“Random and Unjust,” ​“Barbaric” and ​“Ineffective”: Editorials Call for End to Death Penalty

As 2021 came to a close, edi­to­r­i­al writ­ers in four death penal­ty states called for leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive action to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment or fur­ther lim­it its use. 

Editorial boards for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Idaho Statesman took note that as the death penal­ty declines in usage and pub­lic sup­port, it remains arbi­trary and inhu­mane in its appli­ca­tion and con­tin­ues to place inno­cent lives at risk. Additionally, recent­ly retired Los Angeles Times edi­to­r­i­al board writer Scott Martelle penned a December op-ed call­ing for a new vot­er ini­tia­tive to end California’s death penalty.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

In a December 21 edi­to­r­i­al, 2021, enti­tled Executions dwin­dle as pub­lic sup­port falls. End this bar­barism, already., the Post-Dispatch edi­to­r­i­al board crit­i­cized the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty as ​“ran­dom and unjust.” “[C]apital pun­ish­ment is los­ing sup­port across the polit­i­cal spec­trum,” the edi­tors said, ​“It’s past time to fin­ish off the slow death of the death penalty.” 

The board took on the tra­di­tion argu­ments advanced in defense of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: that it con­tributes to pub­lic safe­ty and is reserved for the worst cas­es. ​“Even its pro­po­nents don’t gen­er­al­ly push the debunked argu­ment any­more that exe­cu­tions are a deter­rent to mur­der; the data has nev­er sup­port­ed that argu­ment,” the edi­tors wrote. There also was ​“no indi­ca­tion” that the eleven pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed in the Unites States in 2021 were ​“the worst of the worst mur­der­ers. Who ends up being killed by the gov­ern­ment is more like a lot­tery, large­ly dri­ven by ran­dom fac­tors like the state in which the crime was com­mit­ted, the luck of the draw regard­ing pros­e­cu­tors, judges and jurors, the finan­cial abil­i­ty of the defen­dant to secure com­pe­tent coun­sel — and, most dis­turbing­ly, race.”

The edi­tors blast­ed the aber­rant fed­er­al exe­cu­tion spree in which 13 pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed in the final six months of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, call­ing the spree a man­i­fes­ta­tion of “[t]he twist­ed pol­i­tics of the Trump era.” Those exe­cu­tions, the edi­tors wrote, were car­ried out ​“not to serve the cause of jus­tice but rather Trump’s ego.”

The board was also crit­i­cal of President Biden, who had pledged to work to abol­ish the fed­er­al death penal­ty and incen­tivize states to do the same with their cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statutes. ​“Biden has dis­ap­point­ing­ly failed to fol­low through on his cam­paign promise,” the edi­tors said. ​“If polit­i­cal cal­cu­lus has dri­ven that deci­sion,” they wrote, ​“he should redo the math and real­ize that it would be both good pol­i­cy and good pol­i­tics to end this barbaric practice.”

Pittsburg Post-Gazette

On December 23, the Pittsburg Post-Gazette called for the end of the death penal­ty in Pennsylvania. The edi­to­r­i­al, It’s time to abol­ish the death penal­ty, opened: ​“Quietly and with­out fan­fare, the death penal­ty in the United States is dying, a trend Pennsylvania should applaud and encour­age by abol­ish­ing its death penalty statute.”

The edi­tors traced the ​“wan­ing” pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty, reflect­ed in the fewest exe­cu­tions since 1988, the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment by 7 states in the past decade, and the mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions in three more death-penal­ty states. ​“In paus­ing exe­cu­tions, states have cit­ed, among oth­er things, egre­gious racial dis­par­i­ties and the fail­ure of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to deter vio­lent crime,” the edi­tors wrote. ​“No cred­i­ble evi­dence – none – shows the death penal­ty deters vio­lent crime or achieves any social good.”

Pennsylvania rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1974 and enact­ed a new death penal­ty statute in 1978 when the first law was struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Under these statutes, the edi­tors not­ed, ​“more than 400 peo­ple have been sen­tenced to death in Pennsylvania, at a cost of $1 bil­lion.” From those sen­tences, the edi­to­r­i­al board observed, Pennsylvania has car­ried out only three exe­cu­tions, while ten wrong­ly con­vict­ed Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­ers have been exonerated. 

These exon­er­a­tions, and the more than 180 wrong­ly con­vict­ed death-row pris­on­ers who have been exon­er­at­ed nation­wide, under­score ​“the real pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing the innocent.” 

Finding the moral and prac­ti­cal argu­ments against the death penal­ty to be ​“com­pelling,” the edi­tors urged Pennsylvania’s leg­is­la­ture to take action. ​“When Gov. [Tom] Wolf leaves office in January 2023, his mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions expires.” The edi­tors wrote. ​“To pre­vent more exe­cu­tions and exces­sive legal costs, Pennsylvania leg­is­la­tors should approve bipar­ti­san bills to abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty law and move the nation clos­er to end­ing this bar­bar­ic, imprac­ti­cal and ineffective practice.”

Los Angeles Times

In his December 2 op-ed, California halt­ed exe­cu­tions, now it should abol­ish the death penal­ty, in the Los Angeles Times, Scott Martelle wrote that in the five years since Proposition 66 — which was sup­posed to accel­er­ate the appeals process in death penal­ty cas­es — passed, ​“noth­ing has real­ly changed. … So much for the fix that death penal­ty advo­cates promised. Here’s a bet­ter one: End the death penal­ty in California once and for all.”

Martelle cat­a­logues the flaws that have plagued the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in California and across the coun­try. ​“Capital pun­ish­ment mag­ni­fies broad­er racial and class divides in the United States,” he writes. ​“Death sen­tences fall dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on Black and Latino defen­dants, and on the poor. It’s no acci­dent of his­to­ry that for­mer slave states cling stub­born­ly to this bar­bar­ic sen­tence. And cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is applied inconsistently.”

Martelle’s op-ed also address­es the ques­tion of inno­cence. ​“A parade of death row exon­er­a­tions nation­wide has made more peo­ple aware of how sus­cep­ti­ble the legal sys­tem is to manip­u­la­tion by law enforce­ment and pros­e­cu­tors, and by wit­ness­es who are either mis­tak­en or who lie,” he writes. With ​“a failed jus­tice system[,]when the final step in the process is an exe­cu­tion, the poten­tial for putting the inno­cent to death is uncon­scionable,” he says.

Given the death penalty’s intractable fail­ures, Martelle argues that “[t]he moral argu­ments align against killing even con­vict­ed mur­der­ers, and a legal sys­tem as imper­fect as ours has proved to be should nev­er be used to deter­mine whether some­one lives or dies.” Governor Gavin Newsom has imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in California, but in the long term, Martelle argues, ​“a guber­na­to­r­i­al pledge of inac­tion is not a solu­tion. California vot­ers affirmed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in a 1972 ini­tia­tive, so it is up to them to get rid of it.”

With changes in pub­lic sen­ti­ment and a gov­er­nor who believes the death penal­ty should be abol­ished, Martelle believes ​“the ground is pre­pared for anoth­er ini­tia­tive to end this inhu­mane and unjust prac­tice.” He writes that ​“Newsom should work with leg­isla­tive lead­ers to move a bill … to put the issue before the vot­ers once again in 2024. And then Newsom should use his polit­i­cal cap­i­tal to per­suade Californians that end­ing the death penal­ty is the right thing to do.”

Idaho Statesman

A December 6 edi­to­r­i­al in the Idaho Statesman, Lack of trans­paren­cy, his­to­ry of errors means Idaho should hit pause on exe­cu­tions, argued that the con­tin­u­ing con­tro­ver­sy over the exe­cu­tion of ter­mi­nal­ly ill death-row pris­on­er Gerald Pizzuto ​“offers the state of Idaho an oppor­tu­ni­ty to recon­sid­er its posi­tion on the death penal­ty.” Issues relat­ed to Pizzuto’s tor­tured upbring­ing, brain dam­age, and intel­lec­tu­al impair­ment, as well as chal­lenges to the state’s lethal-injec­tion process, the edi­tors wrote, ​“point to broad­er con­cerns with the death penalty.”

Those con­cerns include both wrong­ful con­vic­tions and state mis­con­duct in the exe­cu­tion process. When it comes to guilt or inno­cence, the edi­tors note, ​“Idaho has a very recent his­to­ry of get­ting it wrong — very wrong,” point­ing to the wrong­ful con­vic­tions of Christopher Tapp and Charles Fain.

Police coerced Tapp into false­ly con­fess­ing to rape and mur­der, includ­ing threat­en­ing him with the death penal­ty and feed­ing him infor­ma­tion about how they thought the crime had occurred. After DNA evi­dence did not match Tapp or any of the indi­vid­u­als whose names he had pro­vid­ed dur­ing the coer­cive inter­ro­ga­tions, pros­e­cu­tors accused him of lying, and played his record­ed false con­fes­sion to the jury. He spent two decades in prison before the killer con­fessed to the murder. 

Fain was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1983 on charges that he had sex­u­al­ly assault­ed and mur­dered a child, although defense wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied that he was actu­al­ly in Oregon at the time of the mur­der. After Fain vol­un­tar­i­ly pro­vid­ed hair sam­ples to inves­ti­ga­tors, an FBI expert using since debunked hair analy­sis tes­ti­fied that the sam­ples matched evi­dence from the crime scene. DNA test­ing in 2001 exon­er­at­ed Fain and point­ed to two other perpetrators. 

The Statesman edi­tors also crit­i­cized Idaho for its ​“his­to­ry of being secre­tive when it comes to exe­cu­tions,” includ­ing its bad-faith refusal to com­ply with open records requests for doc­u­ments relat­ed to the exe­cu­tion process and alle­ga­tions that state offi­cials pur­chased lethal injec­tion drugs in 2012 by send­ing an employ­ee across state lines with a suit­case full of cash to by drugs from an unnamed sup­pli­er in a Tacoma, Washington parking lot.

“Because there are so many ques­tions and prob­lems sur­round­ing the death penal­ty, espe­cial­ly in Idaho, the state should put a hold on any exe­cu­tions mov­ing for­ward,” the edi­tors wrote. Lamenting that ​“Idaho doesn’t appear to have a mech­a­nism, either through the gov­er­nor or the Commission of Pardons and Parole, to sim­ply pause exe­cu­tions,” the news­pa­per urged the state leg­is­la­ture to take up the issue, and if they refuse, advo­cat­ed that the Commission of Pardons and Parole until the ​“ques­tions about the pro­to­cols and the humane­ness of the drugs are resolved.”