Business Executives Launch Campaign Against the Death Penalty

A group of busi­ness lead­ers have launched a cam­paign call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson (pic­tured) announced the ini­tia­tive at the vir­tu­al South By Southwest fes­ti­val on March 18, 2021, say­ing, ​“The death penal­ty is bro­ken beyond repair and plain­ly fails to deliv­er jus­tice by every rea­son­able mea­sure. It is marred by cru­el­ty, waste, inef­fec­tive­ness, dis­crim­i­na­tion and an unac­cept­able risk of error. … By speak­ing out at this cru­cial moment, busi­ness lead­ers have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to help end this inhu­mane and flawed practice.”

Twenty-one busi­ness lead­ers from a vari­ety of indus­tries, includ­ing tech­nol­o­gy, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, fash­ion, and food, urged world lead­ers to end the death penal­ty. Among the sig­na­to­ries are Branson, The Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, and for­mer Tiffany & Co. CEO Alessandro Bogliolo.

“We stand unit­ed in our belief in a fair­er and more equi­table world, the rule of law, and uni­ver­sal human rights,” the dec­la­ra­tion begins. ​“As an irre­versible and extreme form of pun­ish­ment, the death penal­ty is inhu­mane, and it is irrec­on­cil­able with human dig­ni­ty. Its world­wide abo­li­tion is a moral imper­a­tive that all of human­i­ty should sup­port.” The dec­la­ra­tion sets forth four major rea­sons to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: racial bias in its appli­ca­tion, the absence of any deter­rent effect, the risk of exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple, and the high cost of the death penalty.

Celia Ouellette, the founder and CEO of the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice, which orga­nized the dec­la­ra­tion and sup­ports busi­ness­es in advo­cat­ing for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform, linked the effort to the glob­al move­ment for racial jus­tice sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020. ​“This is a com­plete­ly new moment in the move­ment,” she said. ​“You can cre­ate a lot of change quickly.” 

The busi­ness lead­ers explic­it­ly linked cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to racial jus­tice, writ­ing, ​“The abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is a crit­i­cal step in the move­ment toward racial and social equal­i­ty.” Ben & Jerry founders Cohen and Greenfield added in a sep­a­rate state­ment, ​“Business lead­ers need to do more than just say Black Lives Matter. They need to walk the talk and be instru­men­tal in tear­ing down all the sym­bols of struc­tur­al racism in our soci­ety. The death penal­ty has a long his­to­ry with oppres­sion, and it needs to end. Now.”

Branson said he plans to work on expand­ing the num­ber of sig­na­to­ries between the release and October 10, World Day Against the Death Penalty. ​“Part of our job is, is to find the time to edu­cate them, give them the facts and win and win them over,” he said. ​“It needs patience. It needs edu­ca­tion for some. But for, I say the vast major­i­ty, it’s a rea­son­ably easy. The doors are open and I think we can get the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple on board.”