Dead wrong

Death penalty should be eliminated

ormer Supreme Court Justice William Brennan once said, "perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent." Illinois Gov. George Ryan apparently, albeit temporarily, agreed. On Monday, he placed an indefinite moratorium on executions in that state until a special commission could reveal why Illinois sentences so many innocent citizens to death. While the move to stop executions was a step in the right direction, the eventual move should be the complete elimination of the death penalty on a national level.

Illinois alone provides a great example of why, even if the death penalty was not deplorable in principle, it certainly is in practice. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, 13 prisoners in Illinois alone have had their convictions overturned. That number is higher than the amount of prisoners executed in that state over the same time period. Last year Anthony Porter came within a mere two days of execution before journalism students at Northwestern University were able to get him released. The last straw occurred this January when Chicago police officer Steve Manning was released after he was sentenced to die on the word of a jailhouse informant.

The problem goes far beyond the borders of Illinois. Since 1971, 85 people who have been sentenced to death have been exonerated across the nation. Those are just the people who made it out alive. Researchers Michael Radelet and Hugo Bedau found 23 cases since 1900 where innocent people were executed. This is not the type of mistake we can afford to make, let alone allow innocent people to make for us. A sentence of life in prison can be lifted, death cannot.

It might be comforting to believe that the system is effective at weeding out the innocent from the guilty because of the high number of innocent people released from death row. But this is not the case. Recent cases in which innocent prisoners were released from death row appear to be accidents rather than triumphs of justice. An episode of "60 Minutes" helped clear Clarence Brandley. Judges did not free Anthony Porter, journalism students did. Inevitably some inmates were not so lucky. We will never really know how many innocent people have been killed as a result of our ignorance. We must make sure that such horrendous accidents never occur again.

Not only is the death penalty given to a surprisingly large amount of innocent people, it is also disproportionately applied to those who are guilty. Several studies done across the country demonstrate that minorities are far more likely to be sentenced to death than white offenders for the same crime. Given the death penalty's racist nature, it is not surprising that it took the release of Steve Manning, a white prisoner, for Illinois to reexamine its killing policies.

The death penalty should be eliminated. While Gov. Ryan should be commended for putting a temporary stay on capital punishment in the state of Illinois, he ignores the fundamental flaws with the death penalty. The ultimate conclusion must be its complete elimination. Besides being administered incorrectly, it is a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and one that our country should abandon.