A Blow to the Death Penalty

An article by Adam Liptak in the New York Times today describes how the American Law Institute has given up attempting to maintain an intellectual framework for the death penalty.

A study commissioned by the institute said that decades of experience had proved that the system could not reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness. It added that capital punishment was plagued by racial disparities; was enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers were underpaid and some were incompetent; risked executing innocent people; and was undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.

The death penalty is never just, and it’s time to eliminate it.

January 04 2010 | Society | No Comments »