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Apaao pxccutions: Death penalty unfair, illogical
Published: December 3, 2012 Updated 2 hours ago
A court threw out Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol, but the state has revised the rules and wants
to resume executions at the Eddyville prison.
2004 Associated Press file photo
Death penalty unfair, illogical and costly
By Brian Cooney
Kentucky's use of the death penalty deserves the harsh criticism it has lately received from the American Bar
Association, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights and an Oct. 24 editorial in The New York Times. We
should follow the lead of the 17 U.S. states that have abolished capital punishment and the 133 countries that are
abolitionist by law (97) or in practice (36).
These countries include Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and all of those in Europe except the
oppressive regime in Belarus. According to Amnesty International, even the Russian Federation has had a
moratorium on executions since 1996.
Last December, the ABA released the results of a two-year study by its Kentucky Assessment Team on the Death
Penalty. The team included eight distinguished Kentucky jurists, two of whom were retired state supreme court
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Abandon executions: Death penalty unfair, illogical and costly |Op-Ed|K... _ http://www.kentucky.com/2012/12/03/2429547/abandon-executions- death...
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judges. They unanimously recommended halting executions until "serious problems" were addressed. Among their
disturbing findings:
WSixty percent of death sentences overturned on appeal — a very high error rate that creates a real possibility
of executing innocent people.
HINo legal requirement for retaining evidence (including DNA) for as long as a defendant is incarcerated.
MInconsistent, arbitrary application of the death penalty in similar cases across different Kentucky jurisdictions.
Mlnadequately trained, poorly paid and overworked defense attorneys appointed to handle capital cases. In 10 of
78 cases, the defense attorneys were subsequently disbarred.
The team’s survey found that 62 percent of likely Kentucky voters supported a moratorium on executions. In an
editorial occasioned by the ABA report, the Herald-Leader also recommended a moratorium, although it continued
to support the death penalty in principle.
On Oct. 17, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, citing the findings of the ABA committee, sent to each
member of the General Assembly and to the governor a resolution calling for outright abolition. It was this
resolution that prompted the New York Times editorial also calling for abolition.
Why abolition rather than a moratorium to give us time to eliminate the abuses? Even reform of the death penalty
system cannot rule out executions of innocent people. The injustice of a wrongful conviction can never be
rectified if the convicted person is killed.
We have to ask ourselves what good we accomplish by executing murderers rather than imprisoning them for life
without parole (a sentence available in Kentucky). There is no evidence to suggest that the death penalty has a
greater deterrent effect than a life sentence.
As the Death Penalty Information Center points out, "Consistent with previous years, the 2010 FBI Uniform Crime
Report showed that the South had the highest murder rate. The South accounts for over 80 percent of
executions. The Northeast, which has less than 1 percent of all executions, tied with the West for the lowest
murder rate."
So the death penalty doesn’t make us any safer. But some may think it’s the only appropriate penalty for murder.
Yet there is no more reason to kill killers than there is to torture torturers, batter batterers or sexually assault
those who assault sexually. In civilized societies, such penalties are seen as degrading even to those who
administer the punishment.
With the progress of civilization, societies have done away with penalties such as torture, execution, amputation
and whipping. They have replaced them with fines and prison terms. The requirement of just retribution is satisfied
by having a schedule of increasingly severe fines and prison terms. The more severe the crime, the greater the
fine or time in prison.
Moreover, a death-penalty case (from pre-trial to execution) is much more expensive than the combined cost of
trial and incarceration when the sentence is life without parole. This is due to longer trials, more lawyers and
experts for both defense and prosecution, mandatory appeals and other measures required by the U.S. Supreme
Court to avoid unjust executions.
The cost of the death penalty in Kentucky hasn't yet been thoroughly analyzed, but there are detailed studies from
other states. As reported in The Economist, these studies provide differing estimates of the added cost of a
death-penalty case in different states, ranging from $500,000 for Kansas to $2 million in Maryland.
The death penalty doesn’t make us safer. J ustice doesn't require it. It’s also exorbitantly expensive. We should
abolish it.
Brian Cooney is emeritus professor of philosophy at Centre College.
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