56 Prosecutors Issue Joint Statement Calling for End of ​‘Broken’ Death Penalty

Calling cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. ​“bro­ken,” 56 elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors from across the coun­try have issued a joint state­ment urg­ing sys­temic changes to end the death penal­ty nation­wide. As an ini­tial step, the pros­e­cu­tors pledged to not seek the death penal­ty ​“against peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, his­to­ries of trau­mat­ic brain injury, or oth­er intel­lec­tu­al or cog­ni­tive chal­lenges that dimin­ish their abil­i­ty to ful­ly under­stand and reg­u­late their own actions.”

The state­ment was released on February 17, 2022 by Fair and Just Prosecution, a bipar­ti­san net­work of reform pros­e­cu­tors that, accord­ing to its web­site, is ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing ​“fair­ness, equi­ty, com­pas­sion, and fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty” in the admin­is­tra­tion of crim­i­nal laws. The pros­e­cu­tors who signed the joint state­ment, large­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic, rep­re­sent met­ro­pol­i­tan and rur­al coun­ties in 26 states, 11 of which have the death penal­ty, as well as the District of Columbia and the Northern Mariana Islands.

“Many of us have been on the front­lines of the effort to reform the American death penal­ty. Others have wit­nessed — and in some cas­es been direct­ly involved in — pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al efforts to seek cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,” the state­ment says. ​“Although we hold var­ied opin­ions sur­round­ing the death penal­ty and hail from juris­dic­tions with dif­fer­ent start­ing points on the pro­pri­ety of this sen­tence, we have all now arrived at the same inex­orable con­clu­sion: our country’s sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is bro­ken. It is time to work togeth­er toward sys­temic changes that will bring about the elim­i­na­tion of the death penalty nationwide.”

Miriam Krinsky, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Fair and Just Prosecution, told NBC News that the ​“tough-on-crime” poli­cies of pros­e­cu­tors over the last sev­er­al decades have fueled a death-penal­ty sys­tem that has dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed peo­ple of col­or and has exe­cut­ed peo­ple who may have been inno­cent. ​“Now, for [pros­e­cu­tors] to bring their voic­es togeth­er in an unex­pect­ed way and to turn back that tide is sig­nif­i­cant,” Krinsky said. ​“Our hope is they will be change agents in their states. Fifty-six of them com­ing togeth­er is a powerful number.”

The sig­na­to­ries include dis­trict attor­neys from six coun­ties — Los Angeles, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Dallas, Texas; Santa Clara, California; Pima (Tucson), Arizona; and Hillsborough (Tampa), Florida — that, a decade ago, col­lec­tive­ly account­ed for 14% of the country’s death-row pris­on­ers. Each was among the 1% of coun­ties with the largest death-row pop­u­la­tions in the U.S. They also include Republican District Attorneys Sim Gill of Salt Lake County, Utah, and Christian Gossett of Winnebago County, Wisconsin.

In addi­tion to refus­ing to seek the death penal­ty against the most vul­ner­a­ble and least moral­ly cul­pa­ble defen­dants, the pros­e­cu­tors pledged in the joint state­ment to sup­port efforts to over­turn exist­ing death sen­tences in cas­es involv­ing plau­si­ble legal claims of inno­cence, racial bias, egre­gious­ly inad­e­quate or neg­li­gent defense coun­sel, dis­cov­ery vio­la­tions, or oth­er mis­con­duct. Further, the pros­e­cu­tors wrote, the death penal­ty is expen­sive and inef­fec­tive as an instru­ment of pub­lic safe­ty. “[W]e have a cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem that costs tax­pay­ers over $1 mil­lion per death sen­tence,” they wrote, ​“fails as an effec­tive deter­rent, and does not reduce crime.”

Despite ​“count­less reform efforts,” the pros­e­cu­tors wrote, the death penal­ty has failed to live up to the con­sti­tu­tion­al promise that it would be reserved for ​“only the so-called ​‘worst of the worst.’” Instead, near­ly 50 years after the Supreme Court struck down exist­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws as arbi­trar­i­ly admin­is­tered, ​“the death penal­ty still tar­gets not the worst of the worst, but rather the unluck­i­est of the unluck­i­est: peo­ple who endured sex­u­al abuse and oth­er unspeak­able trau­ma as chil­dren; peo­ple with long his­to­ries of severe men­tal ill­ness or trau­mat­ic brain injuries, includ­ing peo­ple strug­gling with PTSD after serv­ing in the mil­i­tary; peo­ple who com­mit­ted crimes dur­ing a psy­chot­ic break they can’t even remem­ber; peo­ple who, because of incom­plete cog­ni­tive devel­op­ment or oth­er intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, have nev­er been able to ful­ly func­tion as adults; and peo­ple with tri­al lawyers so derelict in their duties and oblig­a­tions that they nev­er both­ered to uncov­er long his­to­ries of ill­ness and trau­ma. This, trag­i­cal­ly, is the pro­file of death row in America.”

Racial bias, the joint state­ment said, is also deeply embed­ded with­in the U.S. cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. ​“Black defen­dants accused of crimes against white vic­tims are far more like­ly to receive the death penal­ty than oth­er groups” and are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly exe­cut­ed, they wrote. The sys­tem, they said, also dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly val­ues white vic­tims. ​“Strikingly,” the pros­e­cu­tors note, ​“while about 76% of all death penal­ty cas­es involve white vic­tims, only one-half of all mur­der vic­tims are white.”

The pros­e­cu­tors wrote that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. ​“is par­tic­u­lar­ly uncon­scionable giv­en that we know our sys­tem too often con­victs inno­cent peo­ple.” Citing the Death Penalty Information Center’s exon­er­a­tion data, they observe that “[a]t least 186 peo­ple on death row have been exon­er­at­ed over the last half-cen­tu­ry,” more than one for every nine peo­ple who have been exe­cut­ed. “[W]e will nev­er know how many inno­cent peo­ple we have exe­cut­ed,” they wrote. 

The joint state­ment con­cludes: ​“As elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors, we serve as min­is­ters of jus­tice and are oblig­at­ed to seek out­comes that advance equi­ty, fair­ness, com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty, and the rule of law. And we are also oblig­at­ed to reject arbi­trari­ness, racism, and cru­el­ty. We pledge to abide by these oblig­a­tions by refus­ing to seek the death penal­ty against indi­vid­u­als with cog­ni­tive impair­ments or oth­er­wise dimin­ished cul­pa­bil­i­ty. And we fur­ther com­mit to work toward the elim­i­na­tion of our nation’s failed death penal­ty sys­tem, once and for all.”