The Kansas City Star recent­ly called for an end to the death penal­ty in Kansas and Missouri. The edi­tors wrote, ​“The arc of his­to­ry is bend­ing toward jus­tice when it comes to the death penal­ty, and there’s no good rea­son Missouri and Kansas should lag behind and con­tin­ue to be on the wrong side of both his­to­ry and jus­tice.” The high costs of imple­ment­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the risks of wrong­ful exe­cu­tions were among the rea­sons cit­ed for doing away with the pun­ish­ment. With respect to inno­cence, the paper stat­ed, ​“The Innocence Project reports that, through the use of DNA evi­dence, 18 death row pris­on­ers so far have been exon­er­at­ed. They already had served a total of 229 years behind bars in 11 dif­fer­ent states. That should nev­er hap­pen. Nor should exe­cu­tion of the inno­cent, but the only way to be pos­i­tive it doesn’t is to ban cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” Kansas has not had a exe­cu­tion since it rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1994. The edi­to­r­i­al con­clud­ed, ​“Kansas and Missouri should fol­low Maryland’s recent exam­ple and become the 19th and 20th states to adopt a sane and civ­i­lized approach to this mat­ter.” Read full editorial below.

End the death penal­ty in Kansas and Missouri

Earlier this month Maryland did away with the death penal­ty, which now is banned in 18 states and the District of Columbia.

Sadly, Missouri and Kansas are not among the states whose law­mak­ers have under­stood what an unjust and cost­ly sys­tem cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is. Measures to abol­ish or even tem­porar­i­ly halt the death penal­ty have gone nowhere over the years in both legislatures.

So it’s time for cit­i­zens and enlight­ened law­mak­ers to plan ways to make this mat­ter of life and death a top pri­or­i­ty in these two states for the next legislative sessions.

The arc of his­to­ry is bend­ing toward jus­tice when it comes to the death penal­ty, and there’s no good rea­son Missouri and Kansas should lag behind and con­tin­ue to be on the wrong side of both his­to­ry and justice.

Both states con­tin­ue to sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment even though the evi­dence is clear that oper­at­ing a sys­tem designed to exe­cute pris­on­ers is much more cost­ly than send­ing them to prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole when con­vict­ed of heinous crimes.

In Kansas, 13 men have been sen­tenced to death since the state rein­stat­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1994, but no one has been executed.

A 2003 study cal­cu­lat­ed that the lit­i­ga­tion and incar­cer­a­tion expens­es of cap­i­tal cas­es are 70 per­cent high­er than what it costs the state to seek jus­tice in mur­der cas­es in which the death penal­ty isn’t in play.

In 2008, for instance, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice esti­mat­ed that the annu­al cost of the present death penal­ty sys­tem there was $137 mil­lion. By con­trast, it esti­mat­ed that the annu­al cost of a sys­tem that instead imposed a max­i­mum penal­ty of life in prison would be $11.5 million.

So if this were mere­ly a mat­ter of eco­nom­ics, the death penal­ty should be tossed out.

But, of course, it’s much more than that. Despite the cost­li­ness of cap­i­tal lit­i­ga­tion, the prospects for error are much too high.

The Innocence Project reports that, through the use of DNA evi­dence, 18 death row pris­on­ers so far have been exon­er­at­ed. They already had served a total of 229 years behind bars in 11 dif­fer­ent states. That should nev­er hap­pen. Nor should exe­cu­tion of the inno­cent, but the only way to be pos­i­tive it doesn’t is to ban capital punishment.

There’s more: Killing peo­ple who are accused of killing peo­ple sim­ply puts the state on the same debased moral lev­el as the crim­i­nals. And although such exe­cu­tions cer­tain­ly deter the now-dead pris­on­er from com­mit­ting more crimes, there is sound research to sug­gest that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has no deter­rent effect on peo­ple who may com­mit offens­es that could result in a death sentence.

There’s a com­pelling argu­ment that the death penal­ty is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. What’s incon­testable is that by per­mit­ting the death penal­ty the United States is keep­ing com­pa­ny with such coun­tries as Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Uganda. By con­trast, all 47 mem­bers of the Council of Europe have either estab­lished a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty or abol­ished it altogether.

Surely it’s time for the U.S. to join the abo­li­tion move­ment. Kansas and Missouri should fol­low Maryland’s recent exam­ple and become the 19th and 20th states to adopt a sane and civ­i­lized approach to this matter.

(Editorial, ​“End the death penal­ty in Kansas and Missouri,” Kansas City Star, May 27, 2013). See Costs and Innocence. Read more Editorials on the death penalty.

Citation Guide