Dec. 3, Rick Halperin, director of the Human Rights Program at SMU Dallas, for an op-ed lamenting that the federal government is now the leading jurisdiction carrying out death penalty sentences. Published in the Kansas City Star under the heading Federal government is our top executioner. Don’t violate Lisa Montgomery’s human rights: https://bit.ly/3lyWWsA
A story in the Nov. 28 Star noted that the U.S. Justice Department “is quietly amending its execution protocols” so that methods including firing squads, electrocution and gas chambers may be added to the current method of lethal injection used on inmates in the federal death facility at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
As the tumultuous year of 2020 comes to a close, it is worth reminding ourselves of the current status of the death penalty in this country overall, and especially during this year.
By Rick Halperin
A story in the Nov. 28 Star noted that the U.S. Justice Department “is quietly amending its execution protocols” so that methods including firing squads, electrocution and gas chambers may be added to the current method of lethal injection used on inmates in the federal death facility at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
As the tumultuous year of 2020 comes to a close, it is worth reminding ourselves of the current status of the death penalty in this country overall, and especially during this year.
The death penalty is arguably the longest-running institution in our nation’s history, from colonial America to the present. More than 19,000 people have been put to death in our national experience. We have more methods of execution than any other country in the world — five — and we have used them all to kill condemned inmates: the electric chair (Tennessee and Florida), firing squads (Utah), gas chambers (Mississippi, Arizona), the gallows (Delaware, Washington state) and the most common, lethal injection, first used in 1982 in Texas and now used by most states and the federal government.
On June 29, 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty in America as administered then was unconstitutional, stating that “death is an unusually severe and degrading punishment,” that “it is inflicted arbitrarily,” and “there is no reason to believe that it serves any penal purpose more effectively than the less severe punishment of imprisonment.” All prisoners on death row at the time had their sentence commuted, but were not automatically freed.
Florida rewrote its death penalty statute shortly after Furman, and again started sentencing people to death in December of 1972. Texas’ current capital punishment statute was enacted in January 1974.
On July 2, 1976, in another U.S. Supreme Court case, Gregg v. Georgia, the court ruled that the death penalty is not unconstitutional per se, and Gary Gilmore became the first condemned inmate to be executed in the modern era when he was shot to death by a firing squad in the Utah State Prison on Jan. 17, 1977.
There have now been 1,527 executions in the United States, including 15 this year. Some 2,600 people are under a sentence of death in 28 states, including those in the U.S. military and federal government death row facilities.
The nation carried out a high of 98 executions in 1999, and has recorded a steady decline ever since. There have been fewer than 30 executions nationally every year since 2015. In addition, the pro-death penalty U.S. Supreme Court has restricted the applicability of the death penalty, banning it for people with intellectual disabilities in 2002 and ending it for juvenile offenders in 2005. The death penalty will not likely be eradicated from our country anytime soon, but its abolition is only a matter of time.
In the last three decades, the access to exonerating DNA evidence and the trend toward sentences of life without parole have significantly contributed to juries dramatically decreasing death sentences across the country — from more than 350 in the mid-1990s down to only 34 in 2019. Another 172 people who were wrongly convicted and sent to various death rows in the U.S. have mercifully been released before they were tragically executed.
This year will produce a significant and dramatic statistic: The federal government, which has already carried out eight of the nation’s 15 executions and has two more scheduled in December, will for the very first time be the leading execution jurisdiction in this country, rather than an individual state.
One of these impending executions is scheduled for Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day. It is outrageous, but sadly not surprising, that this nation shows such little respect and regard for fundamental human rights, scheduling the ultimate human rights violation on that particular date.
Officials from the federal government and the Justice Department, both displaying a bloodlust before they leave office on Jan. 20, have scheduled three more federal executions within a four-day period, Jan. 12 to 15. One person scheduled to be executed is Kansan Lisa Montgomery, who would be the first woman executed by the federal government since 1953. Her 2007 crime in Skidmore, Missouri, was beyond horrific. But so were the experiences in her early life, as she was sold by her relatives for sex to strangers, gang raped repeatedly and trafficked as a sex slave.
We should all be reminded that human rights are not just for the “good” and law-abiding people in our society. Human rights (should) apply to everyone, including those who have carried out the worst crimes against innocent people. Death row inmates are the easiest group of people to forget or to care about. But nations must be judged on how all people are treated, even the guilty and least likable among us.
President-elect Joe Biden, once a strong supporter of the death penalty, has promised to support legislation that would abolish the federal death penalty — but it would certainly come too little and too late for those with execution dates before he takes office on Jan. 20.
The deep divisions and polarizations in our country are not going to be mended anytime soon. However, it is never too late for us, regardless of party affiliation, to commit ourselves once again to the protection, defense and advocacy of human rights for all people at all times, and to support the simple and fundamental truth that human rights promotes: There is no such thing as a lesser person.
Rick Halperin is director of the Human Rights Program at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the former chairman of the board of directors of Amnesty International USA.