Retired Justice John Paul Stevens Criticizes Capital Punishment as a ​“Wasteful Enterprise”

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (pic­tured), in remarks to a cap­i­tal case sem­i­nar host­ed by California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, crit­i­cized the death penal­ty as a ​“waste­ful enter­prise” and urged vot­ers, leg­is­la­tors, and the courts to address the issue. Speaking by video, the for­mer Justice said, ​“Few oth­er civ­i­lized soci­eties engage in such a waste­ful use of resources with no demon­strat­ed ben­e­fit to soci­ety. Taxpayers should ter­mi­nate this waste as expe­di­tious­ly as pos­si­ble.” He called the cost of con­tin­u­ing to pros­e­cute cap­i­tal cas­es ​“unac­cept­able,” say­ing the expense of cap­i­tal tri­als is ​“par­tic­u­lar­ly out­ra­geous in light of the lack of evi­dence sup­port­ing the death penalty’s pur­port­ed jus­ti­fi­ca­tions.” Justice Stevens said that ​“the deter­rence val­ue of the penal­ty has dimin­ished almost to zero” with the avail­abil­i­ty of life with­out parole as a sen­tenc­ing option, and is fur­ther dimin­ished by the length of time between con­vic­tion and exe­cu­tion, if one even occurs. ​“If the ben­e­fits are triv­ial com­pared to the poten­tial harm of such an impor­tant issue,” Stevens said, ​“as a mat­ter of sound pol­i­cy you should get rid of it.” Citing the wrong­ful exe­cu­tion of Carlos Deluna, ​“a man who was unques­tion­ably inno­cent of mur­der,” as an exam­ple of the ​“ever-present poten­tial for mis­take,” Stevens said, ​“it is time to put an end to irrev­o­ca­ble and mis­tak­en state action of that kind.” He con­clud­ed, ​“I’ve thought about this issue repeat­ed­ly, and the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that it real­ly does­n’t make much sense for soci­ety to engage in such a waste­ful enter­prise when there are so many good argu­ments against going forward.” 

(R. Sanger, ​“CACJ’S Past President Robert Sanger inter­views United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens,” California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, February 21, 2016; Photo by California Attorneys for Criminal Justice.) See U.S. Supreme Court.