Death penalty is dead wrong: It’s time to outlaw capital punishment in America — completely

By Mario M. Cuomo

I have stud­ied the death penal­ty for more than half my life­time. I have debat­ed it hun­dreds of times. I have heard all the argu­ments, ana­lyzed all the evi­dence I could find, mea­sured pub­lic opin­ion when it was opposed to the prac­tice, when it was indif­fer­ent, and when it was pas­sion­ate­ly in favor. Always I have con­clud­ed the death penal­ty is wrong because it low­ers us all; it is a sur­ren­der to the worst that is in us; it uses a pow­er — the offi­cial pow­er to kill by exe­cu­tion — that has nev­er ele­vat­ed a soci­ety, nev­er brought back a life, nev­er inspired any­thing but hate.

And it has killed many innocent people.

This is a seri­ous moral prob­lem for every U.S. gov­er­nor who pre­sides over exe­cu­tions — whether in Georgia, Texas or even, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, New York. All states should do as the bold few have done and offi­cial­ly out­law this form of punishment.

For 12 years as gov­er­nor, I pre­vent­ed the death penal­ty from becom­ing law in New York by my vetoes. But for all that time, there was a dis­con­cert­ing­ly strong pref­er­ence for the death penal­ty in the general public.

New York returned to the death penal­ty short­ly after I was defeat­ed by a Republican can­di­date; the state’s high­est court has effec­tive­ly pre­vent­ed the law from being applied — but New York con­tin­ues to have the law on its books with no signs of a move­ment to remove it.

That law is a stain on our con­science. The 46 exe­cu­tions in the United States in 2008 were, I believe, an abomination.

People have a right to demand a civ­i­lized lev­el of law and peace. They have a right to expect it, and when at times it appears to them that a mur­der has been par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious, it is not sur­pris­ing that the pub­lic anger is great and demands some psychic satisfaction.

I under­stand that. I have felt the anger myself, more than once. Like too many oth­er cit­i­zens, I know what it is to be vio­lat­ed and even to have one’s clos­est fam­i­ly vio­lat­ed through despi­ca­ble crim­i­nal behav­ior. Even today, I trem­ble at the thought of how I might react to a killer who took the life of some­one in my own fam­i­ly. I know that I might not be able to sup­press my anger or put down a desire for revenge, but I also know this soci­ety should strive for some­thing bet­ter than what it feels at its weakest moments.

There is absolute­ly no good rea­son to believe that using death as a pun­ish­ment today is any bet­ter an answer now than it was in the past — when New York State had it, used it, regret­ted it and discarded it.

Experts through­out the nation have come out strong­ly against the death penal­ty after hun­dreds of years of lawyers’ cumu­la­tive expe­ri­ences and stud­ies revealed that the death penal­ty is inef­fec­tive as a deterrent.

Some of his­to­ry’s most noto­ri­ous mur­ders occurred in the face of exist­ing death penalty statutes.

Psychiatrists will tell you there is rea­son to believe that some mad­men — for exam­ple, Ted Bundy — may even be tempt­ed to mur­der because of a per­verse desire to chal­lenge the ultimate penalty.

It is also unfairly applied.

Notwithstanding the exe­cu­tions of mass killers like Timothy McVeigh, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment appears to threat­en white drug deal­ers, white rapists and white killers less fre­quent­ly than those of oth­er races. Of the last 18 peo­ple in New York State to be exe­cut­ed (end­ing in 1963), 13 were black and one was Hispanic. That racial make­up seems an extra­or­di­nary improb­a­bil­i­ty for a sys­tem oper­at­ing with any kind of objec­tiv­i­ty and consistency.

Because death penal­ty pro­po­nents have no oth­er way to defend this pol­i­cy, they cling unabashed­ly to the blunt sim­plic­i­ty of the ancient impulse that has always spurred the call for death: the desire for revenge. That was the bot­tom line of many debates on the floor of the state Senate and Assembly, to which I lis­tened with great care dur­ing my tenure as gov­er­nor. It came down to ​“an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.”

If we adopt­ed this max­im, where would it end? ​“You kill my son; I kill yours.” ​“You rape my daugh­ter; I rape yours.” ​“You muti­late my body; I muti­late yours.” And we would pur­sue this course, despite the lack of any rea­son to believe it will pro­tect us even if it is clear that occa­sion­al­ly the vic­tim of our offi­cial bar­barism will be innocent.

It is believed that at least 23 peo­ple were wrong­ful­ly exe­cut­ed in the United States dur­ing the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Twenty-three inno­cent peo­ple killed by the offi­cial work­ings of the state, but it is not called murder.

According to the Innocence Project, 17 peo­ple have been proven inno­cent — exon­er­at­ed by DNA test­ing — after serv­ing time on Death Row. These peo­ple were con­vict­ed in 11 dif­fer­ent states. They served a com­bined 209 years in prison. And gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to end their lives.

Tragically, New York holds the record for the great­est num­ber of inno­cents put to death over the years. According to some, New York leads all states with at least six (per­haps more) wrong­ful exe­cu­tions since 1905.

Yet pro­po­nents of the death penal­ty con­tin­ue to assume that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem will not make a mis­take, or they sim­ply don’t care. As was shown by the recent Troy Davis exe­cu­tion in Georgia, where shaky wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny and a lack of phys­i­cal evi­dence were con­sid­ered insuf­fi­cient to cre­ate ​“rea­son­able doubt,” too many peo­ple seem uncon­cerned about the over­ly ambi­tious pros­e­cu­tor, the slop­py detec­tive, the incom­pe­tent defense coun­sel, the wit­ness with an ax to grind, the judge who keeps cour­t­house con­vic­tion box scores.

But these imper­fec­tions — as well as the hor­ri­ble and irre­versible injus­tice they can pro­duce — are inevitable. In this coun­try, a defen­dant is con­vict­ed on proof beyond a rea­son­able doubt — not proof that can be known with absolute cer­tain­ty. There’s no such thing as absolute cer­tain­ty in our law.

We need to con­tin­ue to do the things that will con­trol crime by mak­ing the appre­hen­sion and pun­ish­ment of crim­i­nals more effec­tive and more pre­cise. We need ade­quate police and pris­ons and alter­na­tives to incar­cer­a­tion. We should also have a tough, effec­tive pun­ish­ment for delib­er­ate mur­der. There is a pun­ish­ment that is much bet­ter than the death penal­ty: one that juries will not be reluc­tant to impose; one that is so men­ac­ing to a poten­tial killer, that it could actu­al­ly deter; one that does not require us to be infal­li­ble so as to avoid tak­ing an inno­cent life; and one that does not require us to stoop to the lev­el of the killers.

There is a penal­ty that is — for those who insist on mea­sur­ing this ques­tion in terms of finan­cial cost — mil­lions of dol­lars less expen­sive than the death penal­ty: true life impris­on­ment, with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole under any circumstances.

True life impris­on­ment is a more effec­tive deter­rent than cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. To most inmates, the thought of liv­ing a whole life­time behind bars only to die in a cell, is worse than the quick, final ter­mi­na­tion of the elec­tric chair or lethal injection.

I’ve heard this sen­ti­ment per­son­al­ly at least three times in my life. The sec­ond time it came from a man on the way to his exe­cu­tion in Oklahoma. He was serv­ing a life sen­tence for mur­der in New York at the same time that Oklahoma was eager to take him from New York so they could exe­cute him for a mur­der he had com­mit­ted in Oklahoma. I refused to release him so that he could be exe­cut­ed in Oklahoma, but then the gov­er­nor who replaced me in 1995 was able to get New York to adopt the death penal­ty — and to prove New York real­ly approved of death as a pun­ish­ment, he released the inmate from prison and sent him to Oklahoma, where he was promptly executed.

On the night before he died, he left a note that was pub­lished in the New York Post that said, ​“Tell Governor Cuomo I would rather be exe­cut­ed than to serve life behind bars.”

Because the death penal­ty was so pop­u­lar dur­ing the time I served as gov­er­nor, I was often asked why I spoke out so force­ful­ly against it although the vot­ers very much favored it. I tried to explain that I pushed this issue into the cen­ter of pub­lic dia­logue because I believed the stakes went far beyond the death penal­ty itself. Capital pun­ish­ment rais­es impor­tant ques­tions about how, as a soci­ety, we view human beings. I believed as gov­er­nor, and I still believe, that the prac­tice and sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is cor­ro­sive; that it is bad for a demo­c­ra­t­ic cit­i­zen­ry and that it had to be object­ed to and so I did then, and I do now and will con­tin­ue to for as long as it and I exist, because I believe we should be bet­ter than what we are in our weakest moments.

Cuomo was gov­er­nor of New York.