Welcome back from spring break, Huskies! I hope you all had a wonderful time regardless of how you spent the week, be it resting and relaxing with your families or going to a tropical paradise and getting drunk for a week. I wanted to return with a fun and easy topic, so with that being said: Let’s talk about the death penalty. As far as punishments for crime go, I must confess, it is not one of my favorites. Recently, it’s had a busy few weeks in the news.
In Georgia, the state is set to proceed with the execution of Willie Pye; he was sentenced to die in 1996 for murdering his former girlfriend, Alicia Lynn Yarbrough. However, his conviction raised several red flags — from Pye’s low IQ score to his trial attorney’s alleged racism toward his own clients.
In Texas, after a prosecutor admitted that his office used false evidence to secure a death sentence of a death row inmate named Areli Escobar, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. However, in a stunning 6-to-3 decision, Presiding Judge Sharon Keller said that they were not bound by the Supreme Court’s decision in her written opinion, clearing the way for Escobar’s execution.
These cases are part of a greater overall trend regarding capital punishment in the United States. For years, the use of the death penalty in the United States consistently declined; death sentences have fallen by about 90% since their mid-1990s peak when more than 300 were imposed every year. In 1999, there were almost 100 executions nationwide; 22 years later, there were only 11. However, due to hardline prosecutors and tough-on-crime governors, that downward trend has begun to reverse. The number of executions nationwide jumped 64 percent in 2022 and increased again in 2023 to a total of 24, the highest in five years.
It’s not just prosecutors and governors who are actively reintroducing the death penalty. Perhaps the most crucial player in the death penalty’s resurrection has been the U.S. Supreme Court. Under the conservative supermajority put in place by President Donald Trump, the justices are far more likely to propel an execution forward than intercede to stop it, including in cases where guilt is questionable, or the means of punishment will result in extreme pain and suffering.
But here’s the thing: It doesn’t have to be this way, nor should it. The death penalty should be outlawed nationally. Taking away life is an ultimate power and I believe that the state should have no right to that power. Alongside my moral disagreement to capital punishment, I have economic objections as well; a study done by the Nevada legislature found the median death penalty case costs $1.26 million. Cases that did not result in the death penalty were counted through to the end of incarceration and were found to have a median cost of $740,000. There are also institutions like The United Nations and European Union who support banning capital punishment.
Currently, 27 states have authorized capital punishment in addition to the federal government. In the United States, the death penalty has long been a part of the ‘law and order’ movement that took hold in U.S. politics at the state and national levels of government starting in the 1980s. Being against the death penalty has been historically labeled as soft on crime — as a result, abolishing the death penalty has proven to be challenging.
During the 2020 campaign President Joe Biden promised to seek a federal ban on the death penalty, however he has since balked on this promise. Meanwhile, as the 2024 presidential campaign has begun to heat up former President — and man who wanted his co-worker hanged — Trump has promised to begin executing drug dealers as a part of his “national crackdown on crime.”
However, here is the thing about the argument that the death penalty deters crime: It’s a nonsense argument. Nationwide and statewide statistics have shown no connection between the use of the death penalty and an overall reduction in crime. There is some hope though, even though there has been an increase over the past 2-3 years of executions: overall public opinion of the death penalty has decreased. According to Gallup, support for the death penalty has fallen from 80% in 1994 to 53% last year. In a separate poll from November of last year, Gallup found that, for the first time, more Americans believe the death penalty is applied unfairly at 50% to 47%.
I anticipate that public opinion on this expensive, unjust, and morally indefensible practice will continue to take a nose-dive. While I am hopeful it will, I am not going to hold my breath on a federal ban anytime soon. We do have an election coming up, which means the inevitable tough on crime rhetoric that has put our country in this position to begin with. Hopefully, the death penalty will die in my lifetime.