Editorials in papers around the country have noted that many Americans are rethinking the death penalty because it is deeply flawed. Among the recent editorial observations were the following:

New Jersey’s Star-Ledger

Fewer people are being given the death penalty in the United States, according to the Justice Department, which says such sentences are at a 30-year low. Last year, the number of people who were sentenced to die totaled 144.

While these numbers are heartening in that they reflect a decrease in executions, they ought to cause states to rethink the wisdom and fairness of the death penalty altogether.
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Getting sentenced to death has become just what the U.S. Supreme Court, in its landmark 1972 Furman vs. Georgia ruling, said it should not be — a punishment so “wantonly and so freakishly imposed” that it is like getting struck by lightening.
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Whatever one’s moral views on the death penalty, there are compelling reasons to consider getting rid of it.

Cost is one. It takes from $2.3 million to $3.2 million to bring a death prosecution in New Jersey.

Human error is another reason. In recent years, more than 100 death-row inmates nationwide have been exonerated, mostly using DNA evidence.

The question is whether anybody is willing to kill this badly broken system. (Star Ledger Editorial, November 20, 2004).

Florida’s Daytona Beach News-Journal

Over the past 10 years, Americans have been forced to face reality: Death penalty laws are deeply flawed.

More than 100 death row inhabitants have been freed after their convictions were overturned, many of them exonerated by DNA evidence that conclusively proves their innocence. Years, sometimes decades, pass between conviction and execution. And executions gruesomely botched have many recoiling in horror.
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Why are Americans turning away from this vestige of frontier justice? One possible explanation is the growing international pressure on the United States as the last industrialized nation to so enthusiastically apply the death penalty. But a more likely theory hits closer to home. The continuing spate of stories about inequities in the way the death penalty in administered has forced many to consider whether the notion of retributive justice is itself fundamentally flawed.

The myth that capital punishment is a deterrent has been exploded. Death penalty proponents argue that over the past 10 years, the number of executions increased while murder rates have decreased. But that’s true in states that don’t have the death penalty — and on average, their murder rates are dropping faster than they are in the states that still execute, the Death Penalty Information Center reports.

The other likely contributer is the number of death sentences overturned, a statistic that throws the permanent, irrevocable nature of the death penalty into sharp focus. As DNA evidence has freed increasing numbers of inmates, the number of Americans who say they favor the death penalty has remained fairly stable — but the number of Americans who say they oppose the death penalty has steadily increased. While 60 to 70% of Americans say they approve of the death penalty, the number drops to about half when they are asked to choose between death and life in prison without parole.

This growing uneasiness about the death penalty is already bearing fruit. Last month, President Bush signed the Justice For All Act, which (among other things) provides more hope to inmates awaiting DNA tests that could prove their innocence. The act does not go far enough — it limits access to other scientific tests, for example — but it will provide $25 million to states over the next five years to conduct post-conviction DNA tests.

Yet too many death penalty inmates are still tried, convicted and sentenced in states that deny them adequate legal representation. Without a competent lawyer at trial, the accused lose much of their ability to appeal wrongful convictions.
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A better solution — the right solution — is to recognize the death penalty for what it is — inefficient, ineffective, expensive, slow, unjust and morally reprehensible — and abolish it now, rather than wait for it to wither away. (Daytona Beach News-Journal Editorial, November 17, 2004).

Colorado’s Denver Post

It’s probably too early to call it a radical change, but there’s a flicker of hope that American society is coming to think of capital punishment as a cruel anachronism… .[A] new report has found that the number of death verdicts hit a 27-year low last year. Possible factors include the exoneration of about 100 death-row inmates and the fact that jurors now have the option of imposing life without parole in 47 states.
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Despite support in public-opinion surveys, jurors seem less enthusiastic about capital punishment. “I’m not surprised at the reluctance on the part of American juries to impose the death penalty,” said U.S. District Judge John Kane, who speculated that some death-penalty jurors may hesitate because of news reports and television shows about errors in death-penalty cases.
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Over time, the Supreme Court has narrowed application of the death penalty, banning execution of the mentally retarded, for example. Early this year, the court agreed to re-examine execution of defendants who were juveniles when their crimes were committed.

The Post has opposed capital punishment since 1965. Perhaps growing antipathy for actually imposing the death penalty will someday lead the court to conclude that it has truly become a “cruel and unusual punishment” and ban it altogether. (Denver Post Editorial, November 21, 2004).

See Editorials. See also Innocence, Costs, Deterrence, and Representation.