The ACLU Capital Punishment Project recently released “Three Decades Later: Why We Need A Temporary Halt on Executions,” a report that comes just over 30 years after the Supreme Court’s Furman v. Georgia decision that placed a temporary halt on executions because the death penalty was being applied in an arbitrary, discriminatory, and capricious manner. While the Supreme Court upheld state capital punishment statutes written after Furman in its 1976 Gregg v. Georgia decision, the report notes that questions of fairness remain. In its report, the ACLU calls for a temporary halt to executions to give states the chance to review these concerns, including issues such as wrongful convictions, inadequate representation, geographic disparity, and racial and socioeconomic bias. Read the report.
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