Following multiple botched executions in Oklahoma, the Supreme Court asked the state to halt executions until the court could review the process.
This week, the soon-to-be outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder proposed taking it a step further at a National Press event.
Holder called for a nationwide moratorium on executions until “fundamental questions” are asked.
This case in particular has been focused on whether lethal injection protocols are consistent with the Constitutional abolishment of cruel and unusual ?punishment.
But I would argue the court — and the country as a whole — should cast a wider net on the death penalty ?issue.
The legal developments of recent years regarding capital punishment should be enough to justify a more comprehensive review of the death penalty and how it is used.
Though questioning whether lethal injection is a proper way of carrying out the death penalty is important — as is questioning the virtue of having the death penalty at all — I would point to a question with much larger implications.
Is the death penalty levied unfairly against the poor and minorities?
And if it is, can we justify its existence at all?
Since Northwestern University’s law school began evaluating and defending capital punishment cases through the Bluhm Legal Clinic, revelations about the legitimacy of death penalty convictions have been called into question.
The center has helped to exonerate several inmates and found 5.6 percent of convictions in Illinois alone were eventually overturned during a 25 year period.
Further, questions of why some receive the death penalty and others don’t for seemingly similar crimes have arisen.
A study published in the Journal of Criminal Law in 2009 examined claims that courts unfairly applied the death penalty to the poor.
It found the ability to hire a lawyer significantly reduced and sometimes entirely eliminated the chance of a death sentence. The study also emphasized that, though there was significant anecdotal evidence of discrimination against minorities, there has been little effort to ?investigate the claims.
The discrimination against the poor and minorities by our justice system is a much more important question than whether protocols are appropriate or whether the death penalty should be legal on moral grounds.
Our justice system is built on a presumption of innocence and commitment to the principle that it is better to let a guilty man go free than to convict an innocent man.
We all understand mistakes happen and our justice system is not perfect. But when a person’s life is at stake, a just society can’t settle for “good enough.”
To justify the existence of such a punishment, we need to ensure it isn’t handed out solely to those who can’t afford a good lawyer, and we need to ensure facts, not race, drive convictions.
Until we can guarantee the principles of our justice system are upheld in capital cases, we can’t justify killing our own people.
thompjak@indiana.edu
