I read a story about how the attorney general in my former home state disagreed with the governor’s ongoing reprieves for condemned inmates, calling it “a mockery of the justice system and of the dead.”
I noted in the comments on the Facebook post that since 1975, Ohio has tried to kill 12 innocent men.
There’s also been a recent surge in social media posts about how states are adding the death penalty for certain crimes, and far too many people are far too excited about the idea.
Aside from anything else, the death penalty is not applied evenly or fairly. As applied in most states, it makes some lives more important than others. For example, a black man who kills a white person is more likely to be killed by The State than a white man who kills a black person.
Some states are trying to make child sex offenses eligible for the death penalty, despite SCOTUS rulings in Coker v. Georgia and Kennedy v. Louisiana. In 2025, Alabama Representative Matt Simpson introduced a bill that would authorize the death penalty for rape of children under 12. He acknowledged the bill was unconstitutional when he introduced it, thus admitting he was violating his oath of office. The bill failed, but still…
I note that five of the 11 men exonerated from Death Row in Alabama were convicted of sexual assault. See The Scottsboro Boys for more information.
All Lives Don’t Matter
At any rate, my point to this is that despite the mostly evangelical insistence when the Black Lives Matter movement sprang up that “All Lives Matter,” the use of the death penalty puts the lie to that statement.
Oklahoma defines “aggravating circumstances” that make a murder eligible for the death penalty. If the victim is a peace officer or correctional employee killed while in performance of official duty, the death penalty is available, though not automatic.
Those are the only victims called out by job title. There are a few other objective criteria: murder for hire; a previous conviction for a violent felony; attempting to avoid arrest or prosecution; the murder was committed while incarcerated for a felony.
But two of the criteria are completely subjective: If the murder was “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel,” or there exists “a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.”
How can either of those criteria be enforced equally or objectively? Heinous isn’t defined in the Oklahoma Statutes. There’s no prescribed level of probability mentioned. Is 5% enough? 15%? Should it be more than 50%?
Most of the 26 others states that still have the death penalty on the books have similar eligibility criteria.
Who gets to decide what’s atrocious? In Oklahoma it’s the District Attorney. They are answerable to the voters every so often, but that’s it. There’s no guarantee of consistency when it comes to definitions. A DA in the Panhandle might have different standards than the DA in Tulsa.
In other words, capital punishment is disturbingly arbitrary in its enforcement.
If society is going to kill people for committing murder, should the circumstances be so indiscriminate?
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