Dead wrong

Illinois case shows flaws with death penalty

Last week, after eight years of sitting on death row, Ronald James was exonerated by the state of Illinois. Originally convicted for rape and murder, DNA tests proved that Jones could not have committed the crime. The national attention given to Jones' release brings to the forefront the larger question of the state of capital punishment in the United States - and the facts overwhelmingly show that the death penalty is an inappropriate method for punishing criminals.

The problem with the death penalty begins with its discriminatory nature. Without standard national rules dictating when the death penalty should be sought, African Americans are disproportionately sentenced to death. Today, 36 percent of the inmates on death row are black, while African Americans constitute only 12 percent of the nation's population. Similar discrimination is evident when examining the race of the victim in capital punishment cases. 82 percent of death penalty cases in the United States involved white victims.

Further strengthening the case against the death penalty is the number of innocent people on death row. When he was released, Ronald Jones became one of 79 men and women released from death row since the inception of the modern death penalty in 1973. Those numbers equate to one innocent for every seven people executed, a proportion that cannot be tolerated.

While some may argue that these drawbacks are necessary evils to maintain capital punishment, the statistics show that the death penalty is not effective in deterring crime. When states with the death penalty are compared to states without the death penalty, the non death penalty states often have lower murder rates. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, in 1997, the average murder rate per 100,000 people in death penalty states was 6.6 people, while in non-death penalty states the average was only 3.5. While the drawbacks to capital punishment should not be tolerated under any circumstances, they become even more ridiculous as capital punishment continually proves to be ineffective.

If capital punishment must continue, at least for the time being, improvements must be made to combat discrimination and the number of innocent people on death row. Lawmakers can start by guaranteeing better legal representation for defendants in capital cases. Currently, most defendants in capital cases, too poor to hire their own lawyers, are given court-appointed lawyers. These lawyers are often underpaid and inexperienced. In fact, some states limit the compensation a court-appointed attorney can receive in a death-penalty case to under $2,000. This obviously results in substandard legal representation and increased false convictions. Lawmakers should also institute mandatory DNA tests when applicable. Something as simple as this could have spared Ronald Jones eight years on death row and most likely many other inmates their lives.

But even with these improvements, capital punishment should not continue. Disregarding the looming moral issues, the fact remains that capital punishment is discriminatory and ineffective. Rather than spend their time wasting often innocent lives, lawmakers should look for alternative methods to punish criminals.

05-24-99