U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill recent­ly announced that he is rethink­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because it is expen­sive, can be polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed, and risks inno­cent lives. Winmill, who freed death row exoneree Charles Fain in 2001 after DNA evi­dence proved his inno­cence, said that Fain’s case and the very dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence of sen­tenc­ing a guilty man to die for mur­der prompt­ed him to rethink cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. During a speech before the City Club of Boise, Winmill was joined by Fain as he urged Idahoans to recon­sid­er the death penal­ty. Judge Winmill stat­ed:

I think the death penal­ty is per­haps sought and imposed, at least his­tor­i­cal­ly, more often than it should be. I think we as judges, and we as cit­i­zens now in juries, need to be very thought­ful.
…
[The death penal­ty] requires each of us to crit­i­cal­ly think it through, con­sid­er the costs, con­sid­er the util­i­ty, con­sid­er whether we are sim­ply get­ting car­ried away in this effort to pro­mote law and order. And to think whether or not a life sen­tence with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is an ade­quate pun­ish­ment for far more of the mur­der cas­es than typ­i­cal­ly imposed.

Winmill added that pub­lic offi­cials are ​“loathe to dis­cuss the cost” of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, say­ing, ​“I frankly think there may be a fear of a firestorm of crit­i­cism of the actu­al cost of lit­i­gat­ing if this is ever revealed pub­licly.” During the speech, Winmill also not­ed that the death penal­ty does not deter vio­lent crime and that the elec­tion of judges and pros­e­cu­tors politi­cizes death penal­ty deci­sions. One reform he rec­om­mend­ed was to cre­ate a statewide screen­ing com­mis­sion in Idaho to review cas­es and decide whether they meet a height­ened stan­dard for the death penal­ty, sep­a­rat­ing deci­sions from local pol­i­tics.

(The Idaho Statesman, November 13, 2005). See New Voices. See also Costs, Deterrence, Innocence, and Life Without Parole.

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