After a rare execution by firing squad, a fresh call to abolish the death penalty | Editorial

With the White House making seemingly delirious decisions that have inflated prices, may lead to a recession, and have put the United States on the wrong side of a potential fourth world war, it’s understandable that most Americans paid little attention to a rare execution by firing squad that took place in South Carolina last week.

Even so, we must keep in mind that this nation was born in the pursuit of justice, and acknowledge that it is clearer now than ever before that the death penalty is an unjust form of punishment that provides no discernible deterrent to crime. As retribution, the death penalty may have merit, but retribution isn’t the same as justice.

Brad Sigmon, 67, was pronounced dead Friday after being shot by a firing squad at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, S.C. He became only the third person executed by a firing squad in the United States since 1977. Sigmon was sentenced 23 years ago for the 2001 bludgeoning deaths of his ex-girlfriend’s parents. It was a heinous crime that deserved a severe sentence.

Sigmon spent a quarter of a century in prison awaiting his fate, which is common. Some death row inmates have spent as much as 40 years in prison. Some have grown old and died before being executed. The long appeals process that keeps them jailed is supposed to favor defendants, but it took at least 25 years for more than half the exonerations received since 2013 to be granted. Is that justice?

Crimes like Sigmon’s, and others even more reprehensible, shouldn’t be cherry-picked to make a case for an abominable practice so broadly applied that innocent people have been executed. At least 20 people executed since 1976 died because evidence was discovered too late or was never considered by the courts, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Marcellus Williams, 55, was executed last September for a 1998 murder in Missouri even though the man who prosecuted his case cited new evidence and said he no longer believed Williams was guilty. “Marcellus Williams should be alive today,” former St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell said after the execution. “If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option.”

It would be even better to end the death penalty, period.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall made an unsuccessful but true argument in a 1972 case that executions violate the Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. “If it is impossible to construct a system capable of accommodating all evidence relevant to a man’s entitlement to be spared death, no matter when the evidence is disclosed,” Marshall said, “then it is the system, not the life of the man sentenced to death, that should be dispatched.”

The cruelty of executions is undeniable, but in 21st-century America, their rarity is also a reality.

There were 26 executions in America last year, the 10th year in a row with fewer than 30. Ninety-nine people were executed in 1999. Twenty-three states no longer have a death penalty, and four (California, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Ohio) have execution moratoriums. Pennsylvania’s moratorium was declared by Gov. Tom Wolf in 2015 and has been extended by Gov. Josh Shapiro. The last execution in this state was of serial killer Gary Heidnick in 1999.

Similar to its love affair with guns, America has an affinity with capital punishment that most Western nations lack. Every European country except Belarus has abandoned capital punishment. Even Russia has observed a moratorium on executions since 1996. China is believed to execute the most prisoners, but its statistics are a state secret. Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are believed to be responsible for 86% of all recorded executions. Must that be the company America keeps?

As retribution, the death penalty may have merit, but retribution isn’t the same as justice.

Family and friends who lose a loved one to violence may understandably want the perpetrator of that crime to no longer exist. But many will admit after an execution that the fleeting satisfaction they felt will never fill the void created when someone they treasured was mercilessly killed. Retribution doesn’t last, and removing a criminal from society doesn’t require a death sentence.

Maintaining a system that kills both the innocent and the guilty is itself a crime. But that won’t change until politicians more concerned with winning the next election stop ignoring the issue. Trying to end the death penalty may not win them votes, but it’s the right thing to do. America’s once treasured image as being dedicated to the idea of justice for all was never accurate, but our flawed nation typically bent toward what was morally right. The death penalty is wrong. It doesn’t deter crime. It kills innocent people. It needs to end.