The Ultimate Injustice of The Death Penalty

Sigh. I guess it’s time for a Voice post.

Stop Killing People

Years ago, like in my twenties, I was strongly in favor of the death penalty. I don’t know why I came to that belief, but I understood that it was the classic deterrent. No executed person has ever committed another crime, after all.

But my twenties were back in the 80s, before DNA, before the research into eyewitness misidentification, and before anyone knew what junk science was.

Now that I’ve matured and learned more, I understand the problems with capital punishment. I understand the racial inequality behind its application. I realize how unreliable eyewitness misidentifications are. I’ve read the stories about how cops lie to suspects.

I’ve learned how crime lab scientists can straight-up manufacture evidence.

Science has shown that previous conclusions about bite marks or burn patterns were wrong, based on faulty science or knowledge.

Yeah, no executed person has ever committed another crime.

But no wrongfully executed person has ever been brought back to life.

See, that’s the problem with state-sanctioned killings. Because while it’s easy to let a wrongfully convicted person out of prison and throw some money at them to make things all better, you can’t do that when they’re dead.

You can open the cell door, but you can’t open the grave.

Oklahoma Legislation

Friday, I read a story regarding an Oklahoma bill that would make a person committing a first offense of forcible sodomy or rape eligible for the death penalty or life without parole.

Current state law allows those convicted of certain sex crimes against children under 14 to be sentenced to death or life without parole, but only after a second offense. Senator Warren Hamilton was researching age of consent laws when he came across what he considered a problem. “The question that immediately came to mind was, why is there ever a second offense of a crime of this nature?” he went on to say in an interview, “The goal is not necessarily to add to the number of executions. It’s simply to keep these monsters away from children so this can never happen again.”

But if the goal is not to add to the number of executions, why put that language in the bill? Why not stick to life without parole?

The bill passed out of the Senate 39-5 close to party lines and moves on to the House. I’m sure it will pass out of the House, and I’m sure Governor Stitt will sign it. This is, after all, the same state that enshrined capital punishment in the state constitution in 2016.

My Thoughts

We need to end the death penalty, not add more crimes to the “eligibility list.”

Oklahoma has a horrible record when it comes to wrongful convictions. Since 1993, 44 men and women have been exonerated of crime ranging from robbery to stalking to murder. Their sentences vary from probation to life to death.

Over the last 36 years, more than 3,650 people have been exonerated for crimes they didn’t commit.

332 of those involved some sort of alleged child sexual offense. 279 of those cases involved perjury or false accusations. 6 of those false accusation cases were in Oklahoma and in five of those cases, no crime was actually committed.

We can’t bring back someone from the dead when the state kills the wrong person, and we know we’ve come close to killing the wrong person.

We need to quit killing people.

The Ultimate Injustice of The Death Penalty: You can open the cell door, but you can’t open the grave. Share on X

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