Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country | Founded 05-05-05

February 22, 2007 issue

Capital Punishment: “A Failed Policy”

ASU Prof’s New Book Provides the Evidence from Experts

Story by Kathleen McFadden

If you were to survey a group of experts on the death penalty—academics who have studied and written extensively about capital punishment—what percentage of them do you suppose would say that death is the most appropriate punishment for someone convicted of first-degree murder? 80 percent? 50 percent? 25 percent?

The answer is a surprising 0 percent. Not one of the experts Dr. Matthew Robinson surveyed for his new book, Death Nation: The Experts Explain American Capital Punishment, identified the death penalty as an appropriate punishment. Nevertheless, capital punishment is imposed in 39 jurisdictions—by 37 states, the federal government and the military.

Robinson, associate professor of criminal justice at Appalachian State University, began his research for the book with three goals in mind: to determine the effectiveness of capital punishment, to discover if there are problems with the administration of capital punishment and to determine why states continue to impose the death penalty if it is ineffective and plagued by problems.

The answers, presented in Robinson’s book, are based on the responses of 49 capital punishment scholars.

The majority of the respondents—79 percent—said that capital punishment as practiced in the United States is not an effective deterrent to crime, even though deterrence is a principal argument of capital punishment advocates.

One of the reasons the death penalty is not an effective deterrent, Robinson pointed out, is the infrequency with which it is carried out. Last year, 17,000 murders were committed in the United States, Robinson said, but only 53 inmates were executed.

The reasons behind the infrequency of carrying out death sentences, Robinson said, include time, cost, resource allocation and juries. On average, convicted murders spend 11 years on death row, Robinson explained, to exhaust the more stringent appeals process required in capital cases. Death penalty cases costs the state an average of two to five times more than non-capital cases. Prosecutors are often unwilling to push for a capital sentence, Robinson said, because each capital case puts a major constraint on the office’s resources. And juries are often unwilling to impose the death penalty.

The capital punishment scholars Robinson surveyed also identified significant problems with the administration of the death penalty. Eighty-four percent identified racial bias, 80 percent identified social class bias and 50 percent identified a gender/sex bias. In addition, 76 percent said that capital punishment had been used against the innocent, and 80 percent identified problems other than race, social class, gender and innocence.

Not surprisingly, of those surveyed, 79 percent favored a moratorium on capital punishment in the United States, and 84 percent favored its abolition.

The death penalty is still imposed, however, because it’s a political hot potato, Robinson said. Opposition to capital punishment has been cited as evidence that politicians are not tough on crime.

Robinson said his purpose in writing the book was to develop a policy guide for legislators and citizens that lays out the empirical evidence regarding capital punishment, evidence that can give state officials and politicians effective arguments for proposing alternatives to capital punishment. His research indicates that the experts generally agree that capital punishment is a failed policy.

“This is an argument for pragmatic abolition,” Robinson said. “It’s not an argument against the morality of capital punishment, but an argument that recognizes that the system is broken and can’t be fixed. Most of the people I speak with think life in prison is worse than death.”

 

Capital Punishment in North Carolina

The North Carolina House Interim Study Committee on Capital Punishment has spent the last year studying the state’s death penalty and criminal justice system, but did not consider a proposal for a two-year moratorium that would temporarily suspend the death penalty in North Carolina. Within the past two weeks, the NC Council of State—made up of the governor, lieutenant governor and the elected heads of eight state government agencies—approved a revised procedure for administering executions. The council was forced into the capital punishment debate by a judge who placed three executions on hold, citing a 1909 law that requires the council to approve any change in the state’s execution procedure. State correction officials changed the protocol after the state medical board said it is unethical for doctors to participate in executions and threatened to discipline any that did.

State officials have set execution dates for two death row inmates, even though authorities said both are likely to be delayed by the ongoing debate about the role doctors should play in executions.

The state Department of Correction scheduled a March 2 lethal injection for Archie Lee Billings and a March 9 execution for Allen Holman.

Three other executions were halted last month by Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens as the state wrestled with the role a physician should play when the state puts a condemned person to death.