Yesterday I attended a conference in Phoenix at Arizona State University put on by the Arizona Coalition to end the death penalty. It was quite illuminating as they had speakers who fell on both sides of the fence, from prosecutors to Quakers. Mostly it was from the legal side of the issue - how the death penalty works in Arizona, what are the legal arguments for and against the death penalty. There was very little on the moral and ethical consequences of putting people to death, which itself was very revealing.

It turns out that even if you view the death penalty in cold economic terms it makes absolutely no sense at all. In Arizona it costs on average $31 million (yes, million) to prosecute a death penalty case to completion. It also takes on average 18-19 years from arraignment to execution. However, only about 1% of death penalty eligible cases ever lead to execution. Important factors in deciding whether to pursue the death penalty in a case are race and economic status. Someone who can afford an attorney (i.e. who can afford competent representation) almost never gets the death penalty. And yet there are those - including the county attorney from Maricopa County (Phoenix) who spoke at the conference - who vociferously claim that the death penalty serves as a deterrent. However, the death penalty in the US as it is currently carried out meets none of the requirements for deterrence, such as quick punishment, certainty of punishment, and so forth. In fact, currently in Arizona, all but a scattered few death penalty cases are in Phoenix. Other municipalities and counties rarely attempt death penalty cases due to the cost and difficulty of winning such cases. Currently in Arizona all the death penalty cases are in Maricopa county except for 3 in Yavapai and one or two in Pima counties. Note that Phoenix is not the only large city in Arizona. Tucson is also over a million, yet there are few if any death penalty cases brought there. It is also questionable if someone who kills out of rage would ever think about the consequences beforehand.  So the argument for deterrence has no basis.

Someone asked the prosecutor about why it was that in the EU (and all other civilized countries on earth) where they didn’t have the death penalty, their crime rates were so low. If the death penalty was a deterrent, one would expect these countries to have soaring murder rates while the US should be virtually free of them. However, the opposite is true. The prosecutor’s response was that these countries historically had low crime rates, so it wasn’t a valid question! I wonder what his opinion would be if he understood the law of cause and effect as taught by Lord Buddha. Could it be just the opposite, that the reason these countries have low crime rates is that they don’t practice institutionalized violence in the name of their citizens?

Several members of the American Friends Service Committee presented information they had gathered on how death row inmates are treated while awaiting execution. In Arizona they are held in administrative segregation, only allowed out of their cells for an hour or two three times a week to exercise and shower. The rest of the time they are held in their cells, including eating meals. Such isolation has been proven to cause worsening of psychological problems if already present (according to DOC data, about 16.8% of inmates have significant psychological problems) or cause them if not already present. In fact, the last execution to take place in Arizona - in 2007 - occurred after a Death Row inmate dropped all his appeals and demanded to be executed because he found life on Death Row to be so much worse than the prospect of death. In fact, there are over 1600 prisoners in Arizona who are on long-term administrative segregation, meaning over 3 months but in reality meaning at least 5 years. Last year alone 750 inmates were released from DOC directly from administrative segregation. Pleasant to contemplate, isn’t it?

Of course, there is also the problem of executing innocent people. Recently a long-time resident of Death Row was exonerated when DNA evidence showed that he did not commit the crime for which he was convicted. There are numerous stories about men who were executed who were later found to be quite innocent. Ooops!

All in all, the conference showed the futility, cruelty and ineffectiveness of the death penalty as a means of punishment and deterrence. The same sort of analysis has caused other states to abandon the death penalty, states like Minnesota and New Jersey. But the bottom line is that the chances of repealing the death penalty in Arizona are virtually nil.  The good news is that executions are on hold in most states which still maintain the death penalty (36 of them) after the recent Supreme Court decision on the unconstitutionality of lethal injections.

As Buddhists we are taught not only not to take life but to do everything in our power to promote and sustain life. Yet some of us live in states where the state has the power to take life. It is a dilemma. No one is saying that the people who commit these murders are good people or that they should be just forgiven and sent on their way, but to kill them for killing another also makes no sense and should be stopped for we all share in the karma of killing when the state does it in our name.

Palzang

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 11:26 am and is filed under New Buddhists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.