 13 executions. The group includes more than 100 law enforcement officers, as well as lawyers for victims of crime and exonerated persons. Among them is former Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti, whose office prosecuted dozens of landmark cases during his 32 years as prosecutor. He said: „My frustration has more to do with the fact that the death penalty is useless and very expensive.“ Don Heller, a Republican and former prosecutor, wrote: „I am confident that at least one innocent person could have been executed under the current death penalty law. That was not my intention, and I do not think it was the intention of the electorate, which overwhelmingly passed the death penalty law in 1978. We did not consider this terrible possibility. Heller stressed that he is not „lenient on crime,“ but that „a life without parole protects public safety better than a death sentence.“ In addition, he said money spent on the death penalty could be better spent elsewhere as California cuts funding for police and prosecutors. „Paradoxically, the cost of the death penalty deprives of funds that could be used to improve public safety.“ [34] For 40 years, Amnesty International has campaigned worldwide for the abolition of the death penalty. In 1976, the Supreme Court moved away from abolition, ruling that „the death penalty does not always violate the Constitution.“ The Court ruled that the new death penalty laws „contain objective standards to guide, regularize and make the death penalty process rationally verifiable.“ (Gregg v.
Georgia, 428 U.S. 153). Subsequently, 38 state legislatures and the federal government enacted death penalty laws based on those upheld by the Court in the Gregg case. Congress has also enacted and expanded federal death penalty laws for peacetime espionage by military personnel and various categories of murder. Both due process and fundamental justice require that the judicial functions of trial and sentencing be performed in principle fairly, particularly when it comes to the irreversible punishment of the death penalty. In murder cases (since 1930, 88% of all executions have taken place for this crime), there is substantial evidence that courts have sentenced some people to prison while others have been sentenced to death arbitrarily, racially and unjustly. These results cannot be explained by relevant non-racial factors such as criminal record or type of crime, as these were taken into account in the Baldus and GAO studies mentioned above. They lead to a very unsavory conclusion: In the courts of this nation, even today, the murder of a white person is treated much more harshly than the murder of a black person. Of the 313 people executed between January 1977 and the end of 1995, 36 had been convicted of murdering a black man, while 249 (80%) had killed a white person. Of the 178 white defendants executed, only three had been convicted of murdering people of color.
Our criminal justice system essentially reserves the death penalty for murderers (regardless of race) who kill white victims. Racial discrimination was one of the reasons why the Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional in the Furman case. Half a century ago, Gunnar Myrdal reported in his classic American Dilemma (1944) that „the South applies the death penalty most widely and black criminals have far more than their share of executions.“ A study of the death penalty in Texas shows that the current system of the death penalty is a consequence of the „racist legacy of slavery.“ Between 1930 and the end of 1996, 4,220 prisoners were executed in the United States; More than half (53%) were Black. In Maryland, a comparison of the cost of capital litigation with and without the death penalty for years concluded that a death penalty case „costs about 42% more than a non-death penalty case.“ In 1988 and 1989, the Kansas legislature voted against reintroducing the death penalty after being told that its reintroduction would cost more than $11 million in the first year.59 Florida, with one of the most populous death row in the country, estimated that the actual cost of each execution is about $3.2 million. or about six times the cost of a life sentence. (David von Drehle, „Capital Punishment in Paralysis,“ Miami Herald, July 10, 1988) Amnesty`s work to abolish the death penalty is also supported by its incredible activists, who are committed to fighting this abhorrent practice. Lethal injection is currently the primary method of execution in 28 of the 29 states that allow executions. Texas was the first state to use the method in 1982. With two historic votes, the Virginia General Assembly brought the Commonwealth poised to become the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty and passed separate bills ending the state`s death penalty and ..
[8] See Brandi Grissom, Texas Will Change its Lethal Injection Protocol, Tex. Tribune, July 10, 2012, www.texastribune.org/texas-dept-criminal-justice/death-penalty/texas-changing-its-lethal-injection-protocol/; Rob Stein, Ohio executes inmates using a new drug-using method of capital punishment, Wash. Post, March. 11, 2011, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/10/AR2011031006250.html; David Beasley, Georgia Delay Execution Amid Drug Protocol Change, Reuters, 17 juillet 2012, www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/17/us-usa-execution-georgia-idUSBRE86G14L20120717; Rhonda Cook & Bill Rankin, State Changes Lethal Injection Protocol, Reschedules Execution, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 17. juillet 2012, www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/state-changes-lethal-injection-1479424.html; Steve Eder, A Texas First: Single-Drug Used to Execution Inmate, WSJ Law Blog, blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/07/19/a-texas-first-single-drug-used-to-execute-inmate/; Idaho Switches Execution Protocol to Single-Drug Lethal Injection, Spokesman.com, 18 mai 2012, www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise/2012/may/18/idaho-switches-execution-protocol-single-drug-lethal-injection/. « La peine de mort est coûteuse, inefficace et moralement injuste. We have known for a long time that this does not act as a deterrent to violent crime. The National Academy of Sciences reports that one in 25 people on death row is actually innocent,“ said Rep. Cicilline. „It`s time to abolish the death penalty in the United States.“ The death penalty was eventually reinstated in New York, then found unconstitutional and not reintroduced, partly for cost reasons. The death row syndrome gained international recognition during the extradition proceedings of Jens Soering, a German citizen arrested in England in 1989 and charged with murder on American soil. [30] Soering argued, and the European Court of Human Rights accepted, that his extradition to the United States would violate Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
[31] The court stated that in the United States, „the convicted prisoner must endure for many years the conditions on death row and the growing fear and tension of life in the ever-present shadow of death,“ so Soering`s extradition would violate protections against „inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.“ [32] Similar conclusions have been reached by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the Supreme Court of Canada. [33] Twenty-one years later, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 (2008), the Supreme Court expanded its judgment in Coker and ruled that punishment was categorically unavailable for child rape cases in which the victim lives. Given that only six states in the country allowed execution as a punishment for child rape, the Supreme Court found that the national consensus made the death penalty disproportionate in such cases. The death penalty does not solve the problem of criminality in our society. The threat of the death penalty leaves the underlying causes of crime unaddressed and ignores the many political and diplomatic sanctions (such as asylum treaties for international terrorists) that could significantly reduce the incidence of terrorism. Whether states use one or three drugs for enforcement, all major lethal injection drugs are rare due to manufacturers` efforts to prevent the use of their products for executions[17] and European Union restrictions on the export of drugs that can be used to kill. [18] As a result, some state executioners sought dubious ways to obtain the deadly chemicals from other states and foreign companies, including a pharmaceutical wholesaler operating behind a London driving school.
[19] These behind-the-scenes deals, which were surprisingly approved by the United States.