Protesters who have stood up to the Iranian government and the “morality” police are being killed by the state. The New York Times reported that Iran has so far sentenced 15 protesters to death, and two people were already hanged in December. That same month, at the United Nations General Assembly, a record high of 125 nations voted to support a global moratorium on the death penalty. Noticeably absent from the affirmative vote for another year? The United States, along with Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea and Vietnam, voted no to a moratorium on the death penalty. Once again, the United States has chosen blood over life.
As a digital strategist and storyteller working within the movement to abolish the death penalty here in the United States, the recent vote comes as no surprise, sadly. I’ve seen over and over how our country touts the cruel, racist, inhumane, and ineffective use of death as punishment — rather, death as a form of justice. But if killing people and throwing money at prisons made us safer, wouldn’t we be the safest country in the world?
True crime series and pop culture have led us to believe that the death penalty is reserved for “the worst of the worst,” but in reality, it's not just serial killers and cartoonish villains sitting on death row. Instead, disproportionately it is members of our country’s most vulnerable populations who are being executed: victims of abuse, Black and brown people, and those from poor communities. People with intellectual impairments, brain damage, and severe mental illness are also at greater risk of wrongful conviction because they are more likely to make a false confession, less able to aid in their own defense, and often make less compelling witnesses. These are the people being killed in our names.
It’s past time we reassess how we prioritize punishment over people in the United States and across the globe.
The death penalty is racist
The death penalty is inextricably linked to a not-so-distant past of public lynchings of Black people in the US. As public lynchings began to decline in the beginning of the 20th century, state-sanctioned executions behind prison walls started to increase. Lawmakers nationwide justified these rampant and racist killings by claiming it was a better alternative to the inevitable violence white community members would inflict on their Black neighbors. As explained by Noose to Needle, an educational platform dedicated to highlighting the racist history of the death penalty in America, “The death penalty is the modern incarnation of hundreds of years of racial control that began with slavery.”
Despite being less than 13% of the population today, Black people account for 42% of people on death row, according to a 2020 report from the Death Penalty Information Center. Studies have suggested the odds of receiving a death sentence are nearly four times higher if the defendant is Black than if they are white — and the death penalty is also used much more frequently when the victim is white. In some states, like Louisiana, no white person has ever been executed for the killing of a Black person.
It may no longer be deemed appropriate to hang Black people in public spaces (though it can easily be argued that police killings of Black people in broad daylight are an iteration of public lynchings). But whether a noose or a needle, in America, executions have always been steeped in racism.
The death penalty can actually harm victims
"When my brother was murdered I thought I was supposed to support the death penalty.… Little did me and my family know then that when Michael Ryan was sentenced to death, we were sentenced too. Our sentence has been going on for 20 years and there has been no execution. For 20 years it has been all about Michael Ryan. He is all my family and I ever hear about. Jim is never mentioned…. Having seen what the death penalty has done to my family, I have since changed my mind and now think it should be abolished."
Perhaps the most detrimental narrative I’ve encountered in this work is that the death penalty is an apparatus designed in service of victims. But victims are not a monolith, and serving them means listening to the breadth of their needs and demands instead of continuing to ignore their stories or using them as “tough on crime” political fodder. True justice for victims of violence means supporting their efforts to pass legislation on violence prevention, such as gun control, especially since there’s no evidence to show that the death penalty actually deters crimes.
Justice also means investing in services that support healing for victims and their families, including grief counseling, mental and physical health services, and financial assistance. Instead, the death penalty consistently diverts millions of dollars (an even higher cost than life without parole) and attention that could be spent on these campaigns and other critical services, unnecessarily dragging victims through a lengthy and agonizing legal process that can last decades.
Death penalty cases go through years of constitutionally mandated appeals that are required only when execution is being sought. This means that victims and their families are forced to revisit the most traumatic moments of their lives over and over again with little to no support.
Every execution creates new victims
Many victims’ family members and even prison guards have shared that the death penalty produces a significant amount of collateral damage. Every execution requires a team to carry out the killing: tying down a person to a gurney, strapping them to a chair, escorting them to a gas chamber, administering a lethal injection, firing a gun, and so on. There are real people left to deal with botched executions or forced to witness a human being writhing in pain as they take their last breaths.
Corrections officials have committed suicide, suffered prolonged mental and physical health problems, and experienced substance abuse as a result of their involvement in executions. Jurors who serve on death penalty trials report experiencing prolonged periods of distress; journalists who witness executions experience anxiety, nausea, and nightmares; and even judges have pinpointed death penalty trials as their reason for leaving the profession.
NPR’s investigative team interviewed 26 people working within prisons who were involved in executions across 17 states. All of them described suffering extreme mental and physical health issues as a result of their work. Only one person reported receiving any support from the government to process their trauma, and most of the people interviewed say they now oppose the death penalty.
Every execution creates new victims left behind by state-sanctioned killing, whether they are people working within the criminal legal system and inside prisons or family members of those who have been executed. Children will never get to hug their parent again. Mothers won’t see their child grow old.
Innocent lives are always at risk
One of the greatest injustices of the death penalty is that innocent people have been sentenced to death. America has wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death at least 190 men and women since 1973. A 2014 study published by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 4.1% of the people currently on death row would eventually be exonerated if their executions were delayed long enough.
Headlines about people freed from prison after years of wrongful incarceration might lead us to believe that the criminal legal system eventually works itself out. In reality, after a person has been convicted of a capital crime, it is extremely difficult to overturn the conviction. Unfortunately, the appeals process is not designed to catch all of the potential errors made in original trials. Most exonerations happen only because of extraordinary organizing efforts by people working outside the system, not within it, such as family members, grassroots organizers, pro bono lawyers, and occasionally even celebrities like Kim Kardashian.
But not every case can get a celebrity on board. And despite major advances in DNA evidence, it can’t be solely relied on to solve errors in capital cases. Often DNA testing is not an option because evidence may have been lost, destroyed or not collected in the first place. Even if that evidence is used in a trial, it is commonly destroyed or misplaced after a conviction.
As long as the death penalty exists, innocent people are at risk of being killed.
There is no ethical way to execute someone
Activist and abolitionist Angela Davis once said, “What has been done in this country has been to try to transform capital punishment into something so rationalized that it can be considered humane. Humane forms of capital punishment — to me that [is] oxymoronic. Yet the debates have been … [about] the most humane way to kill someone.”
Organizations like mine maintain that there is no ethical, humane, or dignified way to execute someone. Many methods have been tried: use of a poisonous gas similar to the gas Nazis used to kill people, bringing back firing squads, passing new laws that force people who are incarcerated to choose from the electric chair, a firing squad, and lethal injection, which — despite being hailed as a more humane tactic — has resulted in the highest number of botched executions. Each of these methods have been shown to be problematic and capable of causing prolonged suffering. In fact, 2022 was called “the Year of the Botched Execution” by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Executions across the country continue to be postponed because of what’s conveyed to the public as drug shortages for lethal injection. In reality, most pharmaceutical companies refuse to have their drugs used for executions (they have even sued over it), and it’s almost impossible to find doctors or trained professionals to administer the drugs. The result? Gruesome and agonizing botched executions carried out by untrained corrections staff using incorrect drugs and dosages. There were seven recorded botched executions in 2022 alone.
All of this begs the question: Why are we trying so hard to kill people?
We're in a moment that's ripe for change
To abolish the death penalty once and for all and create a society that is more focused on justice than punishment, we’ll have to confront the issues laid out above and consider all the different ways prison sentences or jail time (19 people died in NYC jails in 2022) turn into death sentences. We’ll have to engage in uncomfortable conversations, sometimes about really awful acts of violence. We’ll need to commit ourselves to investing in violence prevention solutions for communities that are hurting. Perhaps most difficult, abolishing the death penalty will require us to challenge our idea of who deserves to live and die in a country that is ravaged by systemic racism and inequality — regardless of innocence or guilt.
I believe we’re at a turning point for the death penalty in America. More people than ever are questioning the criminal legal system as its abuses continue to be exposed, whether police misconduct or racist prosecutors or the prison industrial complex. There are still far too many executions scheduled every day, but 23 states and Washington, DC, have formally ended the death penalty, another 14 states have not carried out an execution in more than a decade, and recent death sentences are being given out only in a handful of counties. Support for the death penalty is the lowest it’s been in over 50 years — this moment is ripe for change.
You can take action with the campaigns listed below, all helping to fight the death penalty and advocate for people over punishment today.
Take action
- Leonard “Raheem” Taylor was sentenced to death in Missouri and is scheduled to be executed on February 7, despite overwhelming new evidence that he is innocent. Stand with Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty and demand justice for Raheem.
- Billie Allen is a Black man from St. Louis who has spent the past 25 years on federal death row for a crime that the government’s own evidence suggests he didn’t commit. Join Allen’s family in demanding a presidential pardon for Billie Allen now.
- Thanks to an incredible grassroots campaign, Julius Jones, a Black man in Oklahoma, is no longer on death row. But he’s still serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Support the Julius Jones Institute and take the Pledge to Keep Fighting for Julius Jones until he is free.
- Oklahoma is in the midst of an execution spree. People at risk of being executed include those with innocence claims, severe mental illness, intellectual disability, severe childhood trauma and abuse, and cases with noted racial bias throughout the trials. Join the work of Witness to Innocence and the Julius Jones Institute to demand the Oklahoma governor put a moratorium on the death penalty today.
- Ohio is this close to repealing the death penalty, but No Death Penalty Ohio lawmakers need to hear from you directly about why it’s time to end this practice.
- Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty is working to protect people with serious mental illness from execution. Stand on the right side of justice by supporting a bill that will save the lives of many vulnerable people.
- Arizona experienced three botched executions last year after an eight-year pause on the death penalty, which was prompted by the two-hour, torturous, botched death of Joseph Wood. Join Death Penalty Alternatives in Arizona to urge state officials, the attorney general, and governor to stop botched executions now.
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