Time to Abolish the Death Penalty

From The Pilot: November 1, 2009

The last time the state of North Carolina put someone to death in Central Prison was August of 2006.
The state's capital punishment system has been tangled up in the courts since, in a dispute about the role of doctors at executions and questions about the state's lethal injection procedure.
Regardless of what happens in the courts, those issues won't go away and neither will nagging doubts about the way the death penalty is applied and how much it costs, not to mention the moral questions about a government intentionally taking a human life.
A study just released by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) finds that states with the death penalty, such as North Carolina, are wasting millions of dollars during the worst economic crisis in a generation and diverting money from anti-violence programs that work.

The study finds that the extra cost of the death penalty is as much as $10 million per state, enough to hire 250 more police officers. A study in North Carolina several years ago showed that it cost $2.16 million more to execute someone than to sentence him or her to life in prison without parole.
DPIC also released a nationwide poll of police chiefs that found they believe the death penalty is the least efficient use of taxpayer money to fight crime, far below hiring more police officers, reducing drug use, and improving crime-fighting technology.
The police chiefs also do not believe that the death penalty deters murder, a view in line with the vast majority of criminologists, despite claims otherwise by death penalty supporters. DPIC points out that the 20 states with the highest murder rates in 2008 all had the death penalty.
No one disputes that mistakes are made in capital cases, sending innocent people to death row in North Carolina and across the nation. Nationally, 138 convicts have been freed from death rows since capital punishment resumed in 1976. There is now growing evidence that Texas executed an innocent man in 2004.
A judge in Ohio stayed a scheduled last week as state officials continue to examine the state's lethal injection procedure.
Efforts to execute an inmate in September were halted when technicians could not find a vein in the man's arm to inject the deadly poison.
Then there is the unequal application of capital punishment, a system still plagued by bias based on race and economic class.
A 2003 study by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill found the odds of receiving the death penalty in North Carolina increase by 3.4 times if the victim of the crime was white.
North Carolina lawmakers voted this summer to address racial bias by passing the Racial Justice Act, which gives defendants a way to present evidence to a judge that race played a role in their cases.
Public opinion is changing too. Gallup reports that support for the death penalty remains at a 25-year low and that if those being surveyed are given an alternative punishment for first-degree murder like life in prison without parole, support for capital punishment is less than 50 percent.
New Mexico abolished the death penalty in March of this year, the third state in the last two years to end the practice. The tide is clear.
Too many problems, too many questions, too many mistakes and too much money. North Carolina officials ought to understand all that by now, and they should make sure the 2006 execution is the last one the state ever performs.
Chris Fitzsimon is executive director of N.C. Policy Watch. Contact him at chris@ncpolicywatch.com.