The Death Penalty Information Center has released a new report, ​“Struck by Lightning: The Continuing Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty Thirty-Five Years After Its Reinstatement in 1976.” The report shows that despite the changes to sen­tenc­ing schemes approved by the U.S. Supreme Court on July 2, 1976, race, geog­ra­phy, mon­ey and oth­er fac­tors con­tin­ue to make the imple­men­ta­tion of the death penal­ty arbi­trary and unfair. A major­i­ty of the nine Justices who served on the Supreme Court in 1976 when the death penal­ty was approved even­tu­al­ly con­clud­ed the exper­i­ment had failed. The report con­cludes, ​“Thirty-five years of expe­ri­ence have taught the futil­i­ty of try­ing to fix this sys­tem. Many of those who favored the death penal­ty in the abstract have come to view its prac­tice very dif­fer­ent­ly. They have reached the con­clu­sion that if society’s ulti­mate pun­ish­ment can­not be applied fair­ly, it should not be applied at all.”

(Released June 22, 2011). Read DPIC’s Press Release. Read full-text of report. See oth­er DPIC reports and Arbitrariness.

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