Concerning Life Sentences Only for Felony 1 Crimes
Sen. Pat Pascoe and Rep. Rosemary Marshall
SB 02S-008
The General Assembly should end the era of capital punishment in Colorado now.
The United States Supreme Court has just ruled in the Ring v. Arizona case that the Arizona system of administering the death penalty, which is very much like Colorado's, is unconstitutional because it allows the judge to determine issues of fact that would raise the upper limit of the penalty range to death. In contrast, the jury's determination would only have resulted in a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Our parallel system is the third one that Colorado has devised that has been found unconstitutional.
The time has come to do away with the barbaric practice entirely as 12 states have done. The United States, which is the only Western industrialized nation that authorizes capital punishment, is fourth in the number executed after the countries of China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, not exactly bastions of freedom and justice. (Ring decision, Justice Breyer concurring in the judgment).
Capital punishment is a remnant of a more primitive society in which the families of victims wreaked bloody revenge for wrongs done to their kinsman. In a more evolved system of law, murder is recognized as a crime, not against a specific family, but against society. Society has an interest in public safety and justice, both well served by the punishment of life in prison for the most egregious murders. There is no additional benefit to society from executing the guilty defendant. In fact, the machinery and agents of that execution brutalize the whole society.
There are many indications that capital punishment is inequitable. Yesterday we heard from some representative innocent people condemned to death. A United States District Judge has just ruled a federal capital punishment law unconstitutional because of an "undue risk of executing innocent people" which abrogates the right to due process (Judge Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan). The Republican governor of Illinois placed a moratorium on executions because of the concerns raised by the fact that in recent times 13 condemned people in Illinois have been exonerated while 12 have been executed. Death penalty opponents recently celebrated the exoneration of the 100th condemned person in the United States (LA Times, April 10, 2002) since executions were resumed. Now there are 101.
There are weaknesses in the argument that capital punishment is a deterrent to crime, Justice Breyer points out in his concurring remarks in the Ring case. He calls this argument, at most, inconclusive and then cites many studies indicating no deterrent effect. One study of the death penalty in Texas found no deterrent effect. During the last 20 years, the homicide rate in death penalty states has been 48% to 101% higher than in non-death-penalty states, according to the New York Times. 80% of criminologists believe existing research fails to support the deterrence justification.
Justice Breyer continues that very few offenders sentenced to life without parole commit fi.irther crimes. The repeat murder rate is .002%. He also points out the arbitrary application of the death penalty in which the race of the victim and socio-economic factors seem to matter. The death sentence is five times as likely to be given, a Nebraska study found, when the victim is of a high socio-economic status. Poor persons are executed much more frequently than those of higher socio-economic class. Whether a person is condemned to death may be a factor of which county he is tried in. 3% of the nation's counties account for 50% of the nation's death sentences (cited by J. Breyer).
Add to all these arguments against the death penalty the high cost to the state. The death penalty costs Colorado at least $2.21 million a year and in some years $3.3 million, mostly in legal costs. An ordinary prison cell costs $27,000 a year to operate while a death row cell costs us $36,000 a year. Prisoners spend an average of 10 years on death row before they are executed. There is no question that life imprisonment is much cheaper than capital punishment.
The primitive and barbaric nature of putting people to death, the very real probability that we are executing innocent people, the lack of deterrent effect, the inequitable application of the sentences, and the high cost of implementation all call for termination of the death penalty.
