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Editorial
Some good news on a bad practice
Many Ohioans came together this week in Columbus to
seek a moritorium on the state’s use of the death penalty. The action
was a heartening step toward ending this practice.
The protest was sparked by the release, this week, of an American Bar
Association study of the practice of capital punishment in Ohio. The study,
which took 30 months, called on Governor Ted Strickland to halt executions
due to the state’s very flawed system. Ohio failed to meet 28 out
of 93 ABA standards for death penalty practices, partially met 37 and
could not be rated for the rest. Among other deficiencies, the report
states that Ohio has inadequate procedures to protect defendants who claim
innocence, has significant racial disparities in those issued death sentences,
and has carried out the death penalty on mentally-deficient persons.
So our state’s process for delivering the death sentence is deeply
flawed. Beyond that, it is astonishing that the death penalty still exists
in our country at all.
A look at a world map that shows nations which still practice capital
punishment is sobering. There’s the United States colored the same
shade as — well, China, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, among others. It’s
a violent club to which we belong. You won’t find any other developed
Western nation in this group. Forty-seven out of 50 European nations outlaw
capital punishment, a stance required by those who wish to join the European
Union.
As well as being barbaric, the death penalty doesn’t work. Its proponents
claim that capital punishment acts as a deterrant to violent crime, and
research does indicate a link between the two, but perhaps not the one
you’d expect: states with the death penalty have a higher rate of
homicides than states without. In a 2005 Stanford Law Review article,
researcher John Donahue of the Yale Law School concluded, after reviewing
statistics, that “it is entirely unclear” whether the death
penalty causes “more or less murder.”
Most significant, of course, the death penalty is simply immoral. While
Governor Strickland has not yet responded to the ABA study, as a minister,
he has surely given considerable thought to violating the commandment,
“Thou shalt not kill.” It will be a fine day in Ohio if Strickland
joins the governors of the 12 other states that have banned the death
penalty. It will be a fine day for humanity when our country does the
same.
—Diane Chiddister
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