The death penalty is poised for a comeback. Not the practice of capital punishment itself -- which is very much alive and well, especially in states such as Texas -- but the political, hot-button wedge issue of sending people to death could return. And it could force President Obama to take a stand and pick a side.
Throughout modern U.S. history, the death penalty has proven a big political issue. Examples of more high-profile and controversial executions include Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who in 1953 became the first American civilians put to death for espionage charges. Ted Bundy, who confessed to murdering 30 women, was put to death in Florida in 1989. And Timothy McVeigh faced a federal execution in 2001 for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which left 168 dead, including 19 children in a daycare center.
Politicians have manipulated the issue of state-sponsored killing to appear tough on crime. In 1992, Arkansas governor and then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton flew home to watch the execution of Rickey Ray Rector, a 40-year-old, mentally-impaired black man who was convicted of murdering a black police officer.
Clinton, who once opposed the death penalty in his youth, was influenced by events 4 years earlier, when then-Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis lost the 2008 election. Dukakis had appeared soft on crime when asked during a debate if he would support the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered. His response was "I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime."
But lately, as a political issue, capital punishment has not received as much attention in the media. And it has largely faded from public consciousness, even as executions have continued despite troubling questions over its use, and the role of DNA evidence in exonerating the innocent. Since 1973, 138 prisoners in 26 states have been released from death row after evidence proved they were innocent, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. They spent an average of 9.8 years behind bars for a crime they did not commit.
According to Amnesty International, more than 2/3 of the world's nations have abolished the death penalty. Most of the advanced world has done away with the practice. And the U.S. is among the top 5 countries that execute its citizens, putting America in league with China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
The application of the death penalty in America speaks to a history of violence, particularly racial violence. It is curiously coincidental that executions are prevalent in the Southern states, the former Confederacy, where dehumanization of black folks had been accomplished through slavery, Jim Crow lynching, and unequal justice meted out by a kangaroo court system.
With poor, black and brown defendants most likely to receive a death sentence -- often based on a lack of evidence, witness coercion, racial discrimination and inadequate legal representation -- it is no wonder that some refer to capital punishment as "legal lynching." And mob justice is the practical result in an inherently broken system that believes in expediency over affording due process and determining one's guilt or innocence.
A number of recent events have once again placed executions in the forefront. For one, on September 21, Georgia is set to execute Troy Davis, who has been on death row for 2 decades for the 1989 killing of a police officer, despite no physical evidence tying him to the crime. 7 of the original 9 witnesses in the case recanted or contradicted their stories, and three of those say their statements were coerced by the police.
Source: The Grio, Sept 15, 2011
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